The Pipeline: Crash
The anxiety is not all in your head. There are real reasons for it.
Continued from The Pipeline: Shame.
From a series of Ian's journals in April, 2014.
While back in San Diego visiting ships undergoing industrial-level maintenance, I met with the current executive officer of Johnston, the man who would become my future captain. He seemed a nice enough guy, and we got along pretty well. But I felt a dissonance in his friendly smile and weary eyes.
He told me about the last deployment, emphasizing that it was the worst deployment he'd ever been on. He then explained Johnston has been in the spotlight lately, and not in a good way. They didn’t have a plan for bringing the ship into the yards. There were issues with crew discipline. And now entering a maintenance period, typically the worst time in a ship's life, unoccupied sailors would tend to go astray.
His unspoken guidance seemed to be, “Hit the deck at full throttle the moment you report aboard.”
Exciting. And disquieting.
For the last few years, I've had a taste of civilian life. Working in an office, doing training, going to meetings, and most importantly, coming home every night. My blood runs cold at the thought of giving it up. I’m not sure I can do it, or that I even want to.
Since coming to command school, I’ve felt this ever-present low-level anxiety, inescapable even in sleep. I've had vivid dreams where I've missed flights or I can't find my luggage and the gate is never where I expect it to be. Or where I'm in high school again, in the drama club, standing on stage when the curtains open and the white-hot spotlight hits me as I realize I haven't studied my lines, never attended rehearsals, and don't even know what play this is. There I am, naked, expected to perform a role I don’t know, and everyone is watching.
I wake up and my jaw hurts, my teeth hurt, my body hurts, and there’s a pressure like a rhino sitting on my chest.
My mind is a perpetual churn of potential disaster. I imagine arguments, disciplinary proceedings, and defending myself from unfounded accusations. And my self-talk is verbal abuse, like the demon on my shoulder breaking down my flimsy self with every poison word.
More school will not fix it. In fact, learning more might make it worse.
A helicopter crashed aboard a destroyer.
They steadied on course, landed, chocked and chained. All by the book. The captain gave the order to change course. And in that moment, a giant wave crashed over the flight deck and impacted the spinning rotor blades.
One blade cracked and instantly flew apart. The unbalanced helicopter violently shook, breaking the chains that held it down, flipping it onto its side, and rolling it off the deck and into the sea.
All souls lost.
How can you anticipate that? How could any person bear the responsibility for a freak accident? They followed all the procedures. They did everything right. And yet, the official safety mishap report concluded that the captain was at fault.
All the burden. No control. This is my path.
What would I have done?
To be continued....
This is a work of fiction based on actual events.
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