Thinking About My Life As It Was 28 Years Ago Today, And The Servicemembers Serving In Iraq
by: Autumn Sandeen
Wed Sep 24, 2008 at 19:30:00 PM EDT
http://pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=7DB9F8DB61E2ED62E57449BDA56F58BA?diaryId=7180On the 24th of September, 1980, I entered the U.S. Navy's boot camp as a seaman recruit. The nation was in the midst of having incredibly high interest rates, stagflation, and high unemployment rates. I joined the Navy in large part because while living in Portland, Oregon -- a city and state I'd only moved to a year earlier -- I lost my job as a shipping and receiving clerk due to the bad economy and I just couldn't find another job.
Twenty years and six days later (September 30th, 2000), I retired from the military as a Fire Controlman First Class.
I feel odd in thinking about this today; odd in the sense that the Navy was never a really good fit for me. I knew in the back of my mind from before I joined the Navy that I was gender-variant, although in the late seventies I had gone through some reparative therapy and believed God had healed me from being trans. I also tend to function from the perspective of cooperation, and military services tend to reward best the servicemembers who function from the perspective of competitiveness.
