I have given much thought to this blog entry. Some may say, “What do I care about your life and problems?” And I realize to some that my voice may be annoying or even crass, and to some, hard to swallow and even harsh. Remember, I am writing these articles to release my pain and hurt while suffering from my daily trials of being mentally ill. I wonder if anyone is on the world-wide-web that sometimes feels like I feel. You want to run up a hill and scream until all the pain in your soul disappears.

The picture I see in my mind comes from an episode from my favorite show, “Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C.” It was season five, episode nine, called “Come-Blow-Your-Top.” Recorded on November 29, 1968. The late Jim Nabors’s character “Private Gomer Pyle” was causing the late Frank Sutton’s character “Sargent Carter” grief again. You see, Sargent Carter made a bet with Sargent’s Hackers (played by the late Allan Melvin) that Carter couldn’t go one day without losing his temper. You can see the clip of Sargent Carter on YouTube called “Frank Sutton~ Scream Therapy” © 2013 if you need a good laugh.

Sargent Hacker employed the help of Gomer Pyle unknowingly. Private Pyle was happy to help Hacker to get Carter to release his demons of pent-up anger. Sargent Carter, at one point, was so angry that he got into a jeep and drove to a far-away hill. Sprinted up the mountain to the top and screamed his release of Pyle’s stupid antics. I have in my former years doing the same. Before I got the help I needed from the VA Hospital. I came to Reno, Nevada, for the second time in May 1995. I was trying to stop drinking, so I checked into the Reno-Sparks Gospel Mission on West Street in the nineties. I had been in their drug and alcohol program for about thirty-seven days. I became their driver for the ministry, and I was having one of my many episodes of voice, PTSD, and depression.

I couldn’t get any help from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs because I still had to pay off the money I had obtained from the Marine Corps in 1989. I got a separation check after receiving a thirty percent lower back rating. I still had twelve years to go. I couldn’t even get an aspirin without proof that I had paid off every cent of my debt. Every time I would go to the VA Hospital, the doctors would scream PTSD, and that wasn’t all that was my problem. You see, my diagnosis was not just PTSD. I have depression with severe psychosis. It was in the Marines that I started for many years to notice my days of depression were getting worst, but my mind would get worst when I would have flashbacks, be deeply depressed, or was stressed out about life circumstances. Now I have the tools that I have, thank God, for the VA mental health program of thePsychosocial Rehabilitation and Recovery Center called the P.R.R.C. However, back then, I wasn’t there yet in my pathway to recovery.

So, I suffered every day. A chief cook for the ministry was a former Marine at the church.  He wanted to do something nice for me, but I was not trying to have anything to done excellently for me that day. I just went past him without saying a word. He had just cooked a steak the way I like (Medium rare). Maybe I should have allowed him to give me an act of kindness, but my mental state didn’t have it. I knocked on the chaplain’s door and asked him if I could talk. I was telling him my distress, and I was having thoughts of ending my life. Just as I was asking him to please pray with me to get a release. The chief cook came into the room. He didn’t knock; he just barged in and told me to get my head out of my “a**” and get the steak he had made for me. And to show a little appreciation for his generosity.

Like the Choleric I am. I roared like a lion and screamed, “Know body is going to talk to me like that! I ain’t in the Marines no more….” And I told him he could take that steak, and let’s say he could put it where the sun doesn’t shine. I stormed out of the office and punched a picture on the wall of an angel with a man he was helping and holding in his arms. I shattered into pieces and heard it crash to the floor behind me. I had my mantle on me, a sleeveless cotton coat with Aqua-blue, hunter-green, black, yellow, and gray striped colors. I had gotten that coat of many colors from Mother Tucker, my mentor, and I had paid two dollars for it back in 1993. She wanted to give it to me, but I wanted to pay for it.

I also had my Marine Corps butt-pack from leaving the Marines. They were going to throw them away, and I bought them, and this bag carried my first-aid kit. Also, in the bag, I had my K-bark, a canteen [both I got from a local Army-Navy store], with my Bible I had ever since I was fifteen. I had the old Rainbow Color-coded King James Version Bible, which was given to me by the late Reverend Bowen after I was baptized. I took my stuff and drove to the Reno-Sparks Gospel Mission’s warehouse on Timber Way. I entered the office of the then-director and gave him the keys to the van. I told him I was leaving, and I started to walk towards South McCarran Blvd, where you would go to the Hunter Lake Road and the Hunter Creek Trial area.

Like Sargent Carter, I raced up the hill toward the Hunter Creek trail. When I got up to the top of a foothill just North of the path. I screamed and cried my self-a-release. I stayed up there for three days. Eating grasshoppers, black carpenter ants, and the area’s local plants. I would get water from the local stream still coming down the mountain. I would watch the lights of the city of Reno from the many hillsides those nights. Until I got the pain of whatever was hurting my soul, I returned and got a job at the Eldorado Casino as a warehouseman.

I need a place to live, so I rented a room upstairs at the Mission. And when I saw the Chaplain at his office, he and I talked long about that faithful day left. From what the Chaplain told me, the Marine cook that caused my anger left the ministry. Tom hoped I would return because he felt terrible about what he had said to me. The Chaplain gave me his address in Oregon, where he lived with his daughter. Years later, I wrote him a letter before he died of a heart attack five years later. We shared old war stories about what we did in the Corps, and I went to his funeral back in Springfield, Oregon. Tom was troubled, just like me. He never got over Vietnam, but he and I both knew what came with the price of being a Marine and a soldier. And I will never forget, Why I care? You may need to run up some hill, scream, cry, and get it all out. So, I hope you enjoyed my little story. This is why I write and why I am transparent to all who will read. For “The Chronicle” I am Michael Tsaphah. God bless, and I hope to see you here, there, or in the air.