The Courage to Surrender. John Hayes W.
So, I stood up to leave, and told Jason I trusted his judgment on the buy.
That was one of those times where drugs had put me in a place where I didn’t belong, and with people who made me feel uncomfortable by doing what I knew was wrong.
When I got deeper into drugs, I continued to do things I knew were wrong. As my addiction controlled more and more of my behavior, I eventually lost the courage to leave situations when I should have. Instead, I’d sit through anything just to get high, because that had become the driving force in my life.
I did my best at work, but I ignored career opportunities, because I feared the demands of success were beyond my abilities. After a couple of years, my inferiority complex and low self-esteem kept me from doing extra work and following a higher level protocol to position myself for better jobs.
I used drugs to take away the pressure to succeed. Getting high allowed me feel OK with myself, but gradually feelings of paranoia forced me into isolation. My social skills had degenerated, so I tended to avoid gatherings for the most part. When I was pushed into circles of people, I felt a need to get stoned and to drink faster than people could follow.
Although I seemed ‘cool’ by the definitions of the day, I couldn’t let my hair down enough to ignore that inbred question of trust. It was difficult to recover my ego after I saw people laughing at me, when I couldn’t laugh at myself. Although I had fun with drugs and those same people who laughed at others, I often felt compassion. I guess that, deep down, I took life too seriously.
Today, I live with feelings that hurt me from my experiences in 1965 when I was part of my college fraternity. My black and blue ass has healed, but the personal insults, demeaning accusations and general lack of concern for my feelings created questions about my person that I’ve never been able to reconcile.
Those guys were a run-away freight train and, although I was strong enough to hold on, I was dragged along the tracks until I was broken. I had choices, but that didn’t mean I had the courage, self-respect, or personal integrity to pass on things which were not in my best interest.
I wanted to be high all the time, and did whatever it took to satisfy that goal. I was powerless to stop my out-of-control behavior. The hole in my soul got bigger, and my heart got heavier with each bad decision.
Sometimes, I wondered if it was just me who distinguished right from wrong, and I would chastise myself for behavior other people thought was acceptable. But, it didn’t really matter who defined ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ because I would micromanage my personal issues to justify how I lived.
~ ~ ~
On May 4, 1970, students came out on the Kent State campus and scores of other universities to protest the bombing of Cambodia, an initiative by President Nixon that appeared to expand the Vietnam War.
The Ohio governor sent the National Guard to control the students. The Guard’s first response was to march into a group of angry demonstrators, and then all units would retreat up a small hill.
In several articles, the Akron Beacon Journal newspaper reported that, seconds before the Guard would have passed around the corner of a large building out of sight from the crowd, many of the Guardsmen wheeled around and fired their rifles directly into the students, wounding 13 and killing four.
The soldiers pulled their triggers over and over for 13 seconds. The Guardsmen were not in any immediate physical danger when they fired. The crowd was not pursuing them. The campus was full of onlookers and students on their way to class. The killing happened so fast and was so unexpected, that other students were walking around completely unaware of what had just happened. Two of the four dead didn’t get to their next class.
To add insult to tragedy, none of the Guardsmen were ever punished, claiming they fired at nonspecific targets. The message from President Nixon seemed to condone the killing and wounding of protestors.
After weeks of trials, the exhausted relatives settled with the state of Ohio for a reported $675,000 and only $15,000 apiece went to the families of the slain students.
I will never forget the picture of Mary Vecchio, bent over a fallen student who was shot. He lay face down on a campus sidewalk. Her face was contorted and she appeared to be in shock, trying to understand what her friend did that caused his death. Her arms pleaded for help, as though she were asking the soldiers why they killed her classmate.
That picture of the murder brought a message into the hearts of parents across the country that their kids weren’t safe. Even protesting against the war was a free-fire zone. And, angry with grief, much of the country called the killings “the most unpopular murders ever committed in the United States.”
Anyone too young to remember those times can’t really appreciate what it was like. On May 4, 1970, our Army killed our college kids.
~ ~ ~
In the early ’70s, the country continued to be torn apart. The population was fragmented, and both sides were forming walls. It was the pro-Vietnam groups versus the “Hell no, we won’t go” culture.
It was April 23, 1971, and 2,000 members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War had gathered in Washington, D.C. for three days of protest. Dubbed “Operation Dewey Canyon III,” the protest took its name from two secret U.S. invasions of Laos.
The vets marched, staged a sit-in at the Supreme Court, and were turned away at the Arlington National Cemetery and the Pentagon, where some tried to turn themselves in for war crimes. In a climactic ceremony, 1200 vets threw their military medals onto the steps of the Capitol.
Like so many Americans, I felt helplessness, and my sadness was fueled even further by combinations of drugs and alcohol.
For over a year, the men in Rachael’s family goaded me with questions about the war in Vietnam and at home. I tried to give answers with substance, but was alone in defending the peace movement.
A send-off party was held for Rachael’s brother who got drafted. My mother-in-law’s house was filled with relatives. The men were all drinking, clearly proud that one of their own was going off to fight for their country.
“Why don’t you want to go to war to fight for your country?” they asked.
“Are you afraid of being shot at or killing a Vietnam piece of shit? I hear they all look the same and the Viet Cong use old women, kids and dogs to fight. I’d blow the shit out of anything that moved if I was there,” said one World War II vet.
“Did your old man go to war?” somebody asked.
“No, he didn’t, because his speech impediment disqualified him,” I snapped back. Dad had wanted to go to war with his buddies and his rejection hit him hard. He was still bummed about it years later. I couldn’t take their shit anymore, and I raised my voice to give my perspective about the war. The house went silent, as I vented my opinion of them and their stupid ideas.
“Because you have served in the military does not oblige you to support a worthless war that sacrifices the lives of our young men and women for vague causes. Think about our enemy and ask yourself why we want to kill them.
I asked them, “What are our goals? When will it be over? Are we winning? Is the government being honest about what is happening over there?” My tirade was enough to get the room fully engaged in a verbal battle.
“We need to fight Communism just like we have for years,” I was reminded.
“You are blind to what is happening,” I said. “We are fighting in the jungles of Vietnam where North Vietnam has never lost a war since the French came in the ’50s. We don’t know how to fight jungle warfare, and they are killing us by the thousands. Just watch the body counts on the news tonight.”
Months later when we all sat down for that year’s Thanksgiving dinner, the topic of draft dodging began to charge the air. In a controlled tone I said, “I am not going to go to `Nam, regardless of what people say, or think about me,” after which, I excused myself from the table and went for a walk to get away. No one tried to stop me