Part I: The Shear Line
1 – Fall from Grace (17-18)
Two in the morning. I was out of breath, panting under the Wisconsin summer moonlight. I wasn’t running anymore, only fighting adrenaline. The world as I knew it hours ago was gone.
I looked to the stars and focused. I hadn’t blinked in minutes. I rubbed my burning eyes, breaking my focus on the heavens. I cracked my neck, ran my fingers through my hair and tried to pull it out, but it slipped through my grasp. As it did, I looked up again. Far out into the distance, above the trees and residential rooftops, a dark cloud overhead approached the moonlight,
I thought about career day as a six-year-old, when I dressed up like a special-ops soldier. I painted my face and wore camouflage. I detached those dreams and left them with the six-year-old—separating him from who I would soon become. I felt that burden lift—liberation born out of loss. I tried not to cry. I told myself there is more to life than this, so I smiled, but a tear falls as I do. The trees shifted in the wind. My shirtless body shivered, water dripping off the hem of my shorts. Nausea crept up my throat. I heard a car door close and thought about running again. I accepted my fate and stood still. I turned around to face the street, where three friends stood, all shirtless and wet like me. The houses lining the neighborhood street glowed purple hues from the flashing blue and red lights. It’s just a memory now, but I still feel the fresh air of that night as if I were still there.
My friends and I had been chasing cheap liquor with Coca-Cola and stuffing cigar leaves with weed since nine that night. A large roll of industrial plastic-wrap stood idly in the corner of my friend’s basement. A teacher at our private Catholic high school lived a few streets away, one we were all quite fond of. We grabbed it before jumping in my car and going to a “haunted” dead-end road: Lovers Lane in Menomonee Falls, where a few couples were allegedly caught in a serial killer’s crosshairs decades ago. We drove to the end of the road, parked, then got out of the car and waited for the ghost to reveal itself. It never did.
Eventually, we walked to the teacher’s house, plastic wrap in-tow, and had a great time Saran-wrapping his parked car, a prank we committed with love. It was almost as much fun as toilet-papering the dean’s house, a prank we did not commit with love. The flat, unflinching water of a nearby backyard pool glimmered with the moon’s reflection, tempting our unbridled impulses in the humid heat.
We crept over to the six-foot pickets, stashed our shirts and shoes, scaled the fence, jumped into the pool, then scaled the fence out, running to the next pool within eyeshot. This repeated five or six times within twenty minutes.
The red and blue police lights were in response to the homeowners that startled awake to the sounds of splashing water beneath their master bedroom windows. One light turned on after another as we fled around the corner, out of sight.
It was harmless, really. The joy of that memory still makes me smile. These kinds of things don’t warrant more than a call to the parents. But for me, it was life-changing. I was on my way to West Point in a few months, and this meant I was called to maintain a standard of baseline perfection. It was a call I could not answer. That night, escape from my childhood home, a life I resented, slipped between my fingers. That night, I got my fourth underage drinking ticket and the nail in the coffin of a dead childhood dream.
The United States Military Academy (West Point/Army) is one of America’s most elite institutions. Applicants must receive a hard-to-come-by nomination from a U.S. Congressman or Senator, hold leadership positions, play sports, pass a fitness test, and keep a clean background. My motivations revolved around checking those boxes. I also liked to party – copasetic for the pressure to become someone ‘great’.
My district’s US Congressman normally nominated ten candidates to West Point as his “general nominees.” After I applied and interviewed with his office, he excluded the other nine potential general nominees and delivered just one nomination, his “principal” nominee. This type of nomination is a golden ticket, as it is the only avenue which literally guarantees acceptance, and thus, a rare accolade.
I got the call on a Saturday morning over Christmas break. I returned home only hours prior after a long night of partying. That morning, my dad entered my bedroom, a phone in his hands and his eyes agape, a single tear in his eye.
“Son! Get up!” He said, handing me the phone with a whisper saying, “You got it!”
A United States Congressman was on the phone. “Thomas! Good morning, young man! Congratulations, I just reserved your place at the United States Military Academy at West Point, You’re a future Plebe, cadet! I am announcing you as my standalone principal nominee. That means you’ll be guaranteed acceptance. You deserve it. Make us proud! Just don’t go telling anybody yet, if you’d do me that kindness. Keep it between your family members at least until the newspaper announcements are published. We’ll let you know when you can share the news, okay?” ♣
I was pensive, quiet and self-absorbed after that call. I remained that way for 11 years. I just wanted my family to respect me, to recognize me for who I really was, not to go to West Point. I didn’t want to celebrate. After I got that call, I didn’t truly care about going to West Point anymore.
I assumed everyone around me would have no choice but to recognize me as I thought of myself – ‘special’. The concrete of my identity was mixing. I was on track to fulfilling my destiny as someone who will “change the world” as my mother often told me. Many battles will be waged—and lost—with this inner dialogue.
West Point can deny a U.S. Congressman’s golden nominee for only one reason: character risks. And above being perfect in every way, which was now my charge, I had to be good, or be good at it—I had to get away with my ‘risky’ behavior or get away from the edge; no trouble, no arrests, no drinking tickets. To me, that translated to no good times. So I took the risks.
When I applied for the nomination, I told them about my, by that time, three underage drinking tickets. They left me zero tolerance for error. The recent pool-hopping misadventure would be the dagger, I believed.
From time to time I wonder how would things have played out differently if not. But I don’t wish for it. I wouldn’t want to transcend any other past. Even what comes next. Standing in the summer moonlight on a suburban street lit up with purple hues from blue and red police lights, I knew what I’d just lost.
A few weeks later, I called the West Point admissions team a dozen times, wondering why I hadn’t received my official appointment package yet. I hadn’t gotten a denial letter, either, which was great news. The heart knows things the mind doesn’t. My mom threw me into the car, and we drove through the night from Milwaukee to New York’s Hudson Valley, where we physically dropped in on the admissions board at West Point. I suppose there was reason to hope that something dramatic would help. I had nothing to lose.
They granted me a hearing for the next day. I walked into that fateful meeting at West Point, asked them to reconsider, shed a lot of genuine tears, and pleaded my case. I argued that having a good time and attending a party on occasion is good for mental health. They pretended to understand and said they would put it to a vote. In reality, they just didn’t have the heart to split me right there on the spot.
For four years, my singular motivation was to get into West Point and be among the elite. I didn’t want to be an officer in the army, my ego did. Every test I studied for, all the training I did to reach the maximums on the fitness test, the tutoring program I volunteered at twice per week, the leadership society I was a member of, the younger athletes I helped and worked out with—all of it came down to this.
As I blindly collected trophies for my resume, I failed to recognize the genuine good in what I was doing. I chased external validation with tunnel vision, whispering how ‘special’ I was, as I sought validation from a family that would never give it to me. Blinded by the pursuit of becoming who I thought the world would admire, I pursued the societal pedestal. But only inwardly. I knew better than to display my inflated self-worth.
When I was fourteen, my brother Lonnie graduated from West Point. I hear he’ll be promoted to general soon. He’s eight years older than me, my oldest living sibling and only living brother—the golden child who-could-do-no-wrong. I wanted my family to put me on the same pedestal. I spent twenty years in pursuit of a hope that, some day, they will adore me like they adored Lonnie. My desire to belong was born out of a void—one that shaped my identity into adulthood.
By the time I was fifteen, my three older siblings were finally out of the house. The peace and quiet that replaced years of dysfunction felt exotic. At that point, I was independent and raising myself, for better or worse. At fifteen, I didn’t mind it. But my parents did not nurture my development the same way as, for example, I had seen exhibited towards my older siblings. Emotional trauma branched off from the passive neglect. My lack of instruction forced me to learn everything I know through observation and punishment.
When people start a family, their first child is like a porcelain doll, so they bubble wrap it and take blood pressure medication every time they take it outside. By the time they have five children, that porcelain doll progressively morphs into a cloth teddy bear, one that can withstand the soles of feet, plunges into pool water and burn scars from being forgotten alongside scalding-hot stovetop burners.
In the novel, The Call of the Wild, Jack London writes, “There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life. And beyond which, life does not rise. And such is the paradox of living.” These words are tattooed down my right ribcage. ♣ London’s novel tells the story of a half-wolf, half-dog named Buck. Buck’s identity is torn between a desire for his master’s companionship—to be a dog—or to be a wolf and roam with the area’s wolfpack. Those words are written at a point in the story where, Buck is challenged by the alpha, a fight ensues, and Buck is victorious. As the new alpha, Buck’s soul didn’t relent, but grew increasingly restless, longing for human companionship that all dogs crave—conflicted by his insatiable need to be a wolf—to be one with the unbridled, open wilderness, where he could traverse its wild corners.
What I found in chasing an image of superiority, was its elusive illusion. After climbing to the summit of self-validation, it vanished beneath my feet. I awoke to find myself buried beneath the mountain. The world according to me was missing a fundamental component—it’s not about me.