Episode 4: From Military Service to Mental Health Crisis: A Raw Personal Account

Brandon shares how his life dramatically changed after joining the Air Force, from women suddenly showing interest in him to facing a mental health crisis following a relationship breakdown. His journey from Ohio to North Dakota reveals both the external transformations and internal struggles that shaped his early military experience.

Please start with Episode 1. Go to my site BrandonHeld.com

• First experience returning home on military leave after six months in the Air Force
• Women who previously ignored him suddenly showing romantic interest
• Getting lost in a dangerous Chicago neighborhood during his drive to North Dakota
• Cramped living conditions at Minot Air Force Base with a difficult roommate
• Complicated love triangle with roommate's romantic interest
• Overreacting to a breakup by threatening suicide, resulting in hospitalization
• Important life lesson about not overreacting in emotional situations

Stay tuned for episode five where I'll pick up where I left off in this story about my time at Lackland Air Force Base's mental health facility.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

Welcome back. This is Brandon Held, Life is Crazy, Episode 4. Before I pick up where I left off with Episode 3, I want to say a few things. I believe I've made it clear I'm an amateur that just recording this out of his office on a microphone I have plugged into my computer. Nothing fancy here. I'm just trying to tell the story of my life and... Let my kids and maybe their kids or whomever know and anyone else that's interested. And I listened to my first three episodes and I noticed I do a few things. I say, you can hear my breath or maybe my lips smacking because that's the design of this microphone. If I sit back too far, it sounds like this. So I have to sit a little close. And it picks up some noises that I wish it didn't. And also I noticed I was saying a lot. So I will do my best to fix the things that I can try to fix. And also I would like to add that even though I'm trying to tell my life story in as raw and real as possible detail, I also have to be respectful to my wife. My wife is going to listen to this. And there are plenty of details of my relationship past in history that I could tell on here and she would have to hear that. And I don't want her to hear that out of respect. So keeping that in mind, some of my relationship stuff will not be as juicy or detailed or whatever as you might hope, I have to do what's best for my relationship and my wife. Now, having said that, in a pickup where I left off, which is I had just graduated technical school as a security policeman for the Air Force, found out I was going to be stationed in Why not, my not is what they ended up calling it when I got there. Freezing is the reason. So that's the saying up there. They also say that's where you send people to get out of the Air Force. So I got to fly home from Texas and I got to go on 10 days of leave, my first vacation since I had joined the Air Force, which was about six months prior at this point. And I would have to drive from Ohio to North Dakota. I wouldn't have to, but I did because I wanted to take my car and some of my belongings, which trust me, wasn't much. It was clothes, basically. That's about it. But when I returned home and I went to see people, I noticed almost right away that girls were looking at me differently. I believe like the first day that I returned home, one of my sister's friends, who was a very attractive girl at the time, knocked on the door to come see my sister, or at least that's what she said she was there to do. And she didn't even hold back. She was like, oh my God, you're home. Look at you. You look so good. And she was gushing and almost a little bit embarrassed about how she saw me and the way she was looking at me. And it was eyeopening to me because I know she wasn't even looking at me or giving me the time of day when I was in high school. Then from there, I was just hanging out with my friends and buddies and my little brother and just happened to be connecting with some of the girls in town. And again, I could tell like women were into me, like I had never felt before in my life. I had a high school girlfriend, which I didn't bring up in previous episodes. And I will say as much as I'm trying to stay in order going through my life, sometimes a thought or an event will come into my brain and I will have to digress a little bit and maybe backtrack to get a story in that maybe I forgot to tell or a part of my life that I forgot to tell. But having had been the romantic thinking love was going to be a great answer, a great part of my life, and I still do believe that. I just didn't know how to do it properly or how to pick the right person or anything like that. I did have a high school girlfriend who I was two years older than. She was a cheerleader. She was cute, kind, sweet, fun to be around. And I thought I was in love with her, puppy love, my first real girlfriend. And we were only going together like six months, I would say. But we were hanging out a lot, like almost every day. I was going to church events with her. I was meeting her family, doing all those things. And just out of the blue, when I thought everything was good, she broke up with me. She ended it with me. And I didn't know why, and I didn't understand why. And the reason she gave me was her parents thought we were getting too close and that we should split up. And I'm not saying her parents didn't say that to her because they might have. Could have been true. I am saying is I quickly felt within two days that 100% wasn't true. So here I was a little bit heartbroken, not understanding what happened. And she's now dating some other guy at school two days later, like to the point they're kissing in the hallway at school. And people are telling me about this. I didn't see it. I was being told about it. And so then I knew she was just full of it. She found someone else that she was more interested in and she wanted to pursue that. And I get it. She's a young girl starting out life. You don't need to be tied to someone your whole life. And I'm glad it worked out that way. It was a tough lesson at the time, but it also made me tougher. It also made me understand that. That love isn't what in the movies or you hear in your 80s ballad, rock band songs. Things can be great as far as, and then for whatever reason it ends. It toughened me almost to the point of maybe I was a little too tough after that. But anyway, I digress. So here I am back at home. Her cousin who had never expressed any interest in me before all of a sudden was hitting me up, trying to talk to me. And then we ended up getting together while I was home on vacation and she understood it was what it was. I was in the air force. I was there for a few days and I was leaving. That happened. There was a couple other girls that were expressing interest in me while I was there. And all these people I knew before this, and they never once even hinted that they were interested in me. Whereas now they were being very outgoing with, Hey, I like you. I'm interested in you. And it was a super huge for me and obviously confidence builder, right? I enjoy my 10 days at home with my family. And I pack up in the car and get my clothes in there and I start driving to Minot. And this was another new adventure for me, driving a long distance. I had never done that before. So this was going to be new. And it was a learning experience. I got to the Chicago area pretty smoothly without any issues. And once I got in Chicago, got to remember back in these days I had to do a printout of what maps do nowadays where you just it's in your car or you put it on your phone and it tells you how to get there this is a printout that I literally had to read while I was driving obviously reading and driving not a good combination but it was the only way I was going to get to mine out without getting lost because I didn't know anything about traveling long distances. So I got to Chicago and I missed a turn. I missed a turn where the freeway went one way and I went on the freeway another way. And once I realized that, I exited blindly, not knowing where I was. And when I went to turn around, I noticed I was in a Not so nice neighborhood. Look, I see these are rundown buildings. These are rundown homes. And oh, by the way, hey, I'm the only white guy there. This is all brand new to me. I grew up in a small town where when I lived there, it was pretty much all white people, right? No other races. I believe there was one Mexican family there, but it was pretty much all white people. And so I'm not used to other races at this point in my life. And I'm just used to what I see or hear on TV or radio. And here I am in what I would have called or considered the ghetto. And I was scared out of my mind. I was driving a fairly nice blue Monte Carlo with a Nice 350 engine bored out to 380 that I had purchased when I was working at a job at home at Cedar Point. And it had nice rims on it. It was a pretty nice car. I really loved it. And I was scared for my life. I couldn't get out of there fast enough and I was lost. And so here I am lost in this neighborhood where I'm scared to death. Eventually, I make my way out of there and get back onto the freeway and get back headed to the right direction. I just remember that feeling of just being scared like that. I don't think it'll ever leave me. It was the first real fear for my life. that I've ever felt. And you might think that's dramatic, but even to this day, I still don't think that's dramatic. I was a white guy in the wrong neighborhood and who knows how that could have ended. It was very scary and frightful. So I get back on the interstate and I get headed back in the right direction. And while I'm driving, I feel like, okay, it's getting close to time to stop. And I had no particular stopping point in mind. I wasn't trying to reach a certain area and say, this is where I'm going to stop. I just randomly was like, it's time to stop. And I stopped in a place called Wisconsin Dells. Now this was totally random. I knew nothing about Wisconsin Dells. And if you do know anything about Wisconsin Dells, It's a pretty cool area. It's a cool place to stop. They had a lot of cool stuff there. They had rides, they had things to do. I just tripped and fell into this really cool place that I stopped to rest on my journey. So if you're ever in that area, I definitely would recommend going to Wisconsin. Granted, this was 1991. I don't know how much it's changed since then because I know nothing about it. I didn't keep up with it. I just know it was really cool at that time. So I stay the night in Wisconsin Dells and then I get up the next day and I finish my journey. I drive all the way to Minot, North Dakota. Now this is in the summer of 1991. So when I get there, I don't have any strong negative feelings about the city of Minot in North Dakota, the state of North Dakota. But I did notice that it was a very flat land once I left Minnesota and got into North Dakota. It's just flat. There's just nothing to North Dakota. It's just flat land. So it was a long drive just through North Dakota to get to Minot. But I got there with all the excitement and one could hope to have considering the situation. I was still excited about becoming a man on my own and living my life and seeing where life may take me. And I got there and I got put into a barracks and right away, I was back then in 1991, you got a a room Just take a small hotel room and then put bunk beds in it. And a small hotel room. And put bunk beds in it. And then put two foot lockers up. And that's what I had to live in with another guy. And then there was a bathroom. There was a toilet, but the shower and tub was adjoining to another room where two other guys lived. So... We had to share, no, I'm mistaken. The toilet was in the bathroom. So we had to share a toilet, shower and tub with two other people. So four people trying to share this one shower and toilet and tub. And it was a small, very small setup and it was cramped. And so I get there and I meet this guy, Scott right away and he's I don't know if he's insecure or I usually chalk up cockiness to either ignorance or insecurity. And he was pretty cocky. He was a senior airman. I was an airman basic. He was from Washington. He had a big nose and he just treated me like in a condescending tone that he was better than me. Whatever, that's how it started off. As time progressed, we got along a little better, but I never really felt like we were truly friends. It was more of one of those relationships where you're quote-unquote joking, but you're always digging on each other or shitting on each other. That's the kind of relationship we always had. So anyway, he's telling me about this girl that he's into and he met her and he really wants to get in this relationship with her. Or he may not have even said that much. I think he actually hinted to the point that he was with her. And so he left, he went to go see this girl and I'm in my room alone. I don't even know what I was doing at this point. Maybe watching TV, maybe listening to the radio or some CDs or whatever, because I was really big on collecting CDs at this time. As a matter of fact, at the peak, I had over 300 CDs in my collection, but I had started in tech school. I would take my paychecks and some of it, I had no bills. I had nothing to spend my money on. I had room, board, everything paid for. At that point in life, no bills, so I would go to the BX. It's BX in the Air Force, PX in the Army. And I would just buy a group of CDs, 10, 11 CDs, spend$150 on CDs because whatever, it didn't matter. So I ended up with over 300 CDs, so I listened to music a lot. So anyway, got into the evening and it was getting dark and then all of a sudden the phone in my room rang and you got to remember this is 1991. We didn't have cell phones yet. It would be multiple years from that before cell phones would become a common thing. Excuse me. And I picked it up. I said, hello. And this girl says, is Scott there? And I said, no, he's not. He went down to see somebody. And I said, can I take a message? And she said, okay, yeah, I was the one who came to see, but I just didn't know if he was back yet. And I said, no, he's not back yet, but I'll tell him you called. And she was like, well, how are you doing? And then, so she intentionally started a conversation with me. When I was just let him know. And so then we started talking. And she was being really flirty with me. And I never met this girl. I didn't know anything about her. What she looked like, nothing. But I could tell she was being really flirty with me. And at some point I was like, aren't you dating Scott? Aren't you going out with Scott? She's no, not at all. He's trying to pursue me, but I'm not interested in him. And so. We ended up talking more and getting closer. And then she asked to meet me sometime, I think maybe the next day. And so I agreed to do that. And so I go meet her the next day and she's actually a really pretty girl. I understand why Scott was going after her. And we ended up becoming boyfriend and girlfriend to a relationship together. And then while we were dating, She said, you remember that time I called and we first started talking? I said, yeah. She said, I knew Scott wasn't there. He had come to me talking about this new roommate and he was telling me about you. And she was like, I became interested once he told me about you. And once he, and so I called right when he left, cause I knew he wasn't going to be there. I called just to talk to you. And that kind of blew me away a little bit, not because I was flattered, but more because I thought it was sneaky behavior. It didn't come across probably like she probably meant for it to be flattering, but I saw it for what it was, which was sneaky behavior. So anyway, we ended up dating, get into a serious, intense relationship. And in my Air Force job, I was a missile protector. I don't remember. I was a missile cop is what they call us, but What we would do is we would go out into the missile field for three days at a time. We would eat there, sleep there, work there, everything for three days. And then when we returned, we would get three, four, five days off before we had to go back, depending on our rotation and how many people were in, how many police forces, how many security specialists we had. At Minot, that would dictate how often people We would need to go out in the field. So I believe in the beginning, it was every three days for me. But by the end, I was going out. I had three days on out in the field and then five days off, which was pretty nice. And so, yeah, we would have this relationship and I would go out in the missile field and we would talk on the phone. Her. Behavior was a little sketchy to me and I already told you what I went through with my high school girlfriend and she was telling me what she perceived probably to be an innocent story and how she was hanging out with these guys and this one guy offered to give her a ride on his motorcycle. So she took a ride on his motorcycle and all I could see at 17 was my girlfriend on a motorcycle behind this guy, hugging this guy, right? And it just made me angry. It made me so angry. I was super mad about it. And we got into a huge argument and we broke up right there over the phone. She felt like she didn't do anything wrong, that it was all innocent. And of course, only she knows whether or not that's true. I didn't feel like it was innocent just by the way she explained the story and what had happened. And so when we broke up, I completely overreacted. I told my flight sergeants I didn't want to be at work, that I didn't want to pick up my gun because I was afraid I would put it in my mouth and kill myself. And I basically threatened suicide. I threatened that I was going to kill myself. And they were trying to talk me down. And they were like, this is how you really feel. And I was like, yes, this is how I really feel. I feel like if you hand my gun to me, I'm going to kill myself. And then next thing I knew, before I knew it, I and my stupid, young, naive brain thought they were just going to take me in from the missile field and I wouldn't work. And then I could go see her and try to smooth things over and iron things out but instead what happened was I got put I got taken to the hospital I got sedated and I got put on a flight from North Dakota all the way down to the hospital back at Lackland Air Force Base so next thing I know I'm back at Lackland Air Force Base. And I was flown there on a military plane, laying on a bed, basically handcuffed to a bed with drugs in my system to where I was sedated and couldn't really move. And I slept most of the way. And the next thing I know, I'm in a mental institution in the Air Force. And when I first got there, I was like, You know what? This ain't so bad. It's a vacation. It'll give me time to relax, heal, get over this, whatever. But it was so freaking depressing. I genuinely was super upset in a moment, and I obviously severely overreacted in that moment. But I wasn't serious about killing myself. So being in this institution around these people who were people with serious problems and dead serious about killing themselves was so freaking depressing. It actually, honestly makes you worse. It made me worse because of the state I was in, right? I still knew I was young, had a lot to live for. feeling good about myself and just being around these people was awful. And so one of the biggest mistakes in my life was the way I overreacted to this situation. And I share this with you in real raw words, because if you ever feel this way, don't overreact. Don't do that. Like I did, because as my wife says now, it could always be worse. So it could always be worse. And I didn't realize that at the time. And I put myself in a really bad situation. And so we are now at almost 30 minutes in this podcast and I'm going to end it here. Thank you for tuning into episode four. In episode five, I will pick up where I left off.