Veteran suicides rates are higher than non-veteran in the United
States and the highest percentage of suicides per age group is the 18-34-year old’s,
according to the 2019 VA suicide report. But the highest number of suicides
among veterans is the 55- 74. It may be hard to believe for some of you, I was
close to becoming a statistic. What I did to change directions and what steps I
took to walk away from the darkness. Here is my story…
Walking towards the darkness didn’t seem such a bad idea in
the fall of 2016. The Great Recession had drained our savings and retirement nine
years earlier, and it was a struggle keeping our heads above water for several
years. As business slowly turned, paying off debt was a number one priority. No
longer did we have the luxuries of the condo at the beach, exotic cars, boats
and cruise vacations, it was a weekly struggle just to stay afloat. Turning sixty
wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, I was still in pretty good shape and
could hold my own on a building project. Things were starting to pick up, we
were able to take a few small trips and invest in our business once again,
another downturn in my construction business. My business wasn’t just bleeding
cash, it was hemorrhaging. I looked over the profit and loss statement and the
outstanding debt of unpaid invoices and paid out profits, (that should not have
been paid out), I pulled the plug on the business. There I stood again with large debts and all my future
efforts was to pay off debt once again, as the darkness loomed.
During my annual physical at the VA, I was shocked at the amount
of weight I had gained from the year prior and the interview with the nurse wasn’t
going well. My blood pressure was high, and they took it three additional times
and the variance wasn’t much different from the first reading. As the doctor
looked over the blood test results and explained my sugar was higher than it
should be, my cholesterol reading was to high and I should start taking a
statin drug to control it, and my blood pressure medication probably needed to
be increased to bring in into healthy level. As I stared at the report, the one
thing that stood out more than anything was the designation of my body content,
the box marked obese. How did I let this happen? A heavy debt and now I’m
obese, and at sixty-two years old, I could feel the darkness closing in.
2016 was beginning to
be the worst year of my life. It started out looking good with business coming
in and by June, it started to unravel. My annual physical results lay heavy on
my mind then difficulty with an aging parent and family influence and deception
created additional mental pressures. By fall, a question lingered in my mind
from my VA physical; have you ever considered harming yourself? I had never
thought about it before, but I was considering it now. While mowing the yard on
the riding lawn mower, I was developing a plan of what I needed to accomplish
before I pulled the trigger. My plan was to have all the company debt paid off,
have the house maintenance up to date, get my dress blues laid out with all the
ribbons and accouterments polished and properly placed. I was going to walk
into the backyard, call 911 and advise them of my address and where my body
would be, hang up, and pull the trigger.
As a combat veteran from Desert Storm, I had lost the fear
of death. The one worry I had was not for me, it was for my wife.
Communications were different then, if something would have happened to me, my
wife would have had a knock on the door from a Chaplin and a survival officer
standing on the other side. We have an extremely close relationship and the
thought of her pain kept me in survival mode and now, the thought of her having
a police officer knock on her office door would devastate her. I couldn’t bear laying
that burden on her, there had to be another way to walk away from the darkness.
What really got me motivated was a picture of me. I had been
lying to myself for years, I wasn’t in good shape and I had let myself go and
it pissed me off and it was that anger that led me to taking those first steps
away from the darkness. I started out with a fitness plan, one that had been
suggested by a real estate trainer; two glasses of water and fifteen minutes of
a vigorous exercise. My exercise started out with a two mile walk through our
neighborhood. The first few weeks I was disgusted with myself with every step I
took I could feel the fat around my waist flop and jiggle, and over the course
of a month, the jiggle lightened up. I stepped on the scale and I had lost
eight pounds, I was on my way.
The next choice I made was to change my diet. I had been
suffering with acid reflux for several years and I was constantly eating
antacids to control the heartburn. It wasn’t until I overdosed on
fresh buttermilk biscuits that the real problem I was having, was with gluten. I
stopped eating all gluten products and over the course of two weeks, I was thinking
clearer, acid reflux was gone, and I had lost another ten pounds.
Over the next year, I was feeling stronger and I was down two
pant size. I had started interval training with a combination of four quarter
mile walks and three, quarter mile runs, and I was down another five pounds.
The icing on the cake was when I found a good quality bicycle during a
clean-out. I decided I would mix cycling with my interval training. The first
day I rode my bike for two and a half miles and when I stopped, got off the
bike, thank god I had the bike to hold me up as I walked the bike up the
driveway to the garage. My legs were shaking so bad, I had to use the handrail
to help me up the stairs into our home. Within a few weeks I was riding six
miles, then eleven, then twenty and I got the bright idea, (after one to many
glasses of wine), I was going to ride to the beach, an eighty-five-mile ride
and I would do it for a charity. After just three months of riding, (after not
having ridden a bike in forty years), on December 7th, 2018, a
couple of friends joined me for the ride to the beach. It took us eight and half
hours for the ride and I was worn out. We made the same trip again three months
later and it took us six hours this time. It was during that trip while we were
all sitting around the dinner table where we were talking about running, 5K’s
and half marathons. It was after an additional glass of wine I told my wife I
was going to run a half marathon that fall. I trained all through the summer
and on October 20th, 2019, I ran my first half marathon in two
hours, eleven minutes. I finished 125th out of over two thousand
runners and took 3rd place for my age group. Two months later, I participated
in a 100K bike race and finished in the top twenty in my class.
The point of this story is; mental fitness and physical fitness
go hand in hand. If you want to become physically fit, you can do it at any age.
You just have to make that decision yourself and stick with it. There will be changes in your eating habits,
there will be people along the way to coach you or assist you with your
training. You don’t have to run a half marathon or do a 100K bike ride but you
will have to write down your goals and create target dates. Your physical fitness starts just like mine
did; two glasses of water and fifteen minutes of vigorous exercise.
The before of me
