ESOAL/PEARL LTE: 2009

We had been training during August all the way up until September, I was getting around 4 hours a night of sleep. I worked A shift but I was told I had to stay awake until all my girls were back in the room and some of them were B shift and the curfew was midnight. Then we would get up for corporate at 4:30am. After ESOAL, I continued going to corporate 3x a week because I didn’t pass the fitness test.

Corporate Exercise was horrible. They were taking men who have trained for 27 years and created a workout regimen designed for them and it was just horrible. We never had time to stretch out after the workout – the entire thing was just way too much.

I ended up spraining or stress fracture both of my ankles on the Monday before ESOAL. I never went to a doctor. Dave was on this big healing kick and so being injured was a lot like having no money – it was a sign of your weakness. So, I was injured but nothing good could come from saying anything about it. So I kept it hidden since it was only 2 days to ESOAL. I talked to my CA and told her that my ankles were hurting really bad and she said, “Ok, well I think you should do it but I know you’ll make the right decision.” I decided I should do ESOAL – there was a lot of peer pressure. All my “brothers” and “sisters” were doing it. We didn’t have good roommate relationships and I thought it would bond us. ESOAL started on a Wed. night and I remember, that was horrible. They gave us 20 minutes to get ready so we had to run back to our dorms and get ready. It started at around 9pm at night and we had these rotations where we had to learn how to march. There was a former Navy Seal there and I really trusted him. If he thinks this is ok, then it must be ok.

It was pitch black at night and we went into the auditorium and they had set out tarps on the floor and that was the moment I realized that we weren’t going to be treated like humans, we were going to be treated like animals. The floor was more important than they were. It was just horrible. We had to do the wet and sandy (get soaking wet and then roll in the sand volleyball court). I was laughing while I was doing it, and I high fived my friend and Dave Hasz looked at me being happy, somehow laughing at it was really twisted. He said, “Ok, I see some of you getting too much joy out of this and your feeding your flesh so we need to change activities.” I thought he was referring directly to me and it made me feel like a total failure. And that was so confusing, another example of thinking you are doing something well and then finding out your not.

We were supposed to sleep on the Anvil, it was soaked with water and puddles everywhere. The only way we can keep warm is if we all huddle together. There were no sleeping bags and the only time we got to use them, they were soaked b/c they sprayed them with cold water. I remember laying there and feeling so dirty and like the whole thing was so wrong. My head was in a puddle. I was shivering because it was cold outside and my teeth were chattering because they sprayed us down at night with ice cold water and Dave Hasz, this just blows my mind how much control he had over us, he said, “Tell your body to stop shivering. I don’t want to hear your teeth chattering” and on and on. He had enough control over me that I actually stopped doing it, (and shivering is what warms my body!).

Another time, there was a bathtub of ice cold water and huge blocks of ice and you had to jump in, whole body, and Daniel Bostic would be standing there in front of the tub and he told me that I smelled and so I needed to “clean off some more.” Dave tried to make it sound like it was good for our muscles, but I hear sleep is also good for muscles and he wouldn’t let us do that. Then we would jump out only when he told us. There were times I was in there for what felt like at least a minute. Daniel also told us to stop shivering.

We ate cold kidney beans or lentils, baby food or pink/green oatmeal. They had an obstacle course that was completely in the water and I think that’s when something went wrong. On the way to the next activity, my feet began to throb, I got dizzy and I was sweating buckets. I needed help to walk and became really thirsty. I wasn’t able to hold my head up and keep my eyes open. I was really in survival mode – and nobody seemed to care.

At this point, even though we are fighting nature to survive, we were also fighting each other. If you gave someone else a drink, it meant that was less for you. You could only refill at specific times and one location. The water boy would be timed to get the water. I was so thirsty that I had drunk all my water so people were giving me theirs. Because I was so sick, I talked to my CA and she told me, “I think you should keep going.” She said she thought I was just trying to get out. And so I thought to myself, “I probably am.” My whole company is watching me have these symptoms. Nobody was willing to help me so I felt like they thought I was making this up. This was all on the first day of ESOAL. My company prayed for me, gave me some water and that was it. Staff member Daniel Bostic, who was my major, was watching all this happen.

I trusted these people so much that I listened to them. If nobody believes you for so long, you quit believing yourself. So, I thought I was making it up and decided I should keep going. But the symptoms did not subside. My ankles became swollen to the size of melons. At the end of ESOAL, I went to put on my UGG boots, it was hard for me to get them over my ankles. They were huge. I would catch myself standing straight but my body would be (from the hips up) would rotate, kind of like moving in a circle almost like a hula hoop and my eyes would close.

The atmosphere was so abusive that a team was turned against themselves. We would encourage people to keep going even when they shouldn’t. One of my teammate’s foot completely split open. She showed it to me and I remember thinking, “Oh my God! This is not ok. We are going through muddy, unsanitary water,” and I remember looking up at her and saying, “You can do it!”

I saw a lot of things that bothered me. I remember that some guys had to wear dresses in order to humiliate them, it was supposed to help them overcome their pride.

The only way I got through ESOAL was focusing on the next meal. Dave Hasz would prep us or teach us how to stay in the whole time. That was part of his strategy. He was being incredibly rude and mean. He would ask us questions and we would get the right answer but not according to him, so we’d get punished. For example, he would ask what is my mother’s name? We all said, “Mary Beth.” And he said no, “Its Mrs Hasz! Get down and do x amount of pushups. You do not talk to my mother that way!” His tone was really scary. He would call us stupid. Anything short of cursing that was demeaning and that removed any kind of dignity or self-respect, he would use. Lousy. He would call us dirty, we stunk. What was really confusing is that he would like break out and once in a blue moon he would say, “I’m so proud of you.” It was really confusing. It was an abusive relationship. Every time he would say something nice like that, I would just break down crying because I felt like such a failure.

After ESOAL, everyone on campus was sick. I’m not kidding, everyone was sick. It was like the bomb had dropped and this was the fallout. We actually had to put people in the long houses b/c they had swine flu (H1N1), mono, strep, infections, everything. They put everyone together. I don’t know how many people were there but I heard it was about 20. During ESOAL, I lost 15 pounds. I had a rash over my entire body from ESOAL b/c of wearing the same wet clothes for days.
I had infections earlier in the year so I’d already used a couple of my sick days. If you finish, and only if you finish, you get to have Monday off of work. You don’t get any extra sick days after ESOAL. I couldn’t sleep more than 2 hours at a time because I was having nightmares and panic attacks about ESOAL. On Wednesday, I finally got to the doctor. I had gone to work on Tuesday and my feet/ankles were in so much pain, I couldn’t stand. It took me months to sleep right again. You are terrified of going to sleep and then you have nightmares a night, and wakeup and it’s a horrible cycle.

When I went home to visit a few weeks later, I went to see the doctor, she talked with me for 3 hours. She sent Teen Mania a letter, because she was so angry about the terrible physical condition I was in. I begged her not to use the words “child abuse” in her letter and I think she finally relented on that point. Even after that, it took me a week or so to open up to my mom and tell her about what happened, because of the oath of silence we have to take.