All kidding aside, you're to be commended for your work. Glad you survived.
Thank you. It's actually part of a very long story I'm writing up a little at a time. I'll try to write the nutshell version of here...
It actually started in 1974. My dad, who was a Marine who had fought in Korea and who was a single dad like me, decided to start my formal training early. I had grown up in a family of combat vets on my dad's side and it was presupposed I would go in the military at age 18.
My grandfather had seen and understood the threat the Chinese Communist posed in the late 40s after his time in WWII. Dad had fought them in Korea, and my uncles had fought them in Vietnam. All assumed they would some day bring the war here, so dad started my training at age 10. Pretty intense sub-tropic and coastal maneuvers, waterborne landings in swamps sub tropic and coastal survival, shooting and weapons maintenance in salt water environments and inclement weather training etc. every weekend we could. And that went on from 1974 to 1978.
Then dad had an accident at work while I was gone to visit other family and I soon found myself stuck back with the same alcoholic and drug addicted mother he had taken me from and her new husband. I was too young to understand the effects of drug use at the age of 13. Their penchant for eating amphetamines like Black Beauties and Yellow Jackets like candy, and staying up for days at a time drinking created an environment that was like going through Lewis Carroll's looking glass. They got angry, a lot, about things that were either nonexistent or made no sense to me. So most of the time I'd come home and do my chores and homework and run before they came in from work. Then sneak back in through my bedroom window later and pretend to be asleep when they'd check in before going to bed. I wouldn't go to sleep until they did. Probably the beginning of the somniphobia that would cause me issues later.
Being alone on the streets of Dallas at 13 was where I got my first glimpses of gang mentality and activities. I got good a recognizing them so I could be good at avoiding them.
In 1980, their drug use reached its crescendo. They separated for a while, and I thought things would improve. Mom wasn't so angry anymore. But then one night I woke up to what sounded like wood popping in our wood heater and thought she had left the flu open again when I saw the lights flare on the other side of the curtain that was my bedroom door. Only to realize the popping was gun fire and the light was muzzle flash and my stepfather was shooting at me through the curtain. It's still blurry, but I remember us fighting over my 16ga shotgun and it going off under his chin. And mom was already gone. He had shot her twice in the face through the glass on our back door on his way in. I was the only one who survived standing in a house with blood covered walls. I was 15
For the next 4 years i spent most of my time on the streets, hiding from the juvenile authorities and trying to look after some other peoples' discarded and runway kids, and dealing with gang issues until I was old enough to go in the army.
I can still remember the first day at the barracks, after going through culture shock, and wondering why I couldn't sleep. I assumed I was just too wound up, I might have slept the last hour maybe, it felt like i barely closed my eyes. The next night was the same, and the pattern continued. I would only sleep every second or third day all the way through Basic, Advanced Individual Training, and through Advanced Infantry Training. I could sleep in a latrine stall where no-one could sneak up on me, and I could sleep in the woods where people couldn't walk quietly I guess, but I could never really sleep in the barracks unless I was exhausted. I went the entire first cycle only sleeping every second or third day in the barracks, and taking short naps in latrines.
Then Drill Sgt Lazano, who had said he suspected problems to arise from my previous trauma during the interview, finally caught me asleep in a latrine after seeing how I was always awake as soon as he walked through the barracks door every morning. He had known something was up that I probably wouldn't beat in such a short period of time, but I had aced the ASVAB and I had scored high marks all the way through. Including expert marksman even switching from left hand shooting to right due to the brass flying in front of my face, and targets that had been shrunken by 10% anticipating another conflict with China and Korea. Because I had been waiting on and training for the day I'd join the army since i was a kid. So he hoped it would sort itself out. But he had other guys watching me at night, and he knew I wasn't sleeping properly and then had finally caught me going awol to nap in a latrine due to exhaustion in the field.
So I got sent through counseling, and learned that I had somniphobia, and that it was likely brought on by my stepfather attacking in my sleep, and then other street predators attacking me in my sleep. Because of that trauma to this day I can still see better in the dark than anyone else I know, and I can still smell someone's body odor from several meters away unless I am upwind of them. They kept me on all through the the down cycle to give me a place to rest up, and I found I could sleep in the empty barracks, but I'd still wake up every time CQ came through to inspect. They let me work on the company area, painting etc. for like 3 months to let me have a break and earn more money before I was discharged, honorably thank goodness. That was in 1985.
Fast forward to the spring of 2009. When my family, my two little girls collectively the most valuable thing in my world, were threatened with physical violence by members of a drug dealing gang, and then the cops hands were tied by our Mayor. All that had been destroyed in my life by the actions of drug addicts played through my head. And all the times I had been forced to flee with other kids to protect them from gangs, or fight to protect them, played out in my head. Then all the training my dad had given me, and all the infantry training from two cycles of Infantry basic and advanced training. I knew I was qualified to take on the threat. And that left me with feeling an obligation to do so since no-one else was. And i had LEO friends who would help.
I had always said that if we want to see a better world then we have to be willing to be the change we want to see in our world, and willing to fight for it. In the spring of 2009, I found myself being challenged to put my money where my mouth was. So I went home loaded magazines, packed my equipment, and set out on a mission to scour our shire.
The beer I drank on the evening of April 26th 2019, to quietly celebrate not only ten years of a gang free park and all the years I and my daughter and others have safely played there since then, but to also celebrate the time I realized that all I had been taught as a child by my dad, all I had learned in the years of madness and insanity on the streets, and all I had learned in two cycles of infantry training, all of what I had thought for years had all just been for nothing, had finally paid off in some amazing dividends I had never seen coming. And April 26th has been a day I celebrate every year since 2019. I'm looking forward to the twelfth anniversary beer, and hoping that wasn't just the warm up for the new threats we face currently.