Waves

A poem written on November 12, 2007 while on deployment on USS Ronald Reagan

Look around and all you see is a huge ship,

There are tons of people but no one that

Wants to hear your pain or to help you,

Get out further to sea and all you see

Is the deep blue ocean,

The waves rock the ship and the

Waves that are inside of you,

Come crashing in on you,

There is nowhere to go, no one to talk to

So the only place your have is to turn

To writing in this journal,

To get the thoughts and emotions out,

When you lay in your rack at night,

All you do is cry,

The nightmares and flashbacks come back

But what are you going to do when

You are stuck on a huge ship, in the middle

Of the ocean where there is no one to talk to,

No one that cares,

Trying so hard to be the Sailor but since

The rape,

command not doing anything about it

Being called a liar,

The emotional abuse and retaliation,

Being told that I do not matter,

That we will ruin your career,

I just do not care about being a Sailor.

There are times when I look at the waves,

And want to jump off of the ship,

To make the pain go away,

I turn to cutting and burning to feel

Physical pain instead of the emotional pain,

There is no one that cares,

No one that will listen,

I am trapped on an aircraft carrier with people,

That could care less about what happened to me,

I cannot wait to be back at the pier,

To get far away from people that

Are only out to hurt me,

Cannot wait to get back to the pier

To be able to get away from the chain of command,

Cannot wait to get back to the pier to be

Able to see real friends that care about me

And understand what I am feeling,

Cannot wait to be back to the pier so I

Can see a counselor that understands rape and PTSD,

All I want is for someone to be there

Someone to listen without judgement

Someone to hold me,

Someone to validate what I am feeling

And for someone to listen as I talk about

What happened to me in that hotel room.

The waves crash in on me,

There are so many tears,

Feel so betrayed,

Feel so depressed,

Feel so much grief,

Feel so much anger,

Feel lost in an institution that

Only cares about men that rape,

And I mean nothing to them.