“My life changed forever.” Veteran Shares How Her Mental Health Transformed
Golf is a sport where you realize you don't have control. And that's the same thing within some of the aspects of mental health. Not everything's gonna work, so you just learn how to recover from those and then be able to move forward. I just hit a shot off to the right in the woods. Well, I can go work on how to get out of the woods.
My name is Brittney. I was a United States Marine. I was a 63-24 and a 63-91 avionics chief. I served in the United States Marine Corps between 1994 and 2018. Being in Iraq, there was a day me and my partner where I was with, we almost got blown up. If we had not stopped to talk to little lance corporal who was, looked like he was having a bad day and we wanted to make sure he was good, we would've walked right into the impact area. So that was a big eye-opening experience of what was going on there.
There wasn't really a lot of me hiding my identity, considered myself more of a, like at-home processor. I had not really looked into or understanding about transition and genders. Leaving the military, it was, while I was happy that I had served my time and I was leaving while I still felt like I was useful so I wasn't being deadweight, which I felt was important to me. Started college and college is kind of where I started to explore more about who I was. February of 2019, I had a gender crisis. I was kind of in, like, what I call a dark space. There was just like a lot of different things and I'd been outta the Marine Corps, so I was losing my identity as a Marine. I had a suicide attempt and my dog is the only thing that saved me. She came in, busted through the door, put her head on my lap and looked up at me. And that was kind of, like, okay, this is not good. So, and then on the computer was the crisis line for the VA. So I immediately called and did an assessment. And from that moment on, my life changed forever.
I was doing group therapies with an LGBT group, which was good 'cause you get to hear other people's stories. Be able to have somebody who I could trust and talk to changed a lot of my views on things. I had a licensed psychologist. We did some CBT and some DBT type tools. Working through those things. Every time I would go in, it just felt like I opened more and more and a lot of what I was feeling was less and less. I was dealing with some anxiety last year a lot because the anxiety was around my gender dysphoria and later in life anxiety would also wake me up in the middle of the night. Just different things, different noises. A lightning strike that was just over my head on the way to work. I was stopped in traffic and I had to force myself to move, but it just, I was crippled.
During my first year or so coming out, the more open and honest I became, the easier a lot of things became. A lot of people who didn't understand began to understand 'cause they started seeing that more of that side of what I was experiencing. When you're different from somebody else or you have a alternate lifestyle that's, you know, you just don't know how people are gonna react to. It didn't stop me from sharing who I was. I just learned how to discuss it with people better and who and when not to discuss it.
The reasons I think having a hobbies are important for Veterans, especially those who are struggling with mental health issues is it gets you out of the house. It gets you looking forward to doing something. You can go out and be with friends. I don't know if I hadn't identified as transgender, if I'd still be alive because I was dealing with some depression and other things that I probably never would've talked to anybody about. Scary at the time. Still is now thinking about it. But I'm happy that I did.
