#CostofWar Ok I’m going to take a breath and tell a story. It’s not pretty. Many will judge me for it but it’s my story and I think it needs to be told.
In 1999 I married a professional pilot who had joined the marines to be an F18 pilot as a way to get the flight hours 👇🏻
In 1999 I married a professional pilot who had joined the marines to be an F18 pilot as a way to get the flight hours 👇🏻
To get his commercial hours. We believe there was no chance he’d ever see combat, ever drop a live bomb, ever be in the position to have to kill anybody. We were wrong. I was told he’d serve 3 years and be out with what he needed to go commercial. I was lied to. By him. 👇🏻
He knew that I was against war and while I respected those that served I in no way supported the military complex. My brother had already enlisted as a Navy Medical Corpsman and it pressed hard on my heart. Day one I told him I wasn’t going to date a Marine. He told me it was 👇🏻
A temporary thing meant to separate him from the control of a wealthy and political family. He wanted to play for his own flight hours so as to gain autonomy from them. He lied. Hours after the picture above was taken as we were on our way to the hotel I saw 👇🏻
A change in him. He was instantly more authoritarian. He snapped at me for several things and I became afraid of what I had just done. On our honeymoon it became evident I had just made a major mistake. He became verbally abusive and I honestly wanted to hide from him 👇🏻
Flying home I tried to choke back tears and rationalize to myself why he was acting the way he had. He was about to report to his first active duty station as an officer for his second stint of OCS Officer Candidates School. He had taken a deferment through college with 6 👇🏻
Weeks of basic split up between 2 stints. It had been hard for him and he doubted his ability to complete 6 months of OCS. He had been pampered by a wealthy family, only had one job in his life as teen and hadn’t worked since. His parents had paid for college and all his 👇🏻
bills as an adult so to say he was sheltered would be an understatement. He wasn’t used to bills or a budget and now he had a wife and her 5 yrs old son to take care of. So I rationalized his abusive behavior was because of the pressure he was under. 👇🏻
I assumed the abuse would stop. It didn’t. I assumed the pressure on him was making him act the way he did. It wasn’t. As we drove cross country over 2.5 days to check in to Quantico, Va I tried to picture what our new life would hold. Nothing that came after was what I saw. 👇🏻
Immediately I was thrown into this life where men were telling me how to be, act, dress, speak, even parent. Image was everything. I have never seen nor hope to see so many polos, bmw’s, crew cuts, sensible dress suits and heels, or fake smiles in all my life. So many wives👇🏻
lives had just changed over night and not for the better. We all kind of huddled together for strength back then. To survive the crazy OCS schedule where you check your husband in and only see him when he walks in the door in the middle of the night covered in war paint 👇🏻
Smelling of the sweat of a hundred men and he drops down in full gear sometimes with a pack still attached to him and falls asleep for a few hrs till it’s time for him to check bakc in for another day of hell.👇🏻
Conversations back then were short and hurried as I tried to get important information we needed for the budget and household and he snapped at every question or screamed because he just didn’t want to be bothered. I decided then an annulment was in my best interest. 👇🏻
Then I found out I was pregnant. Something that wasn’t supposed to happen since so had just barely stopped Depo shots being told I’d have to be off then for a couple of years if we wanted a child I the future. Drs. dont know everything. I was now terrified. 👇🏻
It was two weeks before my husband sat still long enough for me to tell him. We were in the car with my son driving thru the woods on the way to a 2 day much needed leave to the country. He started screaming as soon as we got in the car. I begged him to turn around. 👇🏻
3 hours later through years and lots of mascara I told him I was pregnant and I wanted a divorce. This seemed to snap something back inside him. A human appeared begging me not to leave saying it would get better in a few months when he was done with OCS hell. It didn’t. 👇🏻
I had to take a breath for a minute. It’s hard to put into words what I went through specifically at this time. The first 6 months of a marriage where I endured every kind of abuse a woman can endure at the hands of the man she loved. I still can’t tell that part of the story 👇🏻
I need it understood for me & for all those that have had someone say why didn’t you just leave what goes on in the mind. I had been w & in love w this person for 2.5 years before we married. Nothing before had hinted at this being who he was. I was in a walking state of shock 👇🏻
During the beginning of the abuse I had tried to bunker down to problem solve. I looked at my options. I’m a problem solver by nature. I looked into an annulment, I had left my job and school to come with him to VA and given HIM every penny of my savings to hold onto 👇🏻
This was my first mistake. His very conservative mother had insisted all MY money go into his empty account. They were cutting him off & he had not worked so he had no money, car, furniture or income till his first check which was a month away. Everything we came with was mine👇🏻
I quickly realized I couldn’t even access my one money in HIS account. I had no money, he drove my car I brought up every day so no car, and I soon realized no options. I called home and was told to stay with my husband. I spoke to our Bishop for marital counseling👇🏻
He tried to help but it was evident my husband was very happy with him as the boss and me as the terrified wife. Soon it was time to move and my husband promised that with the move would come a return to safe and normal. Let’s just say that was the opposite of true 👇🏻
So here there I sat after months of endless morning sickness that had me in and out of the hospital when I became dehydrated to the point of collapse, a husband barking orders at me to get pack and get this us ready to be moved to Pensacola Florida while he attended parties 👇🏻
Hoping and praying and pleading with the Lord that the abuse would stop, that he’d realize what he had done and try to make it right, that my nightmare would turn back into the dream I had hoped for. That I had not married a monster. But dreams are for kids and I wasn’t one 👇🏻
Let’s talk a bit about what gaslighting looks like. I have become well versed. Even before we were married it started but I didn’t recognize it till later. He obviously had intended the marriage to be this way in advance and laid some ground work. He had painted me as crazy 👇🏻
To his family for years. Something I wasn’t aware of. They would say things to me hinting at that but when I asked him what they were speaking of he’d say they just don’t like you & we’re moving far away from them so don’t worry. I didn’t realize their opinion came from him 👇🏻
I have deviated a bit to include more of who he was in the telling because he’s very high ranking now and I think it’s important we know who makes military decisions where people live an die. It’s also important to know the military recruits people specifically w this in mind 👇
So back to the gaslighting. Right before our next move to FL We went home to Utah to spend the holidays with family. Or so I thought. Instead I was basically held captive by his family for 2 weeks while they lectured me & my son on all the things they thought we had done wrong👇🏻
This included them going over our expenses one by one. How much I spent on groceries, school clothes for my son, shampoo (not even fucking kidding). I was not allowed to leave, call or see my family or friends the entire 2 weeks. I sat there for lecture after lecture👇🏻
Monsters are made folks. Not born. His parents and 6 siblings all took their turn instructing me on my role as the wife of an officer and member of the “Thompson” family. I wanted to die. Yes wanted to run. But I had nowhere to go. My family loved him. I was alone 👇🏻
So here I was back to VA packing up our home, sick from pregnancy, barely able to hold my head up, passed out trying to take the stairs a couple of times, a confused 5 year old boy at my side trying to help his mama, a husband screaming orders, me hiding in the closet praying 👇🏻
This part gets extremely hard for me. I lived through the most confusing dark time. It started to look like anything I thought I knew was wrong. The abuse started again quick. I was home alone , pregnant, uncomfortable summer heat, no ac, no tv, no car, while he had a life 👇🏻
The gaslighting took on full force at this point. I learned some time later that he had continued his narrative to friends and commanders to explain why I wasn’t at functions, etc. Things he would not allow me to go to. If I answered the door and he found out I got accused of 👇🏻
Cheating. We spent all holidays and leave with his family. One time my family had a birthday party for me and when they called to ask when I was coming his mother told him I didn’t want to. Family had come from all over. I asked for the keys and was told the cars were gone 👇🏻
This effectively cut me off from family/friends for years. I looked like I was cutting them off when my x was doing it. Anytime I’d make a new friend in a new town this would start again. For some reason I couldn’t go to things every time because of an emergency he constructed👇🏻
The few times we dI’d get out w/o his family or me on my own I had this fantasy of just driving far far away. Once I sat at the grocery store parking lot for over an hour willing myself to drive home instead of away. My husband when he was home and not attacking me he would 👇🏻
Hide upstairs on the computer. He claimed for studying. Let’s just say he wasn’t studying jets. He trie to keep me off the computer at all even though we had no tv and he wouldn’t let me out do the house to even go to the library. After having reread all my books I went on 👇🏻
Big mistake. Apparently the computer had a loose drive and me turning it on shut it down. Breaking it. He came home and found out and chased me through the house in a rage 9 months pregnant. I slept on the couch that night and went into labor the next morning. 👇🏻
I thought once our son came he’d be nicer. I was wrong. I guess we always have hope something will make things better. I’m here to tell you not to have that kind of hope for these kind of things. I spent a lot of time just making sure my now 6 year old never was in his way 👇🏻
Let’s get back to the military. I noticed changes in him the more training he got. A hatred, anger and impatience for everyone around him not just me. He became focused on this fake ideal of “perfection”. I remember thinking I married a Nazi in training. 👇🏻
About 2 weeks after our son was born we were invited to a bbq by his military friends. They insisted they see me and the baby. He was not happy about that. It was about 90 degrees and I had put on shorts. He doesn’t approve. Apparently the fact that I still had baby weight 👇🏻
On was unacceptable. He ordered me to put on a full length skirt so people couldn’t see my fats legs. I refuse and when they called to ask if I was coming he said I was unwell and wouldn’t be making it. This became the norm. He’s come home from work change and go out w/o us. 👇🏻
There is a lot more between these time periods but I wanted to make it readable. Again we were in therapy and again he pretended to care there and laughed all the way home mocking me for anything I had said in the session. He’d then relate it all to his family with his spin👇🏻
At this time I got him agree to let me go home for a visit with my family for a couple of weeks under the premise of giving him time away from kids for him to study. When I got there I had an unwelcome welcome party. Every day he sent a new family member to harass me 👇🏻
His brother in law and sister showed up and refuse to each lecturing me all day on my duties as a wife. Then his bother in law insisted on giving me a blessing in which he said basically “ let this woman lord know her place and be and be a better wife and mother than she has —-👇🏻
And return to her husband as she should” I had told him I didn’t want to go home and he responded by sending his own personal armory to get me then came down to get me himself. My own famous said they didn’t wan to be involved and were sick of the door ringing and sent me home 👇🏻
I went home knowing I was on my own and had to make a plan to get out. His family doubled up on their efforts. We were sent to Texas for my husband to be a test pilot for a new jet. Secretly and to my shame I wished he’d not make it out. His family flew up with us to keep an 👇🏻
On me. His mother hovered over me critiquing my every move. Apparently it was he job to tell me what position my baby should be in while breastfeeding. A very fat healthy both who definitely wasn’t starving. And how to do my hair and what I wasn’t allowed to say to my husband 👇🏻
In the matter of just a couple of years I turned from a funny alway laughing woman who loved to dance, sing and socialize to a woman afraid to look at herself in the mirror because every time I did I saw all the things they said were wrong with me. I stopped dreaming & smiling 👇🏻
At this point he didn’t even need to convince me it would get better I had no options so I stayed. I had left school and a business behind to move with him. I made my own to get out. After a year and a half we got orders to move to Meridian, MS. we had to move in 3 days 👇🏻
He decided he’d like to pocket the moving money instead of having the military movers come which meant I had to pack an entire house by myself because “he was so busy” and him and I moved the furniture into a truck which he drove down. I drove the kids myself and set up again 👇🏻
At this point I was just done. I tried to hide myself ways but we lived on base because we doing get approval to be off base. Our house was in a culdesac of several high up officials that normally we would have not been placed with but we had 2 kids and needed a bigger house 👇🏻
This became problematic. Very large windows and only about 50 feet between us and one neighbor meant they could hear him screaming at me often. I got lots of visits w women holding Bundt cake w concerned looks on their faces. Our bishop happened to work on base as a counselor 👇🏻
He got word and called us in for counseling. He seemed horrified by the responses my husband gave to questions he posed. He repeatedly would talk to him about the meaning of cruelty and his responsibilities to be kind and keep his family happy. All lost on my husband. 👇🏻
The problem with me living in a culdesac with high ranking officers is that even though I didn’t want to be I am naturally social. I tend to make jokes or silly comments & make friends easily. This was a major issue. As people got to know me they realized his narrative was off 👇🏻
I got asked to be on several boards, to speak in front of ladies groups, to coordinate large military functions, to advise women who were having family struggles (I know the irony). I see so officers & ladies came to me to make welcome home banners etc and wed become friends. 👇🏻
When the truth came out he got called in several times by CO to explain things people were hearing. We got ordered to talk to the chaplain and he got ordered to behave. That’s when he got realy scary. That’s when I started to coupon so I could save money to hide to escape. 👇🏻
During this time he was going on trips almost every week. So that gave me some reprieve. In such a reprieve I learned I could finish my last couple semesters of school on base with them covering most the costs. I enrolled secretly. Got daycare and started. He had no idea 👇🏻
I was almost done with my first semester when I was outed. A general walked up to him and shook his hand. Scared him half to death because that doesn’t trust happen and told him how proud he was of his wife for almost completing school while having a baby at home and him gone 👇🏻
He played it off like he knew. The General told him that he was hoping when he instituted the program that it would be a success and ea so excited did be graduating next semester and told him he expected be invited. I didn’t have to hide it anymore but he was pissed. 👇🏻
I was in my second semester and pregnant again when the Dr said he could no longer find a heartbeat on my baby’s ultrasound. The heart had stopped without cause that they could see. I came home to grieve and I’ll put more in the book about this but I learned I had CO poisoning 👇🏻
When I got deathly ill and came back with poisoning they checked my house and found a leak. Since my son was at school all day and my other at daycare, & my husband away on a trip I had gotten the most exposure and they believed it killed the baby. My kids tested positive too👇🏻
I took a few days off and went back to school. Despite not wanting any part of it I ended up pregnant again immediately. By finals time 10 weeks later I had another miscarriage this time they believed because my body hadn’t had time to heal from the previous pregnancy 👇🏻
I had to do finals just a day after this including dissecting a fetal pig which I told them I couldn’t do. My instructor said she’d fail me but later having ran into me at the only book store in town where I was picking up a bible to write the names of my lost babies in took pity
She let me do it on a animated computer program so I could finish and graduate Magna Cum Laude. My husband tried to not let me walk for graduation. I gently reminded him the general and CO of the bases would be there and walked like a damn Queen. My boys cheered me on 👇🏻
Things should have been looking up. I graduated with 2 degrees despite major struggles. My husband had graduated the F-18 program a few days later and I had to do a massive party for 800 while recovering my loss. His entire family 6 brothers and sisters and their kids flew in 👇🏻
His mother arrived and immediately scolded me for bothering my husband with the burial of our lost babies and me being upset he refused to fly home with me for it. Said he had more important things to worry about. Life and death things 👇🏻
At the grad party I made a joke about my husband to his one brother and and his other brother jumped back with a comment that “a woman who can’t even hold a baby in shouldn’t be judging anyone else, and I shoud be grateful he stayed with me”. About 20 people gasped 👇🏻
An officer that was friends with my husband, as well as his sister (which was shocking) immediately to my husband and told him what had happened. He shrugged it off and they both came over to say how sorry that had happened. The friend of his ended up at other duty stations 👇🏻
He was always very kind and I’m grateful for him. The next week I found an email my husband had been sending to an old friend detailing camping trips they had gone on w women while he was supposed to be on a work trip and couldn’t attend the funeral for our baby. I flew home 👇🏻
After 6 weeks of me trying to convince my family that I need to be free of him and find a age place for me and the kids they again sent me home to deal with it on my own. He was so happy to have us home and seemed reformed. That didn’t last long. The next part sealed my fate 👇🏻
I was preparing breakfast watching the news when I saw the plane. My husband was supposed to be in the f18 in an hour. I told him something was really wrong. He thought I was being silly then the plane hit the tower & we heard the alarms and the base shut down, trapping us all 👇🏻
We got visits from friends who had been in the air during the attacks and heard the passengers screaming through the radio and were told to break off from escorting them in before they hit the pentagon. It was surreal, terrifying and I knew we’d never be the same. 👇🏻
The most terrifying part was the happy look on my husbands face. I will never forget it. We were in lock down on base for days. We saw prices for oil surge. We heard we would have subsidies on base for any costs that may go up. People had died and he sat there smiling. 👇🏻
As the days progressed the rallying started. It was like that scene in “Gone with the Wind” where all the young men cheered to go into war. All the psychos came out. Now they had an enemy to hate. Now they could talk openly and excitedly about bombing people. I died inside 👇🏻
My husband skipped around happier than I had ever seen him. Dropping live ordinance for practice became a thing. Then it was time to move again. I asked for a type of sanctuary on base where I stayed in housing and he went to Oceana, Va. I got it for only 4 weeks and then 👇🏻
I was told we had to go. My husband had complained to whoeve he could and got us booted from this sanctuary program meant to keep victims of abuse safe from their spouses allowing them time to save up and start over. I had to go to Oceana. 👇🏻
Im going to stop there for now and try to figure out how to publish this in a book online in more detail. I will give you a heads up that he was chosen as drone pilot and happily jumped to drop bombs from our then San Diego home remotely at Miramar in between deployments.
