Field notes from Wacotown

I’m not really sure where to begin this narrative so I’ll do what my friend Jen (and writing teacher) taught me to do. Put words on the page and see what comes out of your brain.

Content note: suicides of soldiers and former service men and women. Lots of strong language. Substance misuse and abuse. Emotional manipulation and abuses of power discussed.

Maybe I’ll begin here. I went to high school in a 26,000 populated town in East Texas (near Commerce and Paris, TX). I remember the military recruitment tables who stalked our junior- and senior high school, mostly teen boys and a few butch teen girls. The officers looked like bible salesmen or snake oil peddlers. They offered the ASVAB, as if it was a gospel track or these students’ salvation. A answer to the abyss of poverty and no direction of post-graduation.

This is who you are. We’ll train you to be better: Soldiers. Identified by serial numbers and rankings. Real people. Not fuck ups who never left Greenville. Not the guys who work at Walmart and smoke too much weed on the weekends to try to forget no one really believed in them (or cared) anyway. The high school graduated them, passed these perceived fuck-ups through regular classes. Caps were tossed. Graduation robes discarded. Now you are no longer our problem.

Maybe the military wants your burnout-fuck-up-self. They will make you a soldier. Push that sadness down, that anger too, channel those intense emotions into endless war, in deserts you never planned to visit (or die in). You have purpose now. Just sign our contract. Take our blood money; you are one of us now. A soldier. Leave your sadness, existential fears, and doubts behind. Join us. We’ve waited 4 years for you to decide on what we have already planned for you. Come join the war machine. You matter now. Soldier.

When I listen to Homecoming, on my walks with my service dog, I hear the voices of the Podunk town where I graduated high school. Where Walmart was an escape in high school, a place to explore on Friday nights, and the steady place of employment for the fuck-ups who couldn’t do college. Or perhaps college couldn’t do them. Most of those “fuck-ups” probably had learning disabilities or emotional problems, not their fault at all.

The fault of a series of rube goldbergian systems that set these teen boys (and a few butch teen girls) up to fail. If we don’t help you, they thought, we can train you to be only one thing: better cogs for a broken machine. The machine is wearing out, breaking slowly, losing its usefulness, but they keep feeding it cogs to eat. To break; to destroy. To send off to war. To die. Or best case scenario for the military nightmare high ups, they’re not people - they’re fuck up burn out soon poors anyway, to die at their own hands: Guns in mouths, then bullets into brains. Pills in mouths. Repeatedly swallowed, until existence fades away then stops entirely. Numbed out by nonprescribed substances: pills, liquids, solvents, aerosols, and chemistry lab experiments gone wrong.

Fading away from notice until the military industrial complex can ignore these broken ex-soldiers or blame their deaths on: “I wish we could stop these tragedies. We really do. But they gave up. They lost hope. We’re sorry for them, but honestly, they were never really there or real to us, anyway. Burnt-out-fuck-ups, sacrificed to the war machine. Gone at: 22. 24. 19. 20. 26. 28. 32. 39. 40. 50. 62. 22. 20. 16.

We lost them. Of course we don’t blame ourselves, said the war machine; they merely fell into harms’ way. Fog of war. Passive voice shielding them from further inquiry. I wish they could just forget. What happened. Over there. So we could forget about them. Soldiers yet again. Let’s send them back into the deserts, like deserted perpetual motion machines. Fallen, dying demigod, risen yet again. Ad nauseum.

This is the Homecoming I never expected. 20-somethings from a small town with one major highway and one public high school. Gone. Lost; dead. Best forgotten? No. But hearing their stories is so much more painful than deadening our collective narratives and memories. We are witnesses to their homecoming recollections. All of us. But especially those left behind, me included, like them. “May we mourn for the dead. And fight like hell for the living,” Mother Jones reminded us.

Once upon a time there was an angry girl minding her own business, knitting in the local ice cream joint. Just sitting there, wishing she could disappear. It had been a particularly shitful week. Of depression and anxiety. Those ten days in May growing ever so closer. Fuck, I hate anniversaries, she thought.

Then, as if they heard her prayer for silence and peace, then blatantly ignored it (fucking white people, she muttered to herself, acknowledging that while she herself was white too, she lacked the class and economic privilege of these Waco Tour-ists). She sighed to herself, thankful her twice-magnifying reading glasses had the unintentional side effect of making the masses appear to be friendly blobs.

Why, Waco Tours, why. She returned to her knitting and the quiet of huge blue headphones and her service dog beside her on the couch, daring everyone to leave her the hell alone. I am not part of the tour, she exclaimed.

I hear my fellow white people say the silos are neural. How they bring money to Waco, a bigger tax base, so Magnolia is good. The Gaines are fine. Just keep moving along. Don’t question. Don’t fight. Just be nice. [Fuck that.]

I wish others could feel how afraid I am in public spaces. How I can never fully be myself without fear of censure or violence. How the same people who stand in line for a cupcake find my very being inconvenient.

I’m tired of defending my right to exist. I’m tired of people touring a town that doesn’t exist. Fixer upper is no more real than the Bachelor. Money doesn’t mean good or right. Money is power.

I’m tired of feeling powerless and of making myself small.

First of all, I see y'all. You’re pretty difficult to miss: near-perfectly dyed hair, a shade too light or dark. A look in your eye that says I am above you. The way you want everything explained to you.

I hate how y'all insist your presence can only help us. That we should be grateful for your money. How you not at all subtly imply Waco was a shithole before Shiplap began.

This town has persisted and survived long before Chip and Joanna. They’re not saints. They’re not [white] saviors. They’re people taking advantage of Wacoans’ goodwill.

So please keep walking when you see us. Take memories, not pictures. Learn before questioning. Before judging. Remember we all live in the shadow of Jim Crow. Research who Jesse Washington was. [Say his name. Say his name. Say his name. Won’t you say his name.]

Because Waco is my home. It could be yours too. Please stop being neocolonialists discovering what we already know. Listen first. Learn more. Because Waco is fiercely resilient. Not cute.

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only girl in Wacotown with a psychiatric service dog. He helps with my panic attacks. I'm grateful for spaces like @commongrounds-blog-blog who acknowledge and accept my disabilities (and recognize my right to access public spaces).