People often think they understand what the word minority means, but they limit it to the color of your skin. They overlook the way’s identity is layered long before the world ever names it. They don’t see the shift in someone’s posture when their religion becomes a target. They don’t hear the silence someone is forced into when their sexual orientation becomes a liability. They don’t understand the exhaustion of carrying multiple versions of yourself just to survive the day. And in the military—where conformity is praised and difference is treated like a threat—those layers of identity become heavier. When people can’t place you neatly into a category, they’re comfortable with, they create their own narratives, usually rooted in fear or stereotype or even by their false comprehension based on the curriculum that’s limited to them. The struggles that come with that don’t disappear; they’re simply swept under the rug, ignored unless the person living them is loud enough or brave enough to speak. But when your voice is policed by policies like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” even that small power is taken from you. My identity wasn’t a political debate—it was a human truth. Yet that truth was treated as something dangerous, something shameful, something better left unspoken.
Some stories live inside the body long before words are willing to carry them. They exist in joints that pop from years of tension, in memories that hover just beneath the surface of daily life, in the way breath sometimes catches without warning. Telling them requires a kind of courage I didn’t always have. Even now, as I write, anxiety coils tight in my chest because a part of me still fears being seen the way some of the soldiers I served with saw me—through suspicion, through discomfort, through prejudice, and through assumptions. But the road that brought me here taught me that silence can be a form of surrender. And the select few who guided me—General Roméo Dallaire through the story of Shake Hands with the Devil, and the Québécois actor Roy Dupuis through the moral strength he brought to that role—showed me what it means to tell the truth, even when doing so feels like walking barefoot across broken concrete.
My story begins long before the Army haircut, long before the camouflage-soaked years of service, long before I ever set foot on the red dirt of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, or even planted my boots on ground in Taji, Iraq. It begins on a morning in September 2001, when the world shifted on its axis. I was young, but old enough to feel the gravity of watching the towers fall live on television—the smoke, the horror, the collective intake of breath across the country. The anger in the nation became a pulse. Patriotism wasn’t an idea then; it was a calling. I carried the weight of that day with me for years, and like many young Americans, I believed the most honorable thing I could do was answer that call in uniform.
But my enlistment wasn’t only about patriotism. It was also an escape hatch. I was running—from the fallout of my own poor choices, from a childhood shaped by instability, from environments where survival meant anticipating danger before it arrived. When I signed the dotted line in 2005, I believed I was choosing what Robert Frost called “the road less traveled,” a road paved with duty and discipline that would remake me. I didn’t yet understand that the road I chose would be much rougher than the poem ever suggested, or that the trauma I hoped to escape would follow me into the very institution I believed would save me.
Basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, surprised me. It felt strangely like a kind of heaven. Not because it was easy—far from it—but because for the first time in my life, chaos didn’t rule everything around me. The days were long. The nights were short. The sand seeped into everything—boots, bedding, hair. Yes, even my ass. Yet the structure, the predictability, the rigid expectations gave my nervous system a rest I didn’t know it needed. People assume the yelling is the hardest part, but for someone who grew up navigating emotional landmines, the yelling was almost comforting. It followed the rules. It had a purpose. It wasn’t personal. The consequences made sense. The world made sense.
I mistook that sense of order for healing, believing the uniform itself would carry me toward a better version of myself. But I soon learned that uniforms could create the illusion of unity without eliminating the biases tucked beneath them. For a whole ten years, I navigated those biases of my brothers and sisters-in-arms, as well as myself, like a field of landmines.
When I returned home after basic training, the illusion shattered. The same patterns I thought I’d escaped resurfaced—judgment, dismissal, the feeling of not quite fitting into the molds people expected of me. New characters entered my life, but the emotional script remained familiar. I threw myself into the Wisconsin Army National Guard, believing service would offer the belonging I had searched for my entire life within the very community that raised me. Instead, I walked directly into another arena where difference drew suspicion and silence was the coping mechanism rather than truth.
Luckily, those complications would find a quick fix with being called up for deployment. Six months after my initial training, I deployed with the 1157th Transportation Company out of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 2006. Before we even left the weight of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy bore down on me. Soldiers tried to out me without reason or provocation, as if targeting me offered them some twisted sense of entertainment or control. Being queer under DADT was like living under a spotlight you didn’t want but couldn’t turn off. Every word mattered. Every gesture mattered. Every friendship could be used against you. You learned to breathe in a way that took up less space.
By the time we reached Iraq, I had already begun to understand that my uniform did not protect me from the biases of my peers. It only concealed the parts of myself that made them uncomfortable. Life in Taji was complicated. I was restricted to the Forward Operating Base for the duration of the deployment, unable to run missions outside the wire like many others in my unit. This was the first experience in my anxiety was used as an excuse, even before my diagnosis. Some believed that the limitation kept me safe. Others poked at the assumptions that I got paid to do nothing the whole duration of the deployment. Sometimes I wondered if it was a subtle punishment, a way to contain me. But the truth is, it was both a blessing and a curse. It may have saved my life, but it also gave me too much time to realize how deeply isolated I was.
I never meshed with my platoon. My platoon sergeant and I clashed constantly—he clung to leadership through control, while I believed leadership was earned through integrity. When racist microaggressions surfaced within the unit, I spoke up. When rank was used as a weapon rather than a responsibility, I challenged it. But as a specialist, my voice was unwelcome. In their eyes, I was simply someone who didn’t know my place. In my eyes, I was someone who refused to let injustice slide quietly by. Let’s just say, I was thankful that the leadership was lenient, whereas I was only reprimanded through one counseling statement. Falsely, might I add, as someone else in my platoon had outted my sexual orientation to my Platoon Sergeant.
Growing up around cousins who were minorities, being a minority myself, has taught me to stand for something regardless of hierarchy. That instinct to protect others was one of the few things the Army couldn’t break in me, no matter how hard the environment pushed.
My refuge came from an unexpected place: Myspace. In those early days of social media, it became a digital lifeline. Online, I connected with LGBTQ veterans, including one who had been a prisoner of war and another who helped co-found The Trans Theory. I connected with an ex. Or so I thought. They were always a player going from woman to woman, while I was in the sandbox. I shit you not, they broke up with me the very day we arrived in Taji. That was a hardship I was battling my whole time overseas, let alone the isolation with my comrades.
I connected with people who understood what it meant to live in fear of your own country’s policy, even in Iraq. On Myspace, I wasn’t an outsider. I wasn’t the queer troop hiding under DADT. I was simply myself. What most folks don’t know is that it is where I met my friend, Tyler Kritz, before he was killed in action three days before my 21stbirthday while both our units were stationed in Taji, Iraq. My very first trusted confidant, in the mud. He was part of the Stryker Brigade out of Fort Lewis, Washington. And in those late-night messages and digital friendships, I found the belonging the military never offered. My letters and my presence from Iraq influenced people to enlist despite the risks. I carry that knowledge cautiously, especially given how transgender service members are now later targeted under the Trump administration with the current executive order that’s allowing the Pentagon to remove transgender troops from the military with no benefits or a healthy form of transition whatsoever. I can only hope they found something better than what I experienced.
Mid-tour leave was another turning point. Coming home was disorienting. Friends were partying nonstop, forgetting I was returning from a war zone, not a college semester. My ex was lost in their own world but still dedicated some time out of their busy schedule to check on me, regardless of my own family’s homophobic and transphobic beliefs. And when I stopped for gas in my hometown, I ran into my old softball coach—the very man behind the team who gave me the nickname, Mitch. He looked at me and said, “You seem much happier.” I smiled and nodded because explaining the truth would have required unpacking layers of fear, exhaustion, and fragmentation I didn’t have the vocabulary for then.
The flight back to Iraq after leave, also known as R&R, is still one of the most haunting memories of my service. A Blackhawk flew us low over the desert between Balad and Taji, the aviation crew minimal. From the outside, it might have looked like a VIP moment. But inside, it felt like neglect. Like I could disappear from the sky, and nothing would change. I realized then how deeply alone I was among the very people who were supposed to have my back. I really wish I knew what happened to that photograph the gunner took that fateful day.
The loss of Tyler and having my Air Force brothers heading home from their six-month stint made it more challenging to finish the tour in one piece for the last three months. As our unit was prepping for their return home, the building we were getting debriefed in, close to our headquarters, was suddenly mortared on a mid-summer afternoon as we were heading back from our briefing. We all felt the effects. The rest of that summer was a blur of isolation, survival, sand, and prayers to get out of Hell safely.
The military teaches resilience through repetition, but isolation teaches something different: quiet endurance. The kind that eats at you in small increments. My only support came from Myspace, letters, and care packages—physical reminders that somewhere beyond the wire, people still cared whether I existed.
When I finally came home in 2007, I shed the camouflage identity as fast as I could, even though the side effects remained. Diving under my brother’s deck the day of my coming home party due to gunshots in the distance. Long, heavy nights of drinking and karaoke with temporary friends to avoid accountability and the reality of life. I dove straight into the LGBTQ community, unapologetically queer and openly transgender in my civilian life. I lived loudly because I had been forced to live quietly for too long. I performed, I connected, I thrived in spaces where authenticity was welcomed, not punished.
However, that lifestyle would be short-lived. Not even a year has gone by that I would be called up for a second deployment with the 32nd Brigade out of Camp Douglas. The number of troops deployed, 4,500. I was like the red-headed stepchild, even more with this deployment with being removed from my parent unit, 1158th Transportation Company, to be re-assigned not once, but twice, before deployment was cut short before training was even started in Fort Bliss, Texas. I guess it didn’t help that I injured my collarbone during my training to be qualified with a shotgun for our mission in 2009. That incident escalated my symptoms for mental health. That’s when I was sent home back to the VA in Tomah, to be diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, and Substance/Alcohol Abuse.
During this time, I would receive orders to work at the Wisconsin Military Academy in Fort McCoy, WI. I guess it was the State Headquarters’ way to provide me with work after being sent home for medical purposes and being unemployed. It was the first time anyone in authority looked at me and saw a person in pain rather than a soldier failing to adapt. Unfortunately, this experience would provide a new lesson in struggling to belong and a lack of responsibility for my truth. I began working during treatment, surrounded by a mix of leadership who enabled my addictions in ways I had never experienced in uniform. Some used rank as their advantage, while others gave me space rather than protection. They didn’t just demand strength—they taught me how not to treat subordinates and lead differently by what not to do to get ahead in life. I still hold that very close to my philosophy today.
Sobriety was its own road less traveled, full of jagged edges and lost friendships, but it was a road I walked because I had no other choice. By the time Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed in 2011, I was already working on myself on an intrapersonal level.
I re-entered the military by joining the United States Army Reserve in 2012, hopeful that the military I returned to would be different. The experience was different, with a magnitude of opportunities that looked good on paper, but trauma doesn’t disappear because policies change. My PTSD resurfaced with force during my time with the 86th Training Division in Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, and I went through a long, aggravating process that resulted in being medically boarded out for being unfit for duty. My disability rating rose from 50% to 70%, and with it came the heavy truth that my chapter in the military had ended.
Without structure in my next chapter would bring new sins and redemption, but if I learned anything from Dallaire, from Dupuis, from the select few who shaped my path during my journey through adulthood, it’s that survival is not failure. Growth is not betrayal. And sometimes the bravest thing you can do is walk away from the battlefield—internal or external—when staying would destroy you. Forever, I am thankful for the lessons provided and the everlasting and unbreakable bonds that shaped my very existence.
The purpose of sharing my story is to bring clarity for those who may not know my experience in Iraq. It’s not to silence the ones who were injured or killed, but to bring light to those who were affected by the unfortunate events of their battle buddies or unit family. There is so much more to our stories than what our resumes or our educational experience displays, and I hope we all get the opportunity to heal to the point of sharing those stories and not compete about who has it worse than someone else, or dismiss someone’s experience just because of what others may have done to provide them safety to return home, hopefully to acceptance. That’s its own story.
Looking back now, I see the truth clearly: I did not fail the military. Nor did the military fail me. I outgrew it. I outgrew the silence, the constraints, the policies, the prejudice. I outgrew the uniform because the person I was becoming needed more space than the Army could offer. The correct leaders did me justice by repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, because it revealed a new bias within the military, with the result of medically boarding me out of an environment that never really served me the proper justice it should have when I was finally disciplined to lead. The good leaders had gone, but unfortunately, the bad leaders had shown up or stayed.
My road—the one less traveled—was shaped by trauma, resilience, identity, authenticity, and the voices of those who taught me how to rise even when the world tried to push me into the ground. That road, rough and winding though it has been, has made all the difference. This piece just goes to show for those who dare to put my trauma under a rug, that time and character reveal everything, and it takes hell of a courage and resilience to share that side of your story.
Works Cited
Dallaire, Roméo. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Carroll & Graf, 2004.
Herek, Gregory M. “Sexual Stigma and Sexual Prejudice in the United States: A Conceptual Framework.” Contemporary Perspectives on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Identities, edited by D.A. Hope, Springer, 2009, pp. 65–111.
Osborne, Dana M., and Kristen H. Schilt. “Gender, Military Service, and the War on Terror: The Experiences of Transgender Service Members.” Sociological Perspectives, vol. 64, no. 4, 2021, pp. 647–664.
Shane, Leo. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repealed.” Military Times, 22 Dec. 2010, https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2010/12/air-force-dont-ask-dont-tell-repealed-122210/.
United States Congress. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010. Public Law 111–321, 22 Dec. 2010, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-111publ321/pdf/PLAW-111publ321.pdf.