Drudging through the mud

i have not blogged in forever but here is an attempt to catch up. I left my marriage in September and had a flighty few weeks afterward. staying with friends and family for a week or two each until renting and moving into a home in Rolla. after speaking to my command about my situation i was soon released from recruiting officers and ordered to not interact with any applicants. earlier when i had spoken to my master chief, he offered to have someone pay for me to go to this years initiation. when i arrived the day of, i had several things to take care of on the trip and arrived a couple hours after the other guys and he went off on me for nearly two hours, accusing me of blowing important things off and disrespecting him and the chiefs mess by showing up two hours late. the rest of the guys had been told about my predicament and had taken up a collection. it was given to me after the riot act had been read to me.a week or two later i had begun feeling tingling in my arms and fingers, my heart palpitating, i made an appointment with my psychologist as soon as i could see her. this prevented me from attending a retirement ceremony of a chief from the command that was apparently a sacred cow. i was called and railed upon by the command master chief who in the beginning of the conversation said he had half a mind to make me pay back the money given to me by my brothers and sisters for missing that ceremony, no matter the reason. by the end of the conversation he told me to pay it back and squeezed a date out of me for the next payday. I didn't have the money but in turn formulated a better plan to set up the mess' first pay pal account to benefit all the folks who had given to me. when told about this plan, again i was bludgeoned by the command master chief saying i was just doing whatever i wanted and not doing as i was ordered and not when i said i would. i saw this conversation was the same as all the others he had with me to try and make me his bitch one more time. at the next get together in tan tar a i payed the mess 250 to shit him up and at least go out quietly.
all this has rocked em to my core of my standing in the overall chiefs mess, not just the one at this command. we are led to do for each other in times of need and support one another by changing things that are wrong or at a standstill for different parts of the navy. i am a good chief and have led those in my charge to better standing than they were. I love being a chief because i get to be involved with shaping the future of the navy by bolstering those around me and make a positive change wherever i am. this has extinguished any light i had for leaving the navy as a proud navy chief at a retirement ceremony delivered by those who care. i now know that under the wrong direction, a chiefs mess with a cancer at it's top end can be not only a hindrance to it's command, but a bludgeon to the very people who could make it great, as it's supposed to be. i am ashamed to be a part of a consciousness which allows the things that my experience with this guy is a symptom of. more people's careers have been ended and curtailed by this stained tapestry of leadership.
all of this is happening while my family has crumbled around me in a fierce divorce that has been stripped financially by me supporting two separate households. i feel i am not only divorcing my wife, but also divorcing myself from my navy that i have loved for so long.
after hearing from my friend, a retired senior chief that he had a house for me to rent for cheap, i quickly moved in there. the house is awfully run down, just as my standing as a chief. i have to force heat it with small heaters and one gas unit of which i had to borrow the money from the landlord friend to get the gas for it. this is all so figurative of my life and how i feel as a chief. forcing myself to rise to any occasion professionally by external negative forces.
i feel as if all my wanting to make anything better, both maritally and professionally has been thoroughly exhausted, leaving me worn out and hollow. my only hope is a tiny shard of light in my future that shows through all the fog and mud i feel like i'm in. this tiny light is me signing up for college and sometime in my future, an end to this divorce and a bankruptcy to settle all my affairs.

throughout all this, somewhere very deep inside me, there is a roaring dragon driving my sould forward by telling me, you will not only survive, but rise above all of this. how i don't know but i have been hewn into this "broken buildning" type personality with a coursing metalworks in it's basement. this is sewn into my very soul by knowing the bedrock of belief in scriptural form, He will not put more upon you than you can bear, and there is always a way of escape, not only into calmer waters but to stride the highlands that have been purchased for you in the very blood which was beaten and torn from He which sacrificed all so that i may have not only peace, but actually excel in this life and someday actually enjoy being alive again, something whick i know very little about.

kdh