Three Hundred and Ninety-Two Days

Photo By Petty Officer 1st Class Maria Alvarez | 161230-N-BY095-309 NORFOLK (Dec. 30, 2016) Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Janweb B. Lagazo holds his newborn baby for the first time during a homecoming celebration for the guided-missile destroyer USS Mason (DDG 87). Mason, part of the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group conducted a seven-month combat deployment to the U.S. 5th and 6th Fleet areas of operation in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Maria I. Alvarez)  

RED SEA

12.01.2017

Story by Petty Officer 2nd Class Janweb Lagazo 

USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN 76)   

WESTERN PACIFIC – It hit me hard. Leg-sweep hard. It was one of those cliché moments: a near-death encounter I’m only supposed to experience sitting on a couch watching an action movie with surround sound blaring combined with the visceral stimulus hitting my corneas.

It happened last October within a period of seven days. My ship, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason (DDG 87), was charged with defending guided-missile destroyer USS Nitze (DDG 94), amphibious transport dock USS San Antonio (LPD 17), afloat forward staging base USS Ponce (AFSB 15), and other merchant ships steaming with us from land-based cruise missile attack. I was the helmsman for several of the attacks as we took evasive actions to place Mason between the missiles and the other ships.

“Left full rudder,” shouted the conning officer. “Starboard engine ahead flank! Port engine back one-third!”

For a moment, you pause. Your heart races. Everything around you is shaky. You realize that it’s your legs. No. It’s coming from your toes. Wrong again. It’s the ship. They tell you the ship is a shield. Every order, no matter how diluted with the curses of Sailors around you, is to be heard and followed with exactness. You falter. Then the order punches you in the face. You fumble the repeat back in your mind. Then your training kicks in. It jars you into action. You shoot the repeat backs out fast and clear. The ship shudders. It veers to the ordered course. Then you realize what you’ve done. You put yourself and all your friends in the way of hostile fire.

You’ll vividly remember the smells and sounds of those moments. There’s the suffocating smoke from Aegis launchers smothering Sailors running from the missile decks. The screeching of metal as countermeasures launched and the force jolted the space around you. The black ash-like particles covered the bridge wing creating a bizarre transition to dusk. Explosions – too close for comfort. Every second is a flood of detail. Your needless excitement complicated those moments. It was a rush and the crash was inevitable.

After 210 days on a deployment, now wearing a combat action ribbon, I found myself with my family for 90 days to enjoy the New Year’s holiday and catch up on missed time.

Those days were the hardest of my life.

It was all because of me.

Think about that for a second.

The day after coming home, your two-year-old daughter approaches you banging her toy pots and pans – Christmas gifts. She innocently says “hi, Daddy” with that grin of hers.

Your adrenaline rushes to your head.

The bashing metal indents itself into your brain.

Emotion, unbridled and unwarranted, surfaces. You don’t know from where. It is terrifying to control. You stop sleeping well that night. You stop sleeping well.

Your newborn son cries – the lungs on that kid.

He was born on day 186 of the deployment.

You feel guilty. I suspect you will always feel guilty for that.

You try to comfort him. Take some of the burden from your wife. It never works. Abrupt anger and fast frustration became the norm. So you distance yourself.
My wife was the greatest support for me. We talked a lot about family and the future. We talked about the kids. We talked about what to eat. We talked about an impending transfer. We talked about things. It helped ease the inner brawls that played out in my mind.

The stigma of talking about your problems stops you from expressing what you felt. You fill your daily life with menial tasks; convincing yourself they were neglected while you were away. The adjustment was just not happening. You are in self-inflicted exile – your body was home but your heart and mind were elsewhere.

“That hyper-vigilance after being in the moment when someone is trying to kill you and then coming home is very surreal,” said Lt. Jason Owen, a chaplain aboard Ronald Reagan and an Afghanistan combat veteran. “It’s like two different environments. You go from the ship, or mountain, or desert to home and all the sudden you’re surrounded by carpet, tiles, walls, paint, and kids. You don’t really hear children’s voices out at sea, in Afghanistan, or wherever people go.

“That vigilance over there is healthy because it keeps you alive and keeps your head on the swivel. It tells you there’s danger and you have to be courageous and focused to do your job.

“Coming home it’s hard to switch that off. While you’re happy to be home with your kids and family, there’s a part of you that’s longing to still be out there.”

After a brief month, I was back to work and duty. The monotony and routine of work was bearable. I went to a training school in Maryland two months later. I spent another 90 days separated from my family before transferring to the Navy’s forward-deployed aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). I had to learn new skills. Planning a military move while I was away from home brought its own anxieties. It complicated things. Made it difficult to focus on school, on training, and on keeping stable. It wasn’t my first military move but the stress was there.

Japan offered a more predictable schedule but my timing was off. The schedule forced me to leave my family again. Fifteen days after arriving to Japan, I left for my first scheduled patrol – this patrol. Three hundred and ninety-two days in the last two years and counting, I’ve been gone from my family.

I managed to create family in the Navy, when I’m underway, and, especially, during stressful times. It’s close but it’s not the same.

Picture for an instant, that you have these delinquent thoughts: thoughts about losing yourself, thoughts about losing your family, and thoughts about losing everything you’ve worked hard for because of something you might do. You’d think these thoughts would eventually resolve themselves.

You become scared of what others might think of them. You talk to people – the right people. You bear your bare self. If left alone, you start drowning. You wallow in doubt. You stagger in the dark. You clutch for any measure of safety.

Then you find light.

You realize that there’s value to reaching out for help.

Returning home, transitioning back, I didn’t do very well the first time away or even the second time. I’m hoping the third time will be better.

I’m seeking the help I know I need.

“A lot of people come to me because they’re having problems and hard times adjusting to home, to being 18, to being overseas and having all these restrictions but you have to reach out for help,” said Xhosa Burford, a deployed resiliency counselor from Fleet and Family Services.

Burford told me service members should help themselves first, then they become better able to affect the environment and people around them. She said to treat it as if I’m a passenger on a crashing airplane. Should I put my oxygen mask on first or should I help my wife next to me? My instincts say my wife but I should fix myself first.
“Service members make mistakes all the time that they think they can never recover from,” said Burford, “but resiliency isn’t just about strength. It’s about vulnerability and really embracing that to make yourself better.”

Sometimes, our weaknesses highlight our strengths. My vulnerabilities showed me where to focus my efforts – where I was broken and what I need to mend.

Resiliency is taking shape again.

Picture I’m a plastic bottle. Someone pours out all the liquid from me and crushes me.

I can never be the same again.

However, what if air was pumped into me and I was filled with liquid again – better stuff. I’m still a bottle. I may have dents but I still fulfill my purpose.
The process of reshaping that bottle and filling it again with a more nourishing beverage is resiliency. It’s not about avoiding the process but making it work for me.
It’s not easy letting someone into the deepest recesses of my mind but I had to for my sanity and my family.

“One important thing to remember when you’re coming back from deployment is expectation management,” said Lt. James Larsen, the ship’s psychologist. “A lot of people come back from a deployment imagining that their life is going to be exactly like what it was before they left or with a specific picture of what they think life is going to be like when they get home. It’s really hard to have an accurate picture of what that’s going to be like. Your family changes, your friends change and your situation changes with each deployment.”

Larsen said most people come home from deployment to something different. Communication was the key for me. The chaplain, deployed resiliency counselor, and psychologist were all on the same page.

“It’s very important to talk openly with your family members, your friends, or whoever your support network may be,” said Larsen. “It helps set mutual expectations so everyone is on the same page.”

I talked. I talked a lot. I talked to my wife. I talked to my kids. I talked a lot to people who knew what they were talking about – professionals. Communication unlocked the cage of emotion brewing inside me. It led to outlets and resources to express myself. I grew from that experience.

“Post-traumatic growth is the idea that when people go through a really difficult or traumatic situation, there may be some way for them to grow or learn from that experience,” said Larsen. “When we go through these really difficult stages in our life, like a deployment, as hard as it is to be away from family, as long as the hours are, as hard as the work is, or as burnt out as you may feel in the end, there are things you can learn about yourself in the end – your limits, your capabilities, and your ability to push yourself. That will benefit you for the rest of your life.”

I gravitated to that concept. It’s something I already believed in or knew. I just failed to apply it to my own life.

Sailors are resilient.

I recovered and learned from my experiences. I learned my family and friends should have been my first line of defense. They know me better than anyone else. I also know that the Navy has given me resources. Chaplains, deployed resiliency counselors, and the ship’s psychologist are within reach with offices on board. The Fleet and Family Support Center regularly hosts classes and trainings to help reintegrate with partners and children. They also teach about stress and time management and how to be a new parent.

All you need to do is ask.

Three hundred and ninety-two days and counting has never been easy. It never will be. This holiday will be different because I’m different – better at transitioning but by no means an expert. Three hundred and ninety-two days’ worth of growth will be made to good use.

• Date Taken: 12.01.2017
• Date Posted: 12.26.2017 23:07
• Story ID: 260221
• Location: RED SEA
• Hometown: BANNING, CALIFORNIA, US