Jennifer and Lee

You know I need your love
You’ve got that hold over me
Long as I’ve got your love
You know that I’ll never leave
When I wanted you to share my life
I had no doubt in my mind
And it’s been you, woman
Right down the line

I know how much I lean on you
Only you can see
The changes that I’ve been through
Have left a mark on me
You’ve been as constant as a Northern Star
The brightest light that shines
It’s been you, woman 
Right down the line

I just want to say this is my way
Of tellin’ you everything
I could never say before

Yeah, this is my way of tellin’ you
That every day I’m lovin’ you so much more
‘Cause you believed in me through my darkest night
Put somethin’ better inside of me
You brought me into the light
Threw away all those crazy dreams
I put them all behind
And it was you, woman
Right down the line

I just want to say this is my way 
Of tellin’ you everything
I could never say before

Yeah, this is my way of tellin’ you
That every day I’m lovin’ you so much more
If I should doubt myself 
If I’m losing ground
I won’t turn to someone else
They’d only let me down
When I wanted you to share my life
I had no doubt in my mind
And it’s been you, woman
Right down the line

Source: Gerry Rafferty “Right Down the Line” Lyrics

I heard this song the other day and immediately thought lovingly of Lee. Then I was driving to my doctor’s appointment in La Jolla and this song came on AGAIN today. I just knew it would be the next writing inspiration… a story of two people who accidentally fell into each others lives and in love. We didn’t even know what love was given our similar upbringings but goddamit we loved each other and there wasn’t any one person, any government, any state, or any lie that was going to come between us. Lee would turn out to be not only my husband but my battle when I couldn’t even be a wife or notice that he was struggling too. We were living in survival mode doing the best we could. All we both knew was hard work and sacrifice and we did just that for our families, the U.S. military, and anyone else who benefited from our people pleasing tendencies. You see Lee and I are the same person.

We instantly fell in love on my 30th birthday in 2001 at the Keesler Air Force Base NCO Club in Mississippi. By the time I met Lee I had been sexually assaulted and harassed by multiple higher ranking a$$holes, my dad was dying of terminal cancer, and I had just got into a public altercation at this same NCO Club the night before with one of the offenders I was not expecting to see. This mother f*cker assaulted me in a satellite communications van at Keesler in 1997 while I was doing a maintenance loop test to pass the class. After refusing his advances, he threatened to fail me for “attitude” despite passing the test. Now you’ll understand why a couple shots of tequila with a little dash of PTSD and offender #2 may be problematic. I went off on this guy and got kicked out of the club for the night BUT security forces said I could return at a later time so I went back to celebrate my birthday. Lee said he saw the whole thing and didn’t judge me. I felt relieved.

Lee approached me and normally if some mother f*cker came up to me, I was mean. I was sick and tired of dudes crossing boundaries, hitting on me, buying me drinks, or even acknowledging my f*cking existence. I was the only female in most military settings and I was sick of men. I also had two brothers so it just felt like my life was destined to be lonely and surrounded by men. But Lee was different and I could see it in his eyes immediately. He was gentle. I took one look into this guy’s eyes and accepted his offer to join him and his friends at their table. We all had a really fun time drinking, singing karaoke, and dancing. I always loved temporary duty (TDY) because I felt free to be myself (a woman who didn’t have to worry about “turning on” anyone they worked with). I really enjoyed Lee and based on the pictures I took of us that night, it’s obvious we enjoyed each other’s company… but to be honest, I never thought I would see him again.

It’s funny how life works. I was checking my e-mail at the local base library when Lee walks in to do the same. It was only a couple days after my birthday and I was really shocked to see him again. After reading my e-mail, I was upset because I got a nasty gram from an old roommate who bailed and didn’t pay rent but she was lashing out at me as if I did something wrong and calling me a lesbian. I couldn’t understand why this particular insult was used but I wondered if it had something to do with my military service and the fact that I was single. But the truth of it is, I ran back into Lee at that very same moment and as it would turn out marry this man. He said he meant to get my number so we could hang out and I thought it would be cool if he joined me and my classmates on our adventures in Biloxi, Mississippi and New Orleans. And for the next three weeks, we had a blast.

I look back on this now and wonder how I even felt back then given the fact that I was definitely in a chronic state of fight / flight while serving. I was numb. I was depressed. I was sad because my dad was dying. How I could even feel anything for Lee is perplexing but I did. And he did for me as well. I could feel it and it felt real and secure and over powering. He felt right and I didn’t even know anything about him. But I also was a realist and understood I had a life in Maine and Massachusetts and he had a life in Alaska. He had business to take care of and so did I. My dad was my number one priority and I didn’t care about any man while I was losing the most important man in my life. Lee was understanding of my circumstances. He never met my dad but he did speak to him on the phone when calling for me. These encounters mean a lot to us now. We didn’t know it back then but my dad was talking to the man I love and the man I would eventually marry.

9/11 would change everything for me and Lee. We both got stop lossed in our combat communication squadrons and the stop loss lasted for four f*cking years. I lost my dad on September 15, 2001 and everything is a blur after that. Lee would deploy to Kuwait and I would “deploy” to the Massachusetts Military Reservation in Cape Cod. After my father’s death, I was placed in a non deployable status, placed on orders to run the Satellite Communications Workcenter while others were deployed, and tasked with training any and all new troops who walked through the door. My entire shop was gone by October 2001 and the rest of the squadron would follow suit quickly thereafter. There was a mad push to fill critical career fields like satellite communications and the new troops rolled in one at a time. Meanwhile, Lee and I didn’t have much to say to each other because he was devastated about losing his kids after a nasty divorce with an abuser and I was still grieving the loss of my father.

But interestedly enough after the stop loss was lifted for our critical career fields, we would find our way back to each other. Lee called me while I was TDY at the Non-Commissioned Officer Academy at Tyndall Air Force Base. He called me while I was a passenger on the way to Busch Gardens in Florida. My fellow airman pulled over so Lee and I could talk. Lee was the last person I was expecting to hear from but later he would tell me that he reached out to me in a moment of despair while stationed temporarily in South Korea. We got cut off so he wasn’t able to hear me tell him that I loved him. I wasn’t expecting my reaction but I was kinda pissed at Lee due to the fact that I had finally gotten over him and moved on only to have him reignite the most passionate love I could ever imagine. It was the kind of love that keeps you up at night. It was the kind of love you can’t just turn off. It is what it is. There was nothing I could do with any of it. I just had to wait on Lee.

He would eventually call me again except this time it would be to make plans to come visit me when he came home on his mid-tour leave in the fall of 2005. I decided if this guy truly loves me then he will find a way to come see me in Maine. I am not paying for anything. I am not going out of my way. I am not going to get burned by some dude. And I stuck to that. He even wanted me to meet him at the McDonald’s in town and I told him NO. He was very close to me and all he had to do was take two rights and a left. And goddammit, Lee made his way to my house just fine. I was scared. What if I don’t like him? What if I’m not attracted to him anymore? What if I don’t feel the same? I didn’t know what was going to happen but I was willing to find out if this love I felt was real or imagined. He showed up at my door in rural Maine looking all sexy and that’s all she wrote. From that day forward, we would forge as a team and take on life and any and all challenges together.

What we wouldn’t realize until later is that we were not the same people we were when we met in 2001. 9/11, a stop loss, a divorce, a suicide in the family, the Air Force, toxic leadership, high ops tempo, and a lack of proper medical care in the federal healthcare system would set us up for failure. We were both survivors. We both did everything within our power to take care of ourselves. And in the end it wasn’t enough. After about a decade of medical neglect in the VA healthcare system, our health was failing and it was do or die. We started fighting hard for our health only to realize no one gave a f*ck. The day I knew we needed to sell the house and move was the day I watched Lee clean up water in the basement with a look of despair in his eyes. I knew at this moment that we could no longer physically maintain a 2700 square foot house. We needed to sell while the market was good and we needed to either get some healthcare or die trying. It was the toughest decision I ever made but it was the right thing to do because we finally have the healthcare we begged for over the years.

This post is inspired by Lee and what I would come to realize about him and our relationship. Both of us were in survival mode. But both of us had each other’s backs no matter what. We were too sick and vulnerable to fight back against the evil doers in the world but we exited the situation quickly and retreated back to my father’s home where we were safe. We used this property to help us feel safe and to keep people at bay while we tried to figure out what was going on with our health. I’ll tell you what was going on with our health. Medical neglect and family who didn’t give a f*ck. Our families were a primary source of discontent. We kept waiting for someone to rescue us and no one ever f*cking did. No one gave a flying f*ck about us, our health, or anything. And then we realized together that our families didn’t give a f*ck about us as kids either so why would they start now. It was a cold hard reality but one we accepted. We started making plans to create a life that could be managed by sick people.

Lee and I have both been sick for the entire 16 years of our marriage. We have taken care of each other, we have driven each other to doctor’s appointments, and we have sacrificed our health for the comfort of other people. We fought for our health the entire time and we tried to confide in others who might have answers we didn’t have but it never seemed to go down well. Telling anyone anything about our health only made us more vulnerable. We were tired of people taking advantage of us. We were tired of people dictating what we needed to do. We were tired of people dismissing our health concerns because they assumed we were just a couple of broken veterans. People wrote us off to a couple of post traumatic stress having, weak asses yet never even bothered to ask us about our story or what happened or acknowledge their own failures where we were concerned.

Lee never gave up on me and I never gave up on him. And now that we are in treatment dealing with all our issues from childhood until now, we understand what’s going on. We needed to go no contact with those who we thought loved us because their version of love is not a real version of love and we both knew it because we have a real version of love. We don’t want to hurt one another. We don’t want to make the other feel like less or uncomfortable. We accept each other as our authentic selves. There is no pretense. Lee is allowed to be who he is and I too am allowed to be who I am. Lee is getting used to not having to be the provider because I set our life up so he wouldn’t have to be. He needed to stop working and focus on himself as did I. I will forever be grateful to Lee for taking care of my basic needs when I was too sick and/or depressed to take care of myself. And now that Lee is focusing on his own personal issues, I will support him as well.

Lee doesn’t have to worry about me abandoning him while he works on his life long issues of abuse. We are the same person. It would be like me abandoning myself all these years because I was raised to believe that I don’t matter. Well I f*cking do matter mother f*ckers. And so does Lee. Lee’s life matters. Lee’s health matters. Lee’s mental health matters. And anyone who f*cks with our health will be history in 2.2. We have boundaries now and if you cross them after being told not to, you are history. No one gives a f*ck about us except us. Lee supported me through my darkest times with post traumatic stress and lead poisoning. And I will support him in whatever capacity he needs. I’m proud of him for being willing to face his problems head on no matter how difficult it is. I know that his investment in himself is an investment in us. He knows that I am currently writing to help me process my past.

I’m about as loyal as they come. If you are loyal to me, I will be loyal to you for life. Hell, I’ve proven I am loyal to mother f*ckers who don’t even deserve it… like the U.S. Air Force. But I do thank the Air Force for giving me Lee. We saved each other’s lives. I cannot imagine where I would be without Lee and I cannot imagine where Lee would be without me. We don’t have any family support. We are on our own. And we’re gonna make damn sure we can take care of ourselves given we have no one else to depend on. Lee can depend on me and I can depend on him and we’re gonna set up our lives so we’re taken care of should we lose one another to unforeseen circumstances too. Your health is power, power to be free. Everything we’re doing currently is an investment in our relationship and future. It may take some time and it may be difficult but it’s not more difficult than living a life of oppression surrounded by people who would rather watch us drown than reach out a helping hand.

The acupuncturist who got us to a healthy enough place to move to California told me the people who are unsupportive, abusive, and giving us a hard time were not our people. And she was right. They aren’t our people. Tennessee, where Lee is from, is not our people. Southern Calfornia and this relaxed, chill environment is our vibe and these are our people. We love the paradise. We love the diversity. We love the progressiveness. We love the fashion. We love that we have tons of things to do. First we had to find where we felt at home, then we had to tackle our health, and now we’re going to make our dreams come true one way or another. We couldn’t invest in ourselves until our cells felt safe and they do now. We feel safe enough to face the traumas of the past, punch them in the face, and move the f*ck on. We both have a lifetime of trauma to process and no matter what we will be there for each other through the good times and the bad… until death do us part.

Related Links:
Home Base Veteran Story: Jennifer & Lee Norris (2017)
Snorkeling at the Kealakekua Bay State Historical Park, Hawaii (2011)
Swimming with the Dolphins, Snorkeling at the Captain Cook Reef, Hawaii (2011)
Jennifer & Lee Celebrate 5 Year Wedding Anniversary in Jamaica (2012)
Our Dream Beach Trip on the Florida Coast (2014)
Camping with Onyx in the White Mountain National Forest (2014)
Our Hiking Adventure with the Appalachian Mountain Club in NH (2015)
ATVing at Jericho Mountain State Park in New Hampshire (2015)
Sandals Grande Antigua: “I had the time of my life and I owe it all to you” (2017)
It’s Worth the Trip: Pemiquid Point Lighthouse Park, Bristol, Maine (2017)
Life After Maine: Our Move to Imperial Beach (2022)

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