COLUMN: Joining the military provided a sense of purpose, agency post-9/11

When I was 16, I told my parents, that I was entering into the Delayed Enlistment Program for the Air Force. They both nodded in acceptance. “At least you’re not joining the Army,” they said.

Let me put my parents’ response into perspective. My parents are both Army veterans. They met at Fort Gordon, Georgia while my father, a Green Beret, was in between combat tours in non-disclosed sandy locations. My mother was a communications specialist who provided direct support to combat operations. They got out before I was born.

They had opinions about the Army and the varying levels of exposure they both had to combat and military life. They never outright discouraged the military, but they never really encouraged it either, pushing me towards college instead. They were relieved, they told me years later, that I had chosen the Air Force. Even then, the Air Force had a reputation for being a better place for women.

Let me provide further perspective to their response. The night I told them I decided to join the Air Force was two days after my sixteenth birthday on Sept. 21, 2001. Only ten days earlier, the terrorist attacks on New York shook the world and changed the meaning of military service. It was one thing for parents to accept that their child planned to join a peacetime military; it was another thing, entirely, to send a child off to war.

Do you remember where you were that morning in September?

I was in first period, Journalism 1. It was some time after 9 a.m. and the principal came over the loudspeaker.

“Attention,” she said.

Then a pause. A long stretch of nothing but static over the intercom system that I remember viscerally to this day seemed to stretch for an eternity. When she started speaking again, there was a hitch in her voice. In hindsight, I can only imagine she must have been holding back tears.

“Attention,” she repeated. “I need to inform you that there has been a terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City.”

She went on to explain, in truncated and unembellished language, that a plane had crashed into the first tower, then another one into the second, and that the towers were on fire and evacuations were in progress. She told us that any student or teacher who felt like they needed to see what was happening could go to the library where a television had been set up with the live news broadcast.

I went home. I lived near my high school, and no one stopped me from leaving. My mother was home — she worked nights at the time. I walked in, saw her watching the news, and sat down next to her at the kitchen table. It seemed like the towers burned forever. We watched in silence as the first, then the second tower collapsed.

That morning in September changed everything for a lot of people. For me, it was the final and undeniable push needed to make the choice to join the Air Force. I remember watching in silence from thousands of miles and a timezone away as thousands of people died on my television. I remember the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness and helplessness that overcame me that morning.

If I were in the military, I decided, I wouldn’t be helpless, anymore. I wouldn’t be powerless to protect or make a difference that could save lives. I would be able to make an active difference in the world.

I joined the Delayed Enlistment Program at 16 and later enlisted into the Air Force at the soonest opening after my high school graduation. I left for basic training in August 2004, almost three years after the attacks on Sept. 11. My father dropped me off at the Military Enlistment Processing Station in Houston. It was the first time I ever saw him cry.

Time brings perspective to all things, including the events of Sept. 11, the War on Terror, the continued U.S. presence in the Middle East and the cultural changes brought about by being a nation at war for almost two decades. Not all of my experiences in the military were good, and there are things that I have done and that I have witnessed which will follow me for the rest of my life.

But, I also gained a sense of empowerment the day I decided to join.

Empowerment and agency are two things women in general and, I believe, teenage girls specifically have to continuously struggle to gain and maintain. Sometimes people try to take agency away from women for malicious reasons; they want to assert dominance, to maintain some perceived alpha status over the people around them, and society has made women and minorities targets.

More often, though, people will argue to remove a woman’s agency for their own safety, because they want to protect them.

My parents didn’t want me joining the military because they had been in the military and didn’t want me to experience the same things they had. They didn’t want me going to the front line. They didn’t want me exposed to combat support. They wanted to keep me as safe as possible.

Nevertheless, they didn’t try to stop me. I made the choice for myself, at 16, then reaffirmed that choice at 18 for my enlistment and again at 24 for my reenlistment. The choice gave me a purpose and agency. The choice made me feel like I had a say in the world around me.

In the face of the helplessness and hopelessness that overwhelmed me after the Sept. 11 attacks, I made a choice to take an active role in my own future. For better or worse, I made a choice — and I will never regret it.