I'm ready when you are all right um I grew up in a really tiny town in White Salmon Washington um it's got a population of probably like 1200 people if it hasn't gone up since I left um I was raised by a single mom and have two older brothers and um once I was about 20 years old I started thinking about joining the military um I left for Fort Sill in 2013 and did my basic training there and it was awesome I loved every part of it and then AIT I trained to be an Intel analyst and then I spent eight years doing that in Colorado and once I got out then I went to Hawaii to spend some time with my Dad he's getting hospice care and my brother's also over there and his new baby so that's kind of an overview but um to fill some gaps our mom was a very sick individual a very combative really aggressive a lot of anger problems and then in her 40s she was diagnosed with like dementia early dementia and so that made more sense but um basically my childhood was like drastically different than my brothers they're five and six years older than me all three of us have different dads and my oldest brother and I um we had no relationship with our biological fathers I was about nine years old when I decided to try to find mine in a phone book and call him up and I was able to get a hold of him and um throughout my childhood because of what my mom had put us through I had this fantasy that my biological father would find out that I existed when I was nine and then maybe come and rescue me from that um and then I met him and he was a total [ __ ] he made me feel really stupid um he was like commenting on my eye color and I'm like nine so I don't know anything about anything and he said that my eyes were Hazel and I said I think they're like kind of a greenish color and he was like yeah that's like Hazel and that's all that sticks out from my relationship or interaction with him um and the reason why I was so fixated on finding him and being rescued by him is because uh being that I was much younger than my brothers and my mom herself had grown up in like foster care because her mom had her when she was 15 and then she was raised by her grandma for a little bit and then her grandma passed away when my mom was 16 and then she decided to run away then she ended up in juvie for that and then eventually she found a good foster mom who ended up being like a grandma to me and my brothers and being really good to us we went to Christmas at her house every year and got the full like Grandma experience she's a great cook and like so loving um super Christian so that kind of changed like my perception of different things growing up um but to get a little bit deeper into some of my mom's issues with me uh I feel as though even though I'll never know because she didn't talk to me about it um I feel like something pretty terrible must have been happening to her when she was a kid and going through foster care maybe or in juvie or out on the streets and it seems like it took such a toll that instead of her viewing me as like her daughter and her child it seems like she saw me as like a reflection of herself and just kind of like poured all that shame and hatred into me um and that looked a lot like deliberately leaving me with people who were gonna do bad things to me um some of like the earliest memories that I have are sorry okay take your time do you look like your mom no not at all I'm glad but uh um some of my earliest memories of some of the things that happened to me with a lot of people throughout my childhood was um like smells and feelings and sights of like blood like not full memories right but there will be like little things that trigger like a little bit of a like a shred of a memory but um as I got older it became a lot more clear to me like what I was going to be expected to do with these people and as I became more aware of it I would push back because there's certain people um certain like uh I don't know how to describe them like pedophiles that are good at making it seem like a treat they're good at like giving money or candy or food or clothes or toys and like making you excited to be there and then shifting it and then some people are just like like awful right off the get-go um and it led to a lot of confusion of like why am I being left here like because my understanding is like they're babysitters or their friends of mom or like there's she trusts me with these people and uh sorry let me just collect my thoughts so as I got older and more aware and more experienced with certain people because I'd see the same people again and again and as I got older that was an indicator to me that she was like this was a choice that she was making to take me to these people um so as that realization started to set in as I got older and this is before I met my dad so between like birth and nine um I would push back a little bit more and threaten to run away say I don't want to go I don't want to like don't leave me here I don't want to stay here and each time that would happen I'd be stuck in my room and she'd like literally nailed the Windows shut and then lock my door and uh and leave me like for a long time like not long and like the grand scope of things but like a day or two as a kid just being locked in a box like no bathroom or anything like that that uh [Applause] it really uh changed I think what I could have been growing up and um so yeah that really fed into this desire for somebody to come and scoop me up and take me away from it that being said though as clear as I made it that I hated certain things certain ones weren't that bad right so that's where it kind of goes from like um like I don't want to do this into shame because it started to feel like with certain people it wasn't being done to me it was something I was doing and I was so afraid that people were gonna find out and uh I didn't it's like so hard to explain like a child's uh like mindset about things like this because as a kid like I wasn't thinking like oh people are gonna call me like a [ __ ] and think I'm promiscuous as a child I'm thinking I don't know what this is but it feels gross it feels wrong I know at least my friends like don't want to be naked around other people and so like given that comparison um it just felt like I was like really [ __ ] up and being gross and it was my choice and uh that like over time once these things stopped uh that just kind of became like my understanding of how to interact with men um so around the age of 14 is beginning to taper off and I got my first period that year and my mom actually um purchased like cemetery plots at Lyle cemeteries like 20 minutes away from my hometown and she like walked me up into the cemetery and showed me my plot and said like this is where you're gonna be because you're done I'm done like she was I think she was trying to get across the like my my purpose my what I was meant to do for her I didn't have that job anymore because I'm not like right for it anymore I felt you're too old exactly I felt like I was being like like fired like terminated basically this is rural Washington yeah very rural rural and that uh that really feeds into it too because in a town that small everyone knows everyone perception is reality and my mom was perceived as this like beacon in the community she had a daycare when I was a kid and then around the time that I went to middle school she finished up her master's degree in like sociology or something and she got a job with the Head Start in town the only Head Start in town as like the center coordinator so kind of like a principal and so like everyone in the community especially in our church just thought she was like the best thing ever and I could never relate to that because she was like such a [ __ ] monster at home like she was psychotic like he was doing this for money I don't know what it was for because we really struggled with money like I know I talk about her having a master's degree but like the way I described my home growing up is it's literally a single wide trailer they took half of the trailer off and built onto it to turn it into a house so like we had like this like Shack of a house with a trailer hitch still attached did she have a drug problem no not that I know of and then it was just last year in Hawaii with our dad who's getting hospice care because he's on like such heavy medications he had like he had substance abuse issues so now he's got cancer and they're trying to treat pain and he's got such a like high threshold for pain medications and things like that so in that delirium he's admitted a few things that I didn't know about my mom like that they dealt cocaine before the boys were born that would have been in like the early to mid 80s but after that my experience with her growing up was like very Christian no drinking except maybe a glass of wine anytime I would cry as a kid she thought I was on drugs she'd accused me of being on drugs if I was breaking down because she was being like crazy and throwing [ __ ] or slamming things and it was too much as soon as I'd start to break down she couldn't see it for like the reaction that it was but she treated it more like it's just coming out of the blue and like why are you why are you acting so crazy you must be on something in like again I kind of like absorbed all of that and uh I got really heavy into drinking after I turned 14. but I never touched drugs because I was so afraid of any like weird Behavior I had being tied to that and it helped me though because when I did decide to enlist and go for like a TS clearance my background check was pristine because I'd never been busted for anything or been on anything I was giving them honest answers in the interrogation but um so between 14 and 16 she was done with me and made it very clear she wanted me out but it's not the same as living in like a bigger city because you can't just like walk out on the street and find a stranger to crash with or whatever like I said like everyone knew me everyone knew my mom so when I did get out of the house I had to just like go back there and um so I started parting a lot when I was 14 that was like freshman year of high school I got my first boyfriend um and uh between 14 and 15 with him especially everything that I'd kind of like piled up when I was little started to like cause problems with that relationship because like teenagers are kind of thinking similarly like when they get into relationships right start thinking about like sex and things like that kissing everything and it was like so weird for me because I had such an aversion to him kissing me so we put that off for almost like the whole first year of our relationship we didn't kiss which I know seems ironic but then he started to like want us to lose our virginities to each other and it like destroyed me because uh I wasn't thinking about it that way like by that age I'd come to terms with certain things I'd heard enough about the things that people were doing to know like more about like what I'd been partaking in when I was a kid and so for me like he's thinking we're going to lose our virginity to each other and I'm thinking like I lost it like when I was probably like four like and so and it just it made me [ __ ] hate him so much he was so nice to me he's like the best high school boyfriend you could possibly have sorry it's so weird because I don't know you but um but um he would like take me out on nice dates and buy me things and uh he got his like license and he wanted to drive me everywhere and he was like he was like obsessed with me he was so good to me and I was so [ __ ] nasty to him because I like couldn't really I felt like I hated him so much and I couldn't make sense of it but I just started acting on it and uh and at these like parties that I was going to when I was that age um I would just like Get Wrecked and then just like act like a [ __ ] like as soon as I was drunk I wanted to take my clothes off and I wanted people touching me and talking to me and taking me places like I wanted it I felt like that was like what I was supposed to do and um and like obviously he couldn't take that like he wanted to stay together to and he wanted to stay friends and everything and then I'd like give him a hug and it's trying to turn into more and I like couldn't handle that and uh eventually we fully broke it off this is like before I even turned 16. and um shortly thereafter I had my 16th birthday drunk on like the floor of someone's trailer watching fireworks on TV and um it was about a week after that I went to another party in town at this place called The Grange hall it's like a barn basically where people have like bigger parties in town and so I went there to see um like friends of a friend who were playing in a band there and after they finished playing I went outside to see like what's happening afterward and there was one guy who's like I think he was probably like 19 or 20 at the time and I'd seen him at a few different parties he and his girlfriend were like known to like kind of coordinate a lot of this stuff so I went up to him I was like what's going on tonight where's the party and you say oh yeah like we're gonna go with my friend Jeremy we're gonna drive up to Trout Lake there's going to be a ton of people there and so I got in the car with those two and his friend Jeremy and we went up to Trout Lake which is an even smaller town that's like 20 minutes like up into the woods they have one gas station and like a little like corner store and we get to Jeremy's house and it's just this guy and his girlfriend and Jeremy and Jeremy on the way up there was talking about like he just got divorced so I'm thinking like he's like old as [ __ ] and so we get up there and we're like sitting around and kind of drinking and I'm just thinking as time goes on I'm like when is everyone gonna get here like there's like nobody [ __ ] here this is lame and so I told the guy the one that I knew I was like I'm just really tired I just want to sleep and then maybe you can like drive me back down the hill in the morning and that guy Jeremy was like here you can take my room I'll sleep on the couch and so I went and I passed out in his room and then hours after that I wake up to him like crawling into bed and reaching under my shirt and like I didn't I just went with it right and um but it felt [ __ ] like it just felt so awful because that had a little break from that and like every interaction I'd had after that was like fully like my Pursuit and something that I thought like I was into and that felt like what I was used to which is like I'm just here and like you're gonna do what you need to do and I need to just like like wait until it's over and then we're good and it's fine and so that happens but at night Corey and his girlfriend left and went back to their house so they left me alone and this guy Jeremy's house and he didn't take me home for like two days and like it just kind of like At first I felt like really like disgusted and like shut down because it took me back to that but shortly after that I started looking around and I'm like this is like somewhere that I can stay though and not go back to Mom and I [ __ ] hated my mom at that point and she hated me she was like so volatile all the time and like school was like a dumpster fire for me every year I'd like start strong and then I just quit turning in my work and sleeping in class and dressing like [ __ ] and acting out and so by that time I like given up on school and so I was thinking like I'm just gonna drop out and I'm just gonna stay here and so I did that and uh after some time had gone by with this guy Jeremy my brothers caught on to what was happening because like I said everyone knows everyone and people knew Jeremy and those same people knew my brothers and word got to my brothers that this like 30 year old man was like in a relationship with me and I I had just turned 16. and my brothers at that point in my life it was so weird because like it felt we never really like bonded that well because there's such a huge age Gap in our experiences at home were so different and as soon as they could move out they did which was when I was like 11 and 12. and um so I wasn't like close with them in that way but when they heard about this they went and found Jeremy at work and they like cornered him and beat him up and I guess like well I don't want to say something like incriminating but they like really [ __ ] him up and then he stopped talking to me for a couple days and I know this sounds weird right but like I couldn't [ __ ] handle it I couldn't handle being like left by him like after I had like decided that that's where I wanted to be um I was just like so upset that I would have to like go back and so I would not leave him alone and basically we had this Arrangement where like he would come into my hometown and then have me like hide in the back seat of his car so he could take me back to his house and things went like that for a little bit and then um my mom was aware of the situation after that too and told me that I like could not come home after that and uh so I stayed with Jeremy and then when I was 17 I got pregnant and um of the time I was trying so hard to act like him and like emulate that age and that like maturity level and like life experience and stuff I was like yeah I'm ready to start a family like this is what I want too and so I got pregnant and then we got engaged and we had a son together and um I really really tried to like fit that fit that mold and like be a good mom because like I knew that even at that age like I really wanted to be the complete opposite of her like I spent probably my whole adult life trying to identify an opposition with my mom but um I just like I felt like I was [ __ ] suffocating because like once I had our son I looked at myself differently I felt like like more important because I'd made somebody I was in charge of somebody like and that made it like so much harder to be around Jeremy or like act like a partner to him because I didn't see it that way anymore I felt like I was more like a possession to him or like someone just kind of coexisting with him and because like the attraction was starting to wane then he just wait until I fell asleep and do it then and so like I just after I think maybe like a year of that I couldn't do that anymore I got a job at Big Five Sporting Goods and I started to think like I can find a way out of this I can like work really hard and get my own money and get out of this and it was actually while I was at big five I met my recruiter's wife and was training her there and she started to tell me about like the military and what it could do for my life like school being paid for and medical benefits and maybe even the signing bonus depending on what kind of job you get and if you get the Intel Analyst job you'll have a clearance to fall back on and this is like embarrassing to admit now with um kind of like the culture of everything but I really wanted to be a cop when I was that age and so I'd gone on a few ride-alongs and tried to get an idea of like what I would need to have to go and apply for a job like that and a lot of them had military experience but specifically they said don't be an MP be an Intel analyst because so many people fall off this job after like a year and you'll want like a clearance to fall back on to get your foot in the door for like high paying entry-level jobs so that's uh when I started to kind of like think about starting over and like making something out of my life and getting away from my hometown and getting away from Jeremy but unfortunately what ended up happening is as I was approaching my ship date for basic training he like preemptively filed for divorce and I was like not to make excuses but I was a dumbass kid and I asked somebody else to read the court paperwork for me and be like what am I about to sign can you explain to me like what this says what is this and they said like oh it's like nothing is going to change everything's going to stay the same it's there's no changes you're just going to be divorced and I was like [ __ ] yeah that's exactly what I want and it turns out that I was like agreeing to not have custody of our child anymore and also agreeing that I owed him back child support for months and I signed it like happily willingly signed that and uh right before I shipped out it's finalized I get my paperwork I give it to my recruiter so that he can start figuring out like how many dependents do I have what kind of pay am I going to get when I'm at basic training and I'm thinking like hell yeah like I'm gonna get BAH because I have my son as a dependent I'm gonna put a bunch of money away I'm gonna come out with a fat savings account for us and we can start fresh instead I showed up to basic training owing back child support and then something that a lot of people don't realize is it takes a minute for your pay to catch up in basic training and so I'd only earns like one month worth of pay before it was Christmas block leave and our drill sergeants had told us like you can stay here for Christmas block leave and just clean and get smoked the whole time like have to do like push-ups basically or you can buy yourself a ticket and fly back home and go have Christmas and like who's that lucky who gets to do that in the midst of basic training and so I was thinking like I don't have [ __ ] for money right now but like I'm gonna use this paycheck to fly back home and like see our son and spend time with my brother and uh and I had a car leased at the time and I've like never told anybody this because I'm like embarrassed about it but basically I didn't have money to make that payment I skipped the car payment and bought a plane ticket instead so I could go back home so what ended up happening is my car was taken away right um and then with the back child support like my credit was destroyed and so I graduated AIT and luckily a lot of people got like interim clearances in AIT because their investigations were still going but like my clearance came through lickety-split because there was nothing to it and so instead of having an interim clearance I had a full-on like TS clearance when I graduated which was a blessing because my credit got ruined at the same time and that's a huge part of maintaining your clearance is having like good finances good credit so that people can't use like your financial instability is leverage over you I think that's basically what they're worried about um and so once I had my job I was just like riddled with anxiety that I was going to lose it at any time because you lose your clearance over [ __ ] like this all the time I had to take people to go and like get flagged for having [ __ ] up finances so I had that hanging over my head and then the custody of course and in the midst of that is sloppy and stressful as everything was while I was at AIT I met my second husband and he was my age like a couple years older than me like the most like physically fit like normal looking guy probably in our class and so when he started giving me attention at AIT I was thinking like one I didn't think I had it like this and two like this will really be my new life like I'll have a spouse that's my age that I'm really happy with and really attracted to and then like we can be together and that can make it even easier for me to get my son back but um once I graduated and moved to Colorado with my second husband he was [ __ ] crazy too which it took me a long time to realize that you kind of repeat those patterns throughout your life until you deal with it um again just really volatile serious anger issues and then like a ton of cheating throughout like right off the bat and uh when I had to go back home after AIT to get my things and moved on to Colorado and in that time I met up with my like childhood best friend and I told her a little bit about like what had already happened and she was like you need to get this annulled like this is not a good guy this is [ __ ] up like you need to get out of this and then just like come back home and I was like that's not an option anymore like I have to go to Colorado I have to be married I'm not going to leave this person this is my chance like no matter how like [ __ ] up and crazy he's acting I really wanted my life to look better and like different and have a chance to turn this around I still felt like I could undo the damage that had been done but it just got like too much to handle like we're calling the cops on each other like he would break [ __ ] and hurt me and I would call the cops and then he'd go and call the cops to make it look like he hadn't done anything and it was such a mess there too um that like just a couple years after that I flew back home for a little bit and stayed with Gaby again and in that time though I went back home and I was like starting from scratch or trying to and uh I I got like all of my military [ __ ] moved up to Washington I got like everything done that I needed to have done and then I even started working like side jobs and stuff and then I was borrowing this couple from Church's car into like a buy my own and over time though I'm like so shitty about communication or I was that I was like blowing baby off and not talking to her when I was having worse days and then Ryan was reaching out my husband and I wanted to like I really wanted to make that work I wanted to go back to that and I had hope that maybe like if he got like anger management or something like he said he did maybe it would be like totally different if I just gave it another shot and like as I'm blowing Gaby off she's being hurt by that because she worked so hard to get me set up there and take care of me and give me a soft place to land and then I just wasn't even talking to her um and so she got pissed and she texted me while I was at work one day and she was like um these people my my friends from church they want their car back if you don't give it back today they're going to report it stolen and um and I no longer had a place to stay because I was also like rooming with another couple from church who had like a renovated garage or whatever so in one day and one Fell Swoop no car no place to stay and like Ryan in my ear so for me it was like such a clear choice I have to just go back there at least there I have my own apartment with my husband we have a car I have a life there I'm like somebody there I'm not just this like free-floating thing back home surrounded by all my peers who are like flourishing in their lives right now and that was like the added thing I know that seems Petty but it like it just felt awful to work that hard to change things and then be surrounded by all these people that didn't have to work that hard and their lives are taking off and yours is tanking and uh so I made the choice to return to Colorado and it was about a year after I came back to Colorado that Ryan and I had our son together um and I have him he's the light of my life I felt a lot more ready for him and able to take on mothering um in the midst of all this instability though I really came to terms with the fact that like if I were to re-enter my first son's life that would be such a detriment to him because as gross as Jeremy had to be to be a 30 year old man pursuing a 16 year old child he had like remarried already and to somebody his age and our son was like settled into life with them and calling that lady mom at that point and I started to feel like I wasn't ready for that I don't know that I could ever like move far enough away from my experience with his dad to not have that effect how I treated him or raised him I knew how my mom treated me based on things that she'd experienced or things that I'd feel like she probably experienced and I made the decision over time that I'm not gonna pursue that I'm hoping that he'll do what I did when I was a kid and he'll wonder about me and want to be rescued and maybe like find me and reach out to me because he still lives so close to my brother who still lives there and that like I feel like it would just be so easy for him to find me if he wanted to I feel like I want to leave it his choice to like try to search for me rather than like try to like infiltrate his life in that way because there's just so much that would come along with that so much explanation like you know as he gets older I'm sure he can factor in the age difference and understand what that means but at the age that he is now which um he's like still a kid for sure but uh I think that it would just be like so damaging and so disorienting to a child at that age like he's going to be coming up on like puberty soon and things like that and I feel like that would just decimate a kid at that age to like have their their absentee mom like re-enter the picture and explain why they left in the first place and have to Grapple with the idea that like their dad played into that somehow the person who is raising them so my choice now is to leave it and raise my other son and um uh while I was in the military um it got like trickier and trickier to balance things out with my second son's dad my second husband and um eventually I mean I would have to so we're dual military or we were he had the same job as me obviously we went to AIT together and but he worked at division so he was like a desk jockey and then I worked in first brigade so I was actually doing like field training pretty often because we're supposed to be like the first to deploy if something happens so I was in the field constantly and uh in that time he was very clearly like not honoring our relationship and it just making it like obvious to me um and a big part of that that like really uh wasn't something that I was like willing to deal with anymore as the thought that like our kid was in the house when he was like having different people around and uh so our sun wasn't even a year old when we divorced or we split up and then we filed for divorce but that court case got dropped so many times because I wasn't around to even go to the first hearing the initial status conference um and a couple years after we divorced is when I shipped to Afghanistan for my first and only deployment um and I was very excited about that I didn't want to leave our son but I was so excited for the chance to have that experience because it's like kind of a rarity these days for like regular military people to deploy like SF is a totally different ball game but like just regular like combat support Moses that you don't really expect to like get to deploy unless you're staying in for like 20 years and so the fact that I had that opportunity was so exciting to me and again thinking about all the money I'd saved not paying rent not paying a car payment and just stacking like combat pay on top of that and it was also really nice and really fulfilling for me because I trained so hard on that job and then I finally actually got to use those skills in like real life scenarios so again I felt like very purposeful very important and like motivated about my future but um about halfway through I was working co-ops so that's current operations ocean open source intelligence analysis um ISR so that's Intel surveillance and reconnaissance uh basically you tell like the drones where to go and what to look for and they give you like counts of like Personnel at different compounds and things like that so we can decide if we're gonna send anything that way right um so in the mix of all that right as fighting season was ramping up in the summertime we heard over like the speakers on the fob um like the bass uh that somebody was shooting at the base and so everyone's freaking out and thinking it's like very very serious right because we get reporting all the time that I'm looking at myself saying like these are people that were targeting this is the place that we're targeting in the time and everything so I'm looking at reports that back this up as a possibility and uh once I heard that over the speaker and everyone's talking about it in the jock so the joint operations center um it was my job to kind of brief everyone on what was happening and then help make a decision about what qrf was going to do about it now um I had like two sets of orders for this deployment and one was from NATO and that was advise and assist so what people imagine we were doing in Afghanistan like training their own military and police and then I had a second set of orders from 4 ID which basically said that it was gonna possibly be more of an offensive Mission with some like support for like Parliament elections but um basically uh when this person was shooting at the base we called in the Afghan police to deal with it first but they didn't want to approach the persons this person standing in like really tall grass right outside the fob near like the vehicle entry point I think and um it was hard to make out like what they looked like or what their age might be or anything like that but the Afghan police wouldn't even approach this person they're standing like a field away and won't come any closer and this person's just like unloading rounds at the fob with a pistol granted but um he dug down into the grass when he noticed the Afghan police were in the area and when he came back up we had such like uh blurry footage from the drones basically that when he stood back up everyone around me was so convinced he had a beard right that's what we look for too to determine is this someone who's like a like military aged male right and so I was like I'm thinking like yes let's like put this to a stop let's end this like qrf is on the way they'll deal with it do what you need to do and um so they arrived right on the other side of the fence and they got their 50 cal ready we waited and then they shot the guy down and it was like completely excessive right it's a 50 cal for like a human being that's not that far away I don't know if you've ever seen a 50 cal firing but it's like insane and um and then after that all happened and the guy was clearly like dead in the fields um I I had to like keep eyes on this person right so I'm like watching the footage of this person like convulsing on the ground eventually they stop and he was left there for like the whole day and as time is going by and we're using like different tools to get footage of this we looked at the peateds footage and it turned out that this was like a little boy who had ducked into the grass when he saw the police coming and he tried to kill himself he shot himself like in the mouth but it didn't kill him so when he stood back up he was very disoriented and had blood like running down his cheek and chin and neck and it looked like a beard with like really poor footage but once we looked at the peateds footage which is what I used to get clearer images to build a storyboard which is basically like images from start to end and explanations analysis and any reporting that might go along with it and like I said like I even I had reporting talking about hakani Network patrolling that specific Village that was in that area and I had to explain that um once once we did find out that it was a child once some people had come to like gather the body later in the day um then I had to explain that hakani Network's been going to these Villages it's a normal thing for them to like give weapons to kids and send them outside of the fob because it will set off this type of chain of events and it's easy to like build propaganda off of that and say like hey look they're just like killing the kids in the village for no good reason like don't trust them don't talk to them because that's what we count on right we count on people all around the fob in these villages to give us like reporting about threats and things coming down the line right so that's like a great way to get people to not want to talk to you if they think you're a monster that just kills kids for no reason and so it worked out exactly the way that I think that they wanted it to um but once that happened and I had to like watch that whole thing play out realized that it was a kid and then used images of this dead kid just laying out and stiffening in the Sun Well nobody's coming to collect his body and that's uh that's like that's the hardest part for me is that like nobody was coming to collect him up and um I don't like it felt different if it had been a man I was like [ __ ] it like he's doing some bad [ __ ] like whatever he can lay out there and then I found out that he was like 12 years old and I was like where are his parents why didn't they come and get him he's like turning yellow and [ __ ] like when they they put him in the back of a truck to take him away and they just like picked him up and like tossed him down in the back of the truck and drove off and I could just see his like stiff body like rattling the back of the truck and I couldn't [ __ ] believe it because I was like it just like like that's a kid like and I think that I had spent enough time in a different kind of life and far away from my mom and not talking to her to be so far away from my experience of like feeling and I know there's no comparison right but I felt like so far away from being a kid that wasn't like cared about I felt like that could have happened to me when I was a kid and nobody would have really noticed that's how I felt when I was a child and that got kind of reactivated when I watched this um happened with this kid in Afghanistan and so that being said when I came back home from that I felt so differently and uh so like careless like I felt like very indifferent like I didn't give a [ __ ] about my job anymore and I didn't like the people I was around and I just didn't see the point of any of it and you've like you can't be that way and like do your job in the military right and um and then I started having like sleep issues and panic attacks and like anger issues and uh finally I took myself to behavioral health and I found a psychiatrist there and just started telling him like I don't I can't function like I want to be dead so bad I want to be gone so bad like it's so uncomfortable to just exists because you know I worked so hard to get away from one thing and then it's on to the next thing I worked so hard to get away from that thing and fix it and then it's on to the next thing and then and then I'm like back through the [ __ ] with my second husband and I've got to work hard and get through that [ __ ] and then deployment again it felt like a huge opportunity and something that was really gonna like 180 things for me but um it just seemed to dig me deeper and deeper and keep pushing me back so um so I started talking to the psychiatrist and he explained to me it's like you we can manage this we can get you on medications you can do this or you can be medically discharged because you have PTSD that will discharge you for that and so I just took him up on that and uh I was like let me let me get the [ __ ] out of here because I can't do this anymore as badly as I wanted this as badly as I wanted to like complete a career and like do good and be worth something and make all this money um I just like I couldn't [ __ ] do it and I didn't care anymore and it started to become like really hard to like find a way to put anything into my son right because that was just like you know he's a child that I love him so much I would never do anything bad to my son right but like it was it that you know mothering should come fairly naturally right and I felt like I had to like force myself to take care of him and like that was making me hate myself even more because uh I was like this isn't coming naturally and and it's like so much work to just give him the bare minimum and he deserves so much more than that and uh so once I got out um it was crazy as I was getting out covet hit and uh it was actually I was at a voluntary 30-day inpatient program called strong hope in Utah some excellent program um but while I was there and getting a lot of help from my problems and getting on antidepressants and everything we started seeing like news on the TV and our little like Clinic area talking about this new virus from you know and uh and everyone's freaking out and thinking like what is this should we take it seriously and lo and behold I get back from this 30-day program and like all hell is breaking loose there's like the quarantines and everything like mass panic and like everyone misunderstanding what's going on and having no trust and business is shutting down and my plan had been like okay I I'm gonna tackle these like mental issues that I'm having right now and then I'm gonna go back to school I'm gonna finish school there's still a chance right and uh I get enrolled in school and with covid happening all the classes change to like an online format and I was going to a community college at the time and their online format was garbage it was so [ __ ] hard and so I ended up just giving up on that and uh just kind of like coasting along for a little bit until um until uh my second husband he had been in Korea for like a little over a year and he was anticipating coming back to the states he was supposed to finish out his contract there get out of the military and come back to Colorado to help me co-parent so we could do 50 50. and he met a woman over there and they got serious very quickly and he decided to move to California with her instead of coming back to Colorado and when that happened I was like I don't know what the [ __ ] I'm doing here like I want to go I want to go back to Washington or somewhere and I knew that my oldest brother was on the big island in Hawaii we spent some time there when I was little and so I reached out to him and he had just had a baby he was telling me that our dad was over there getting hospice care and I decided that like I just wanted to be close to like the little bit of family that I like felt good about and wanted to be close to I wanted my son to like get that experience too because he'd never met any of my family um and it was there that like kind of uh the type of person that I had tried so hard to be in my adult life I stopped caring about it and I wanted to do something easy and so with covid with you know everything else that's happening right now and only fans being such a huge thing I decided to get into that a little bit for easy money somehow I had like I mean not like a lot of people following me on social media and stuff but enough that like immediately I was raking in like so much money doing that and I started to feel like you know I don't really give a [ __ ] like what this looks like to anybody anymore I just want to like make my money and like and just enjoy my life for once I was in Hawaii and making easy money I had like I had to spend 10 minutes a day to make like 30 Grand in a month you know like it was a no brainer for me for a long time but um I also like started to feel kind of burned out on just doing the same [ __ ] all the time and having to talk to these people because that's another part of that you don't get to just like post pictures and videos you need to like respond to people and send out more [ __ ] for them to pay for and I just didn't want to keep talking to these people because they've got all these expectations and uh and I was I don't I don't care about those people you know like I was like just look at me that's it and then give me your money and that's all I want like but um one person that was uh subscribed to my only fans found after he found my only fans he found my Instagram and uh he messaged me a few times saying like I'm on the big island too can I like take you out to coffee can I take you to dinner whatever and I'm thinking like this another person that thinks I'm gonna be like a prostitute and they can meet up for a date and then like pay and have me for like the whole night or whatever and I don't want to deal with that [ __ ] and so I put it off and put it off and then eventually he like started saying some like genuinely nice things to me like hey like it seems like you're not having a very good day are you doing okay or like I'd post something about like how I was feeling or whatever and be like really nice and supportive about it so eventually I was just like yeah like let's go get coffee like my favorite place and in my mind I'm thinking like this guy's gonna be weird as hell but I'm gonna have my coffee and dip but um he ended up being great and that's my boyfriend now um and he's got like an awesome job in Virginia and so my son and I after a while of course um but not long enough by most people's standards uh we ended up moving with him to Virginia he had to leave and it was um kind of this decision of like if he leaves and we stay then that's it and I felt like he was so different than like anything I'd experienced before um even though it's not not the most kosher way to meet somebody like it felt so like good and so like not necessarily safe but very comfortable right away and that was something that I like was not used to experiencing my life like feeling genuine care and support and like consideration about things that were important to me and like he took a little bit of my background information and it seemed like he took it upon himself to kind of like help me figure myself out and get better and um and so that's where we're at now we're in Virginia and I'm like much happier much more stable um I'm sure I'm still going to need years of therapy like effective therapy to really work through this stuff but I'm like feeling more optimistic about my future I'm more sure of it than I have in a very long time because finally I feel like all these things that I've really struggled with and been hurt by I've like turned into tools for me and experience that I can look back on to like level myself out because when so many like intense things have happened you start to feel like there's just it's always going to happen you're always on like high alert for the next [ __ ] that's going to fall apart as good as everything might look and that's obviously taken a toll on us a few times but another thing that stuck out to me is like he's so like gentle about it and understanding about like why I'm acting the way I'm acting and he like really wants to learn about like why certain things that would be so normal to other people like really affect me and send me spiraling and it's like it's so cool to have someone like passionate about learning about another person so um and like my son is doing amazing uh his dad's parents live like 20 minutes away from us so now he gets to see his like really wholesome put together grandparents all the time it's obviously had like such a great influence on him and um it seems like things might really turn around for us now and I feel like so driven now um and I just feel like it's I feel like it's important for like someone who's in the midst of a lot of [ __ ] that might be similar to what I felt I feel like it's important for them to see that that's not the end state that pit is not the end state in like healing is not linear and like character development is not linear you can be like a great person for months and be a [ __ ] person next Second and that also doesn't have to be the end state so as like cheesy as it may seem like I just I feel like it's important for people to see that you can no matter what the circumstances are of course I don't know what everyone's been through but like you can dig yourself out of it if you want it badly enough if you want to be you have to want to be a good person not just like be successful and Achieve what you want but like I really want to be like a good person and and you know as badly as you want it sometimes you can be like really [ __ ] up still and so it's like uh yeah I just I feel like that's that's pretty much it it's one hell of a story it was a lot you've been through so much it's nice to see you getting some good luck finally yeah yeah I feel very very lucky and plus um my boyfriend's mom has like she like has me call her on me uh their Pakistani and so that means like Mom and so like she texts me all the time to see how I'm doing and we have like dinners at her house and like when when it was Eid she like dressed me up and like it it is feels wildly uncomfortable in the moment with things like that that are like so foreign but um after the fact like it's pretty amazing to like have a chance at that um and so yeah I'm like very fortunate and very thankful I know not everyone is gonna like luck out the way that I have but yeah it's worked out for us for sure that's great all right thank you so much Victoria thank you thank you very much