Dear me,

Decker,

Control is a desirable thing. Whether it's using a conversation as it's a helm at the bridge to control what's being said, whether it's manipulating your way into the more favorable assignments at work, or simply deciding what to eat in the middle of the night, control is something I very much enjoy having. Because of this, I don't understand how I spent the past short part of my life letting something control me.

Knowledge is another desirable thing. And in the quest to know everything until you actually do know everything, but can't always remember it all in the same point in time, I've come to realize there are things that are not desirable to know. Like how it feels to be arrested, or if I'm smart enough to actually get away with absolutely everything. I just don't care to know. 

I've been crying for days. I've been drinking for weeks. But for some reason, some odd circumstance arose as I laid awake at 5:00 in the morning: it's time. It's time to write a letter to myself. It's time to change.

I haven't done this in a while. I honestly think the last time I wrote a letter to myself was in high school was when Marissa stopped texting me back, and months later I found out it was because she was grounded. Isn't that strange? I got so broken and down and out of the fight that I sat and write a letter to yourself, something to look back to, something to cling to as you fight for life in the bitter world we call our own. And then, in six months, you go back to it. You read the letter you wrote, and realize how stupid this shit is. She was GROUNDED, of course she didn't text you back. There was just information in the world that you didn't happen to know at the time that would've walked you off the ledge had you known.

I've been listening to a lot of music lately. I know that military training has the tendency to do that, but this time it feels different. It's a lot of Phill Collin's music by the title of "that's all" and "I don't care anymore." I scream the lyrics from my car; I want people to hear it. "Oh it's just a shame, and that's all."

But in a day, maybe it was the sleeping pills, maybe it was my will to survive, I can't tell; but one night the music went from "Oh it's such a shame" and "I don't care anymore", to "it's time to move on" and "lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones, and I will try to fix you." I broke down crying, maybe at the transition, maybe at the new lyrics. But maybe now it's time to forget how to play on piano "that's all", and learn "fix you."

Maybe now it's time to eat. Maybe it's time to sleep. Maybe it's time to fix my entire world that I inadvertently destroyed. It won't take a day, it won't take a week. But it's time. Time to fix me.

I can do it. I've done it before. I've done RIDICULOUS shit before. I've landed planes in thunderstorms and 50kt winds. I've graduated an engineering school where we were tested on how electrons move through semiconductors. I've done pilot training - OVER A YEAR OF IT. I've been fucking tortured. Let that soak in. I, W Decker Loyd, have been tortured. So why let this feel worse?

So I will definitely fly again. The Air Force will understand the hiccups along the way. I've been trained in acute communication, I know what to say if they don't quite understand. But motherfucker, I will fly again.

The sun is coming up. Slim blue light is starting to gloss over my pool and pond. Soon the sandhill cranes and blue herons will wake up and make their presence known. Soon Cessna's, British Airways triple sevens, and KC-135's alike will be flying overhead. My house isn't going anywhere. My wife isn't going anywhere. My wings aren't going anywhere.

You aren't losing anything. Just the time it takes to heal. And then, when it's all done, when you read this very letter in how ever long it is, and chuckle over A) how poorly written it was and B) how unnecessary it was; you'll pack up your flight bag, flight suit up, and fly across the world.

And life will be good again, as it always has been.

My Fucking Awesome Life

Her side:

"I’m currently writing this because I don’t want to say something I can’t take back and regret later. Decker had barely been home from SERE for 12 hours when his dad told him that his mom’s cancer was back. Right now I’m so upset I don’t know if I should cry or scream - currently doing both.

He was so down and depressed before SERE and came home actually happy. He told me SERE was the perfect reset for him. He finally felt normal again. I’m heartbroken and fuming mad that he couldn’t even enjoy that for A DAY!

I want to ask his dad what the fuck is wrong with him or, if I’m toning it down, ask why he couldn’t let him have just one day at home. They don’t even have any details yet, so why the fuck would they spring this on him right when he gets back.

Today was supposed to be a relaxed movie day. We were so excited to watch Red Sparrow and other movies and Decker would tell me what was and wasn’t realistic, but now he’s driving around alone and I’m here trying to talk myself off the ledge. Seriously, we couldn’t even have one fucking day, what the actual fuck is wrong with his parents. Not even one day. That is so fucking ridiculous.

Who in their right mind thinks, “he’s been tortured and had the worst few weeks of his life, let’s tell him some news that will destroy him”? Seriously. This news destroyed him last time and they know it. He couldn’t have ONE FUCKING DAY. I’m pissed. NOT. EVEN. ONE. FUCKING. DAY. “Oh hey, Karen and Decker have their reunion day to relax together and enjoy him being home. Hmmm, yea, fuck that, let’s crush him.”

Don’t get me wrong, I know they’re not being malicious by any means, but this just seems like a horrible judgement call.

The last time his mom had cancer was the worst time for our marriage. Decker has said before that his biggest regret in life was how he treated me while his mom was sick. That pain was still lingering with him before he left for SERE as he told me one night when he was upset. I wish I was stronger back then and I wish I could’ve helped him more. I’m worried this time that I won’t be strong enough again."

My side:

I'm currently sitting shirtless in the sun, on the pool deck of my Florida home that I worked so hard to attain. I'm listening to the same music that got me through SERE. I'm tanning. I got pale in Washington and we can't have that.

But I'm manically depressed.

There are six Florida condors circling my pool. I love them, like all birds. They are free but endangered; fake nests are erected along I-95 to keep them alive. They are beautiful. So why the fuck am I crying and shaking in a pool lounge looking at them.

It's been on my bucketlist since middle school: trouble in paradise. To be absolutely miserable in a place people go to escape misery. I think it's been checked off one too many times.

So what do I do? I've texted my boss, gotten myself off the schedule, so I'm good right? I'll just sit by the pool and tan until everything is better. Temporary solutions to permanent problems.

Apollo's son, or daughter, is in the pond next to me. I didn't know he had a family. I'm happy for him. I hope no one gets cancer.

My palm trees are still alive. The majesty palm is struggling but I might just replace it. Or should I nurse it to health? These are the questions that now embody my spirit. Unfortunately.

Am I replaceable? Or have I reached the budget point where I'm worth more damaged and flying than not? We shall find out.

My parents didn't ask for cancer. They didn't beg for it to fuck with me. Yet here we are. They told me one day too early for Karen. Was that one day too early for me? I don't think so. There is no day in which that is the right time to disclose that information.

I could've been at SERE, it could've been a week from now. And I would be destroyed. That is the nature of it. Destruction. It takes a lot to destroy a human being. It's easier to kill than destroy, Killing is quick, take out an artery, a blow to the head, suffocation. To destroy is much more involved. You have to figure out what that being latches onto, and slowly and efficiently destroy that. And then a human is alive, and destroyed.

But does that describe me? I'm in Florida while the rest of the country freezes to death. I could be at the beach in five minutes. Who could be so fucked up to which this isn't enough?

Me. I am fucked up. I am destroyed. Universe help me.  

Dear Mom

Good evening,

I went to the beach today. I drove my blacked out sports car down 41, weaving through tourists with my favorite music playing. I walked barefoot on the sand, down to my spot next to the breakers, and I sat. I saw a plane overhead that wasn't commercial traffic, it was clearly a 135 in MacDill's pattern. "Watching one of our own, tearing up the pattern over Tampa Bay, Florida, as I watch from the sand. Nothing gets better," I thought.

I had visualized this moment for four weeks, I even wrote about it: "the end". I slept through many cold nights and endured plenty worse with the thought that on February 1st, 2019, I would be on a beach watching my friends fly above me. It's a beautiful feeling, one that I'd hoped would cling to me as I endured my time in Washington.

But for an entire month, that feeling was robbed of me. The feeling of "the end" has no shortcuts. The psychologists told us, "when you're in pain and misery, just visualize that beach, or that ski slope, or that spouse you cling to, the mind will allow you to escape." I found that to be a lie. When I was going into shock from the ice water, I had not a single neuron left in my brain to think about Karen, the beach, or warmth. Thought's very rapidly turn to survival. What is it? What can I do right now, to get me out of this fucking coffin, and eventually home. That's what the brain resorts to: the ultimate end. Survival, so you can enjoy everything you love, in health, one day in the future.

Dad told me about your situation. The bleakness of potentially doing chemo again covers us all in the family, running a marathon and being told to run another. I'll tell you what dad told me after being tortured: I don't and can't understand what it feels like, the emotions, despair, anger, the questions. But I get it. I get emotions. I get despair. I get anger. I have questions that are never answered. There are a lot of things that we can't control, can't know. God does, but we aren't God. We are simply here at the poker table of life, with the cards we've been dealt.

Another thing the psychologists told us, which was not a lie, that I really latched onto, is that, and I can't emphasize this enough, "IT. WILL. END." The thing I figured out early on, perhaps the biggest secret in tough military training, is that that ending is by your own accord. That is the one piece of control you get in life. At SERE we had a safeword. "Flight Surgeon." If I ever said that word, at any point in training, everything would have stopped and a SERE psychologists would've snowmobiled into my location, and at that point, I could've S.I.E'd, self induced elimination. The military acronym for quit. I could've just quit, and it all would've been over. But had I done it, that day would've been the last day I wore my wings, a fate to me worse than death.

When I was in a coffin being showered with ice water, I knew I could force myself to stop shivering, and let my body go unconscious. I knew the Air Force regulations, once I conk out training is done, I get rushed to the hospital. I could end it, rather quickly. But had I done that, I will have lost consciousness without a blow to the head, which is a precursor to epilepsy, migraines, all sorts of potential complications. My medical clearance would've been in jeopardy. It may have been the last day I wore my wings. So I stayed awake, and endured.

I knew I had just a hair of control over my situation. I could quit, and be done with my career and life, or I could take one more miserable step. This conversation in my head was a broken record for eight days. But the only logical, emotional, rational choice, is to take another step - one step closer to the end. That is the only option. Yes, you have a choice, but only one makes sense. You can't quit on yourself, on your family, on your God, you take one more miserable step towards the end. And as long as that step is on course, the end will come.

Mom, you obviously don't have incredibly intense military training ahead of you where they bend your emotions to a breaking point. You're in a very different boat altogether. But the psychological tensions are the same. "I have a lot of shit ahead of me, and I don't even know how much. I don't know if I can handle it." It's a position of despair and fear. But you have an advantage, you know how this works. You know how kidney stints work (if it comes to it), you know when to eat the brownie and when it's futile. Just like I'm trained to make a real world experience as a POW more comfortable, you have the experience, which always trumps training, to make chemo livable, survivable, enough to get through this.

I remember how awful it was seeing you in chemo. And after watching 15 adults cry over me being iced, when I turned out fine emotionally (relatively), I'm convinced that not only is the dread worse than the deed, but going through it is not the hard part. Having your loved ones look over you is the hard part. And your husband and I are mentally and emotionally the strongest people you know, believe me. We've seen some shit. We will be by your side, unwavering like the American Flag through the snowfall. We will be fine. We just want you to be fine.


And considering the circumstances; considering you left your home in Utah because you wanted a better life which lead to us, considering the strength and bond of our family that will never leave you, considering you raised me to be a superhuman, getting through engineering, pilot training, SERE, and considering that you are the toughest of all of us because, shit, you've done this before; you will be fine. You will get to the sacred "end".

There is nothing worse than having your health or freedom taken from you. You and I have experienced both. It sucks. It really fucking sucks. But until you forget that God has planned an ending to this chapter, where Karen and I visit for Christmas and drink bourbon around the fire because we're freezing; until you forget that your husband is by you thick and thin with great health insurance, desperate to go to fucking North Dakota for some reason, and until you forget that the son you raised will continue to succeed in everything he loves and wanted in life and calls you each weekend...

You will reach the end.


And then you will be forced to go to North Dakota. And I can't help you there.

A Salute to the Limnadian Flag

Good evening,

I have a story to share. Please don't tell anyone, it's not classified but the emotional response to the theatrics is what they don't want to get out because it cements a lot that you learn here, which spoils it for future students. You'll see why. The reason I'm sharing with you, is that you're one of the few people I know who would ever come close to understanding; I really wish I could share with Grandpa, but can't. They say sharing little tidbits here and there with close family who can comprehend is helpful, so this is what I've chosen to share. 

So we're POW's, still getting beaten and abused by the Limnadians (the fake communist country that's captured us). I estimate it's about 8pm, probably ten hours since getting iced. I'm still shivering and convulsing. We're pretty broken. We're in our cold little huts together and they're trying to force propaganda or something and we're slowly resisting but breaking down steadily. Snow continues to pour outside. We're trying to get our guard to build us a fire, but every time we ask we get hit. 

Then air raid sirens go off. That means the chief commandant is going to address us as a whole group, all 82 of us. We huddle outside to the courtyard, into our lines, in the "position of utmost respect to the comrades". Snow is dumping, it's piling down my neck, getting into my gloves; still convulsing, can barely stand upright. The "glorious commandant" addresses us with more mind games and threats and propaganda. Guards are going through the lines hitting people that aren't standing respectfully enough. It's about as low and broken as we could get. They won. Game over. We'll do what you want. 

Then when the leader was done with his speech, he told us, "Now each and every one of you will salute the beautiful Limnadian flag to our beautiful anthem, and that salute will pay respects to our glorious country while denouncing your faith in America. And whoever doesn't will be taken away and beaten senseless. Nod if you understand." 82 airmen nod. 

"Present, ARMS." All the guards start saluting the flag behind us. A long drumroll starts over the loudspeakers. I don't remember exactly what I thought, but it was along the lines of. "Whatever, not doing it, don't care, I'm done." I peaked around, and realized not a single person out of 82 people were saluting. The drumroll continued. I could see on every person's face, a deep and sincere "FUCK. YOU." being spoken through narrowed eyes. No more submission or broken posture, just "fuck these sadistic assholes and their flag."

82 American servicemembers and every single one of them came to the conclusion ON THEIR OWN, 'I will not salute my captors flag and anthem.' No matter how broken, how cold, how apparently compliant by that point, 82 people took the "fuck you" option, independently.

Then the drumroll started slowing, and I noticed something. The Limnadian salute was very different, palms forward, toes together etc, but all the guards were rendering American salutes, perfect salutes, feet at 45 degrees. We all realize something is off. The drumroll stopped. The United States Anthem started playing. We still don't know what's going on, just kind of frozen in our "fuck you" stances. One airmen up front figured it out, about faced, and gave an American Salute. We all followed suit.

A giant American storm flag was flying from the flag pole that had a Limnadian flag flying a few minutes prior, they changed it without us realizing. There're four spotlights illuminating it, glinting through the heavy snow. I stopped shivering, I stopped feeling cold, hungry, in pain. I stood upright for the first time in 8 hours and held that salute. The anthem ended and we about faced away from the flag. The guards were gone, they disappeared during the anthem, now a Col is in the guard tower. 

He says, "Everyone say the key element of the United States of America is freedom, but almost every single person who says that has never had their freedom taken from them. You have now had the unreal experience of losing your freedom. But if you ever lose your freedom again, remember that that flag and anthem exists, and America will get you back home, and freedom will be restored. Never forget the emotions you are feeling right now, because this is the reason you do what you do." 

I've read and heard from so many veterans that at some point, in training or real world, it clicks. The deep emotions tied to pride overflow, and after that you feel like you can do anything. I can't write about it to the caliber of it all, but seeing dozens of Air Force officers and airmen, some only 18 years old, all decide at the same exact point in time, "okay I don't fucking care if you beat me, this is where I draw the line, your country's a malicious piece of shit that tortures people, and I'm simply not doing it." It was amazing, and what's crazy is that is what happens with every single class going through, every single week. Then to see the American flag through the snowfall, and hear your anthem, ohhhhhh it puts the Super Bowl flyby to shame. 

On another note, our psych debriefing was sobering. They had the three people that got iced (I thought it was only me and someone else, but there was a third. That made me so furious, the odds were 3 in 82 and us three lost. Something about knowing the exact odds really pissed me off emotionally but I can't figure out why.) Anyway they had the three people that got iced share their experience, so I did. "Yeah it fucking sucked." Then they had the thirty some odd people that were forced to watch come up and talk about it, and that's when it became surprising. People were crying, couldn't talk about it, it was all so complex it seemed, their emotions over having to watch it were far far worse than those who went through it. I was totally floored by people choked up over having to watch little ole me get hosed in ice water. I had no idea the extent of how hard it was for them watching. Then I started getting survivor's guilt, over having getting tortured! Psychology is weird.  

So anyways, it's all over now. Now I can play blackjack with the boys and decompress. I just have to get through the three weeks that your brain essentially withdrawals from adrenaline and cortisol. But one thing that was made so blatantly unequivocal these three weeks is something I already knew, but it wasn't cemented, it had no emotion prove the gravity of the reality:

The United States Military is the absolute best in the world.