My name is Matthew.
I served in the US Navy between 1991 and 1996.
I worked in the Seabees as a construction worker.
We built a lot of buildings on bases.
We also did a lot of work out in communities.
I was assigned a battalion.
As I was on my way up to my room, a couple gentlemen asked
if I wanted to hang out that night.
And I thought, this is cool.
I don't really know anybody.
This will be a chance to get to know somebody.
Well, it turned out that they were planning a hazing type of
event, and it just turned into more than that.
There was a lot of drinking involved.
There was a hazing incident where they indoctrinated me
into the battalion.
But then also later on, I was held hostage, I was beaten,
and I was raped.
After that, my thoughts with starting a new career and all
the excitement was gone.
I didn't know quite what to do, because I knew if I would
say something, it would definitely end my
career as I knew it.
So I held on to a lot of what happened.
But I did eventually, through stress, I reported the hazing
incident to the battalion.
And when I did that, the gentleman was disciplined.
I struggled for a long time while in the service trying to
deal with what happened.
So I got myself into a lot of trouble.
I self-medicated quite a bit with alcohol.
But once I did leave the military, I thought leaving
the military was going to solve all my problems.
But of course that's not what happened.
I continued living the way I was in the military, trying to
deal with these issues through drinking and
that kind of thing.
The problem was, is I lost all trust in people.
It was very hard for me to connect with people.
So that deteriorated all my relationships.
I had a very hard time with guilt.
I was isolated in my parent's basement.
I had no contact with people, hardly any with my parents.
So in a way this did protect me from
being victimized again.
But it did horrible things to my life.
I was unable to leave my home.
I got to a point in my life where I decided that I had to
do something different.
I thought about suicide.
I thought about what I really wanted in my life.
And I decided that I was going to give the VA a try and try
to push through these issues.
So I got out in 1996, and about 2000 I started actively
seeking help.
I saw a VA psychologist, and there was no way I was going
to talk about my military sexual trauma.
But he did recognize symptoms of PTSD, and that's where I
really started working on myself.
I did have some shortfalls.
It was very hard at the beginning.
But once I started believing that these people were trying
to help me, and I started trusting them, that's when
things really started to look up for me.
What I love about individual counseling now, is I work with
a gentleman--
he's a doctor, a psychologist.
He's also encouraged me so much to grow in my life.
I think I did a lot of great work in the
psychotherapy groups.
You make goals, and you commit to goals, and you're kind of
held responsible by the rest of the group.
I was able to talk about this military sexual trauma.
And not only that, I was able to work with those issues,
which was extremely hard, because I spent so many years
trying to suppress these thoughts and emotions.
It was a feeling of relief.
It was also a feeling of this happened to me, but it
doesn't define me.
For a long time, I thought of myself as three things-- a
military veteran, someone that had suffered a military sexual
trauma, and someone that was diagnosed with PTSD.
But once I started working with this and accepted this, I
started to think of myself outside the box, and a lot
larger than I ever had before.
Now I'm in school studying to be a social worker.
I'm married.
I own a home.
I'm very satisfied with my life, and I'm happy.
I am so happy that I went to the VA and got some help.