Cold, Dark, Comfort

On September 11, 2001 I was twenty-two years old, stationed with the 10th Mountain Division in Fort Drum, New York, and hating life. It was the end of a long hard summer full of personal failure and the first day of my last year in the Army. I woke up to a gorgeous late summer day in upstate New York looking forward to finally being a short timer and riding down my last year in the Army taking classes about resume writing and fucking off.

Instead I went to war.

Or more specifically Karshi-Khanabad Uzbekistan where on October 9, 2001 I was crushed between the front bumper of an Army LMTV and the rear of a 500 gallon water trailer, what we in the Army called a “water buffalo.” On the back of a water buffalo is a spigot, no different than the water spigot on the outside of a house. Somehow, someway, that’s what got me. The spigot caught me right in the ass and tore almost all the way through me. It ripped out my sphincter, damaged my anus, prostate and bladder, broke my urethera and more importantly cut an artery.

One day, probably soon, we’ll talk about the accident. It’s both horrific and funny and probably one of the most badass things I’ve ever done. My last words before the world went dark were “If this is bullshit and I’m gonna be back on duty tomorrow don’t call my parents.” Then an Air Force anesthesiologist told me to count down from a hundred and by ninety-seven the lights went out and stayed out for over a week.

There were surgeries and flights. Uzbekistan. Ankara, Turkey. Ramstein Air Base in Germany. I was dying. That's why the Army flew my parents from Louisiana to Germany to meet me. The doctors felt there wasn’t anything more that could be done in Germany and while a flight might kill me, the only hope of recovery was getting to Walter Reed in Washington DC. They say I died on that flight. That the aircraft had to lower it’s altitude so the doctors and nurses could stabilize my vitals and the lower altitude led to burning more fuel. Allegedly the aircraft was running on fumes when we reached Andrews AFB, saved by a freak tailwind. A miracle. The answer to a hundred prayers.

I don’t know if any of this is true.

All I knew, all I can remember, is cold darkness.

I can talk…hell I promise you I will talk, about the nightmare that is waking from a medically induced coma and the misery of life in an ICU. How they wake you every two hours. How everything is uncomfortable, too loud, too bright, too cold. How the good nurses are angels but the bad ones, the bad ones are demons who seem to relish the pain they cause. I might tell you about the night I spent in a windowless room convinced that the analog clock on the wall read 12 noon and not 12 midnight growing more and more panicked as the minutes and hours ticked by and no one arrived like they usually did. One day, I will tell you about the time I had too many pain meds and hallucinated a tiger. Or the time they fucked up the dosage and the voice in my head became so badly disconnected from the words coming out of my mouth that I got into an argument with myself.

But for now that’s not what’s important.

What’s important is, in October 2001, just weeks from my 23rd Birthday, I found myself in the ICU of Walter Reed Army hospital. I was strapped to a bed with what felt like a thousand wires and tubes. My legs were stuffed in these plastic, inflatable, booties that would loudly and seemingly randomly inflate and deflate. There were IV lines in both arms running to a pole with so many bags and bottles and blinking lights it looked like a Cyberpunk Christmas Tree. There were oxygen tubes and feeding tubes and tubes that drained ghastly looking, sludge like, fluids. The entire tangled and heavy mess was hidden from my sight under a thin hospital blanket that was pulled up to my neck.

I was hungry. I was thirsty. I hurt. I was bored and tired and scared and I knew I was fucked up but I had no idea how bad. I wouldn’t know until I looked under that blanket and saw for myself.

It took me most of a day to work up the courage. It took far, far too much energy and strength to pick that thin blanket up. What I found was both ghastly and surreal. There was a red latex tube that I’d later learn was called a suprapubic catheter that drained urine from my bladder to a bag beside my bed. I didn’t know it at the time but I’d be stuck with that hated thing for the next two years. Bandages covered the massive surgical incision in my midsection. I wouldn’t face that bloody horror for a few more days but I could smell the rank awfulness of it. The most immediate and horrifying feature was the colostomy bag. They use clear ones in the hospital to help measure output. I’d been on IV fluids for a week or more and MREs for the week prior to that so the “output” was an unrecognizable, foul, black sludge. The smell was the worst part. As soon as I lifted the blanket it hit me, latex, blood and shit. I smelled like cleaning a deer.

I’d had, by any measure, the worst twelve month period of my life. A year of heartbreak and failure that ended there, in that ICU bed, covered with all that shit. Stinking. Hurting. Freezing. Immobile. Alone aside from the constant fucking beep of the IV pump and the air compressor sounds of the compression socks. I knew almost instinctively that my future was bleak, that all I had to look forward to in the coming days, weeks, maybe even months, was misery and pain. I couldn’t help but think that the cold darkness of the coma would be a comfort compared to learning to live with what I saw under that blanket. I knew that I’d have to suffer and fight if I ever hoped to recover and nothing was guaranteed. I had a sudden and horrifying realization that in that moment, laying in that bed, things were as good as they were going to get. I knew my future was going to involve a level of misery and pain that I couldn’t yet even comprehend and I’m not sure I can describe and I’d already been through so much.

Then I realized with stunning clarity that if I closed my eyes, if I gave up, I would sink back into the darkness and I would die. A week and a half before my 23rd birthday I looked at my mangled body and I knew that MAYBE if I fought I could live, and MAYBE if I was lucky I’d recover some and MAYBE if I worked hard I could have a life but I knew with a cold certainty I’ve never experience before or since that if I chose to quit, if I closed my eyes right then I would slip back into the cold, comfortable darkness. I wouldn’t feel a thing ever again.

I have no idea why I chose to live but I did. I had my twenty-third birthday in Ward 68 of Walter Reed Army Hospital. I got a copy of George Strait's "The Road Less Traveled", Gary Allan's "Alright Guy" and a no shit discman to play them on. Before Thanksgiving 2001 I’d be back in my childhood bedroom.

I spend too much time online but we’ve established that already.
I’m not naturally a creature of the internet. I have no great love of technology. I have no deep understanding of the lore. I don’t really know what usenet is or was. I’ve never been to Something Awful. I don’t have a Reddit account. I use my phone to scroll Facebook because my mom is there, Instgram because my godchild is there, and Bluesky because Twitter became X. I may as well be a boomer posting minions memes. So I’m not sure I have the words to describe what’s bothering me. Some folks call it depression. Some folks call it nihilism. Some folks call it doomerism. Some folks call if being blackpilled. No matter what we call it, there’s an undercurrent of hopelessness and defeatism that I see everyday and it irritates me.

I won't cherry pick specific quotes because I’m lazy and it’s late and I’m tired. We’ve all seen the posts, usually in the comments, usually attacking someone for trying. “There’s no point in trying because the climate is doomed”. “Why bother, we’ve already lost”. “We can’t do this thing because it won’t fix all the problems”. “We all know the bad guys will win anyway”. “Nothing will ever change so we might as well just sit here and watch it burn”. Spend anytime online and you’re bombarded with the message “WE ARE DOOMED AND THERE’S NO POINT IN TRYING!” In the aftermath of yet another Trump win, as we watch an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon sworn in as the leader of the most powerful nation on earth it’s hard not to think these folks might be right.

I probably shouldn’t say this because it’s political, and I’m trying to build an audience for a book about soldiers, war, and country music and revealing my personal politics might alienate potential readers, but fuck 'em. I was worried about this election. I was genuinely scared when Donald Trump inevitably became the Republican nominee and that fear almost became panic when Joe Biden dropped out. I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do then and I’m still not sure if that was the right decision, or if in the end it even mattered, but in the aftermath I made the rare choice to embrace positivity. I woke up. I put on a fake ass smile. I went to work and I worked harder for the Kamala Harris campaign than any political campaign in my lifetime. I wrote post cards. I put up signs. I wore merch. I donated cash. I talked to the young folks I know. I made sure people had a plan to vote. I made sure people had a ride to the polls. I worked my fucking ass off and I kept a stiff upper lip and I was positive and cheerful and I encouraged others and we all collectively got our teeth kicked in by a fucking convicted felon promising bloodshed.

It hurts.

And fuck I’m scared.

I don’t know what the future holds and from where I sit all I see stretching out before me is hard work and pain. The only thing I know is guaranteed, the only sure thing, is the future is going to fucking suck. The best case scenario is still going to be miserable. I’m a middle class, cis, straight, white, veteran and I’m scared to death. I can’t imagine how folks who don’t have it as good as I do feel right now. I log on and I see the fear and the uncertainty and the anguish and the rage and I get it. Man do I get it.

But I also see the recriminations. The finger pointing. The backbiting. Worse, I log on and I see the surrender. I see the doom. I see the black pilled nihilism. I see person after person after person announcing defeat. Nothing can be done. Nothing can get better. We’re all doomed. And that I don’t understand.

We’ve lifted the sheet on this country. We’ve looked and seen the horrible mass of wires and hoses and tubes. We’ve caught a glimpse of the blood and the shit and the urine and we all know that this is our future. This right now, this is as good as it gets for God knows how long and it’s going to hurt. Even on the good days. Even when we make things better. Even when we can eat solid foods. Even when the tubes and the needles come out and the monitor wires come off we’re still going to have to learn how to fucking breath, and walk, and eat all over again and every fucking second of it is going to be misery.

Some folks picked up the blanket, saw the mess, and have clearly chosen to close their eyes. Some folks have chosen to slide into the cold dark comfort of the coma. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t judge them for it. They’re cowards. And they’re wrong.

I walked out of Walter Reed Army Hospital under my own power roughly a month after my accident. For the next nine months I suffered through a painful and humiliating nightly ritual where I lay on my childhood bed and spread my legs like a woman giving birth and my mother ripped bloody gauze out of the hole where my ass once was and shoved fresh gauze back in. Every six weeks the suprapubic catheter had to be replaced in a painful procedure that led to bladder infections that lingered for weeks and made me feel like I was pissing gravel even though I wasn’t really pissing at all. One time a urologist didn’t properly deflate the balloon that held the catheter in my body and yanked so hard he pulled my midsection off the table. It felt like he was ripping my guts out. Motherfucker didn’t even apologize. One time the catheter popped out somehow by accident while I was sleeping. I knew something was wrong because I woke up comfortable, covered in piss but pain free for the first time in a year.

I went through sixteen surgeries. Most of them failed. Despite several attempts, they never reconstructed my anus and sphincter so for the rest of my life I’ll live with a colostomy bag. It took two years to fix the break in my urethra. For a month I wore a foley catheter AND a suprapubic catheter and it was abject misery. After a few years the “healed” suprapubic catheter site broke open and I would periodically leak urine out of my torso. I wore a foley catheter through two weeks of a police academy, suffering through every second so I could keep my job and keep paying my bills. I went through another round of procedures and in the end the solution was periodic self catheterization. Every few months I get to shove a red latex tube in my dickhole. Apparently, for some people, this is a sexual fetish. I try not to judge, but…it’s not a fetish I understand or honestly, even care to try.

I had to wear sanitary pads for a while because I bled from the ass. I had to wear diapers for a while because I leaked piss. I stank like a latrine. Sometimes the ostomy bag will pop open and leak. Sometimes it’ll fall the fuck off if I’m sweaty. I keep extra clothes around, wipes, bandages, ostomy supplies, a piss jug for emergencies, all hidden away but close at hand. The worse part? The real torture? I don’t ever get to take a long, leisurely, sit down shit ever again. You don’t appreciate the simple pleasures until they’re gone.

Then, just to add insult to massive injury I was diagnosed with Crohns disease in 2020. At the absolute pinnacle of the Covid Delta surge I spent a week in a VA hospital shitting myself to death. Every stinking, fluid ounce caught in a bag on my torso and disposed of by hand. My recovery was as miserable and painful and hard as I suspected when I first looked down and saw my injuries. In a lot of ways it was harder and twenty three years later it’s still fucking hard. It still hurts. It still stinks of blood and shit and piss but I don’t regret a second of it.

Not a fucking one.

Because of that hard road I got to hug my mama again and I got to a chance to learn to appreciate my dad before cancer took him. I spent time with my Pawpaw in the woods before he passed. One night, after one of those painful and humiliating dressing changes I walked out of my bedroom to find a pretty brunette sitting on my parents couch. Six years later I married her and a decade later I was there when she gave birth to our child. I got to introduce that kid to my Memaw and they got to know and love each other before she died. I lost friends when I was hurt and couldn’t party anymore, but the guys who drove out to visit me at my parents place way out in the sticks, the ones who picked me up and drove me into town and helped when I was down and out are still my friends today.

It was hard. It’s still hard. But I’ve gotten to see myself finally become someone I can be proud of, or at least grown enough to accept myself for who I am. I’m not where I want to be in the world, but I get to see the ocean almost every day. I’m not as rich or as happy as I’d hoped, but I’ve fished South Florida with my best friend and Minnesota with my cousin. I’ve watched my wife and kid dance to a New Orleans second line while I drank too many beers. I’ve seen the bonfires lining the Mississippi river levee on Christmas Eve and I’ve seen the Northern Lights. I’ve watched Great White sharks swim by and I’ve seen whales breach. I watched a bald eagle snag a salmon out of a river in the shadow of the Canadian Rockies and watched another snag a slice of pizza out of a dumpster in Bar Harbor Maine. I was there when my kid caught their first 28 inch Louisiana Redfish on the first cast of the day.

It’s been a long, hard, painful fight. Twenty three years of blood and shit and piss. It almost killed me on at least three different occasions. I’d be lying to y’all if I told you I didn’t think things are going to get worse before they get better. Shit…as I edit this Los Angeles is burning. I won’t, hell I can’t, bullshit you. I’m scared. I’m looking at the mess we’re in and all I see is a future of pain, misery, and hard work but fuck…I’ve been there before. I didn’t want to do it again but I learned early and hard to want in one hand.

I don’t know what happens tomorrow. I don’t know how to make things better today. Shit, I can’t guarantee that things will get better but I know this from twenty three years of personal experience, giving up, embracing the cold, dark, comfort is bullshit. Every second of the pain, every ounce of blood, piss and shit, it is all worth it for one more day on this planet in the hopes that shit can get better because despite all this, despite the misery and the pain, this world is a beautiful place filled with beautiful people.
And the abyss will always be lonely, cold, and dark.

I still don’t know if I’ve gotten this one “right.” Don’t know that I ever will but hell, that’s half the game right? Grinding away until you get it right and you can make someone feel just the faintest hint of what you want them to feel? Anyway, here's a Kris Kristofferson song that's been stuck in my head as I tried to whip this post into some kind of shape.