Beside my barracks door sat a green seabag, padlocked and packed so tight I could use it as a building block. It contained the years I spent in the U.S. Marine Corps. Wherever I moved, it came with me, carrying every possession I had for 4 years. There were multiple uniforms, some so tattered and faded I wonder why I even bothered to pack them up to begin with. Sentimentality in the end, I suppose. Some of them I don’t believe I ever wore in all those years.

Marines can be quite picky about their fashion and wearing certain issued items, even if allowed, was taboo. For example, there was a brightly fluorescent and olive-green tracksuit with the word MARINES in block letters stamped onto the back that I never once wore. That tracksuit stayed at the back of every dimly lit closet and at the bottom of every rubber storage tub. If I were to hold them up to my cammies, their collar would be white, the cammies blue. They were both me in a way, except one remained hidden from view. The cammies were less of what I would consider a uniform and more like gear, built for utility more than fashion. They were my skin, thick and callous. The tracksuit had bold lettering surrounded by an outline of illumination. An illumination only visible when exposed to light. A light that didn’t reach the backs of the dimly lit closets and the depths of rubber tubs. They were my heart, sensitive and cautious.

I took a seat on the bottom bunk, now stripped of linen, leaving behind only the bare blue mattress in the coffin rack. The white cinderblock walls were now bare of the posters and flags that were once meant to provide daily affirmations, although limited in their success. The faint smell of mildew was slightly noticeable now in the humid air. Its presence was enhanced by the now vacant space I found myself in. I felt the poorly ventilated room gasping for the slightest hint of fresh air. Truly, a mutual feeling.

The air around me had carried many smells over the years. Turns out the sharp sulfuric smell from fireworks is very similar to the smell of ammunition. It’s something I would learn lingers in far more than the nostrils. I sat there, my fingers tracing the valleys of stitching on the mattress. The friends I had gained were now scattered all over the world. The friends I had lost, they too now were scattered or boxed. I touched the band that grasped my wrist. A reminder I live for him, and him, and him, and.

The places I went, the things I thought I would never accomplish and did, flooded my mind. For a moment, I felt as if I were sinking with memory. A flash of uncertainty struck me. Did I do the right thing in choosing to leave? Would I be okay with never wearing that tracksuit? Would I have been okay with dimly lit closets and rubber storage tubs for the part of me that illuminates?

I opened one of the side table drawers and the metal against the tracks boomed like thunder throughout the room, a reminder of the previous storms I had weathered. I looked into the drawer, nothing but a boot band and an ink stick. I removed them, placed them in my pocket, and stood up from the bed. I had moved out of rooms many times before, but this was going to be the last time. The last time I would hear that sound, that echo.

I was in civvies. Nothing special for my final day, just jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of old Adidas. A fitting return to how I started, yet unrecognizable even to myself. I backed up to the seabag, hooked my arms through the duct taped straps, and lifted the weight of 4 years onto my shoulders. This seabag—now faded—the edges like wrinkles, whitening where the creases fell. Even the metal had lost the protective finish in which it started.

***

I went to bootcamp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, which is often referred to as your birthplace amongst fellow Marines. The drive began in Reserve, New Mexico, and it took almost 5 hours to get to the airport in El Paso, Texas. It was only my second time flying. Both times I was accompanied by strangers. We were a group of 4 on our way to bootcamp, all of various ages I was too preoccupied to remember. I believe they moved us at night on purpose. It was uncomfortable not being familiar with your surroundings, let alone being unable to see them in the light of day. It’s a tactic I’m sure they used purposefully to further disarm and unsettle us. I can affirm either way that it worked.

The air was warm and humid, far different from what I had become accustomed to in New Mexico. I was on edge, and rightfully so given the circumstances, and not the same way everyone else was on edge. I had something to hide and something to keep hidden. My mind was racing through every potentially bad scenario imaginable. My gut was twisting, and it felt like I was wringing out any water I managed to drink previously.

The drill instructors pushed us through lines, yelling and screaming. Our heads were quickly shaved, and our personal clothes and belongings hastily shoved into boxes with our names on them. We were given cammies, go-fasters (the Marine Corps running shoe), and a single green seabag. The rest of our gear would come later, and the worst of this experience was yet to come. In what form I did not know. I was completely in the dark to what I had just gotten myself into.

We all began to look alike, which slightly reduced my anxiety. I found a moment of calm when I wasn’t so different from everyone else on the outside. I had a plan and studied up before I got there, knowing full well it would be the conversations that would be my downfall. I needed the name of a girl I found pretty and a football team I knew the quarterback of. I needed to stay away from topics like politics and religion and almost never discuss shows, movies, and music. They reveal too much. It doesn’t take a lot to deduce my secret from Team Jacob, Democrat, doesn’t like religion, and likes Vampire Diaries. Above all the rules, there was one rule that must remain consistent. NEVER DRINK ALCOHOL. I feared that if I ever relaxed, if my guard ever lowered, I would slip up.

I would follow my rules, and I would remain hidden. In the dimly lit closets and bottoms of rubber tubs, I would be safe.

***

Before I arrived at bootcamp, the recruiters sat down with me and went over the entry paperwork. It was all normal, run-of-the-mill type of documents until one specific acknowledgment required a signature. They referred to it as the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy.” When I met the recruiters—two Marines decked out in their dress blues with medals gleaming on their chests—I couldn’t picture myself like them, but I wanted to. I was nothing but a scrawny kid who had zero coordination and didn’t look like I could speak above a certain decibel, let alone fight someone.

However, I was smart enough then to know that if I stayed where I was, I had little to no options. If I stayed, I would surely become a statistic. Rumors would become increasingly difficult to fight. I could get a beard, but what life would that be?

Survival was off the table if I stayed; I had seen mirrored images of myself in others who stayed and dared to grasp for light from their dimly lit closets. Now, 6 feet further from the sun, they remain. So, I sealed myself into a box and tossed it where nobody would ever find it. I convinced myself that I could be rid of that box. I needed to be rid of that box. They would never find it if I followed my rules. They would never find me. For a time, I hoped I too would never find that box. I signed the acknowledgement without hesitation.

***

I had become accustomed to saying goodbye over the years. You spend just a little time with each group of Marines before being shipped off to another location. You learned their parents’ names; you made a surgically placed joke about dating their sister and often made cameo appearances on Skype calls home. Then you do it all over again and again and again. This consistency made it easier when I made my rounds at the barracks saying farewell to all the guys. The guilty feeling of abandonment hovered over me like a dark cloud.

Many of these guys I trained and mentored. I would not see them put it into practice. I would not be there to see them through what I knew were dark times to come. Leaving to go to school was the main excuse I used. However, underneath the veil was something I could never say out loud. Something I felt was selfish. Their voices, the men that I trusted with my life, they spewed the most hateful vile things in my head. “You are leaving us to fuck dudes?” “Faggot” “Good, I’m glad people like you are leaving!” and of course there are the ones I do not hear. The ones I cannot imagine.

Being gay in the Marine Corps wasn’t something to be spoken about. Just a tracksuit, the Marine Corps, and me. I needed to leave to give myself a chance to be me. Which, ironically, is the same reason I left home. A swap from a coffin to a coffin rack after deep reflection. However, I told myself that they will do what they must, they must continue without me, and they did. For a time, I was a gear in the machine alongside them. Soon enough, another will fill the space in which I spun.

***

The straps of the seabag cut into my shoulders, causing a burning sensation as I approached my car. A tender reminder of what I was leaving behind and what clung to me. I remember placing the seabag into the trunk and feeling the weight literally fall off my shoulders.

I drove out the gates of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and gave myself a chance to be me. I dove into the depths of the place I had once tossed that sealed box. For months, years, and even now, I chisel at that lid of the box that lay in the depths of the dimly lit closets and the bottoms of rubber storage tubs.