Master Sergeant Spencer Tau delivers a raw, personal account of his post-military crisis, describing the overwhelming rage, suicidal ideation, institutional abandonment, and over-medication he experienced after nearly 20 years of service — including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He closes with a meditation on grief, lost peers to suicide, and the painful but necessary transition away from a combat identity toward healing.
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Transcript
[01:19:56] Give it up for him, y’all.
[01:20:00] Oh, he well-dressed, I like this.
[01:20:04] Snazzy.
[01:20:04] Dang.
[01:20:07] Give it up for his dress, you feel me?
[01:20:09] Yeah, for his suit.
[01:20:11] I like that.
[01:20:12] Hey, the shoes.
[01:20:14] Okay, good luck, bro.
[01:20:19] So I’m kind of a hypocrite, not the hypocrite.
[01:20:22] So this is for the past almost 20 years,
[01:20:27] what Master Sergeant Spencer Tau is.
[01:20:31] And I’ve spoken at Case Western Reserve University,
[01:20:34] multiple universities about leadership.
[01:20:37] But,
[01:20:39] four years ago,
[01:20:41] everything went black.
[01:20:44] And the reason being was because I was lost, right?
[01:20:49] There’s not a better way to put it than because,
[01:20:51] besides,
[01:20:54] the rage won.
[01:21:03] And once the rage won, I was no longer Spencer, right?
[01:21:07] So there I was,
[01:21:09] sitting in tears at my table on the phone with very important people, begging,
[01:21:18] please, can I go anywhere?
[01:21:22] Will you help me?
[01:21:23] Can I go somewhere?
[01:21:24] But the thought that I might harm myself was a detriment to someone else’s career.
[01:21:32] So I was not allowed to go anywhere.
[01:21:34] So as I sat there, I thought, oh, I’m going to be a lawyer.
[01:21:35] I’m going to be a lawyer.
[01:21:36] I’m going to be a lawyer.
[01:21:37] I’m going to be a lawyer.
[01:21:38] I’m going to be a lawyer.
[01:21:39] And I ended up being a lawyer with my family.
[01:21:40] Which led to paralysis for three days and then driving myself back home and begging
[01:21:53] the professionals from my hometown to help where I was greeted at the ER by strangely
[01:21:58] enough a reserve Lieutenant Colonel who said,
[01:22:02] I’ve seen this.
[01:22:06] You have to talk, right?
[01:22:07] I’m going to talk.
[01:22:08] Okay?
[01:22:09] I thought I was saved but of course the only savior is pills so a cocktail of 12
[01:22:23] pills and to include opioids I don’t know if you’re sure what happens when a
[01:22:28] guy that looks like a bad guys from WWE in 1980s takes a cocktail of 12 pills you
[01:22:38] don’t become calm all of a sudden right
[01:22:45] but of course you try to sedate this beast right and here’s what I had to
[01:22:51] find on my journey these hard men my cohort right I made most of my money in
[01:22:57] Iraq and Afghanistan as a bodyguard or a guardian angel right the soft people and
[01:23:05] this is not to put down anybody the soft people
[01:23:08] in the world are the ones that are the most vulnerable and the most vulnerable
[01:23:08] in our lives and in our relationships are what break us finally
[01:23:20] I couldn’t find a way to express to my family my rage to try to tell a
[01:23:32] five-year-old boy that you have to walk into a building with a plan to hurt a
[01:23:38] everybody whether they’re good bad or indifferent it’s impossible to tell
[01:23:49] that to your wife of why you drive the way you do why you act the way you do why
[01:23:54] you eat a French dinner in 4.7 seconds and think that you might be able to use
[01:24:03] this butter knife as a weapon if you need to it’s not normal
[01:24:08] if I told you if I’ve experienced and been around 14 of my peers committing
[01:24:16] suicide that’s not normal six of them were personal that’s not normal if I sat
[01:24:27] here in front of an audience of professionals and said there’s a cohort
[01:24:30] right now rewind three years ago of 35 to 45 year old people G watt people who
[01:24:38] are in the hospital right and they’re in an unspoken location in San Antonio Texas getting
[01:24:43] treatment mission 100 and they’re the best of the best the best of the best PJ’s Navy
[01:24:53] Seals bodyguards CIA airborne Green Berets you would be told it didn’t exist but we’re
[01:25:07] speaking the truth
[01:25:08] not just our truth we’re speaking the truth so you get there and finally the man on the island is no
[01:25:16] longer the man on the island he has a community but again there’s still fences so it’s nearly
[01:25:26] impossible for me to break that fence to come and talk to you the culture it’s so hard to
[01:25:38] say that I’m realized that I’m not the man of color I’m I’m not the man of the Lord It’s
[01:25:43] hard to say it’s not but it’s also it’s a little I mean it’s just so hard making the transition
[01:25:47] because I spent the large portion of my life becoming a man trying to figure out
[01:25:49] how to raise America’s men and women
[01:25:55] think about that every year I got a new group of forty five young men and women
[01:26:01] and I knew at the end of that 12 months out of red cycle
[01:26:07] I was going to have to figure out which 40 I was going to take to Afghanistan
[01:26:11] that was me writing those names
[01:26:15] but here’s what I figured out
[01:26:20] and this will be the closing statement because this is a long part of
[01:26:25] a one man show that I’m putting together but
[01:26:28] I had to swallow the proverbial pill
[01:26:33] and understand that in that suspended adolescence that I’m trying
[01:26:37] to figure out how to not be 23 years old for the rest of my life
[01:26:41] I’m trying to figure out how to not be 29 years old for the rest of my life
[01:26:45] I will never be 23 again
[01:26:51] I will never be 29 again
[01:26:55] I will never be 29 again
[01:26:58] I will never be 29 again
[01:26:58] you will never be 23 again
[01:27:00] you will never be 29 again
[01:27:05] but all my friends
[01:27:08] they will never be 23 again
[01:27:11] they will never be 29 again
[01:27:14] thank you