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      YVONNE BISBEE, ATASCOSA, TX, 2012

      TECHNICAL SERGEANT, U.S. AIR FORCE, 1979–1999

      SIGINT Analyst, Intelligence Analyst. Retired; repeatedly threatened with being outed throughout military career; suffers anxiety and panic attacks

      I lived just outside of Erie, Pennsylvania. I knew I was different. My mother was physically, verbally, and mentally abusive. I fought tooth and nail every step of the way, but I learned at a very young age that it wasn’t me who was the problem. That protected me. I’ve always been strong-willed. I don’t think she liked the defiance she saw in me. My stepdad was the buffer between us, but when I came out to him, he would have nothing to do with me.

      I did not want to be stuck in a small town for the rest of my life. I had a partial scholarship to a local school to play volleyball and I talked to my mother about it. They couldn’t afford to send me to college, so she took me to the Air Force Recruiting office: “My daughter wants to enlist—sign her up!” I enlisted with delayed entry in December of ’78. I was pissed at my mother, but it turned out to be one of the best things she ever did. It opened the world to me.

      I was seventeen, barely out of high school, and I fell in love for the first time with a woman. I met her in tech school and it was an instant attraction for both of us. My stomach was in knots when she would come around. She made me realize that is how I want to live the rest of my life, but I knew enough not to show it, because my career was important to me and I wasn’t going to jeopardize what I could become for who I was out of uniform.

      My older sister and I were never close; there was always a mutual dislike. She entered the Air Force in 1978, a year before I did. My first job was a Morse systems operator. That was also her career field. The intel world is small and her presence in it haunted me my entire career. I cross-trained and became a SIGINT [signals intelligence] analyst before being sent to RAF Chicksands, England, where she was already stationed. A few days after I arrived, we were driving onto base and she pointed out the female security police on duty and told me to stay away from Mr. Man—she referred to lesbians as Mr. Man.

      I never told my sister I was gay; we never discussed my personal life. I’m not sure when she actually found out, but with that knowledge came power over me. At first it was comments like, “Are you seeing Mr. Man?” Then it was not being invited to my nephew’s school events, to not being invited to birthdays and holidays. If I pushed her about it, she would say, “You know I could end your career with one phone call” or “I’m sure OSI would love to know you’re gay.”

      I never doubted for a minute that she would make that phone call. It got to the point where I quit trying to be a member of my own family. I was afraid she’d go through with her threats and my career would be over. I was more afraid of the fallout to my friends. The Air Force loved getting other gays simply through guilt by association. It was one thing if I lost my career, but I wasn’t about to see it happen to my friends. I finally quit being afraid of losing my career on the 21st of May 1999, the day I retired.

      My anxiety/panic attacks began in the mid ’80s as a result of living two lies, or lives: I couldn’t talk about my job at home and I sure as hell couldn’t talk about my personal life at work. I started to feel invisible. At first the attacks were minor. They would come out of nowhere. Large crowds of people would cause them; movies at the theater became a thing of the past. Knowing I had to be outside in formation would guarantee one. Trying to explain to someone what was going on made others look at me like I was crazy, so I quit explaining and suffered through them. I drank to avoid the attacks and mask the symptoms.

      My first major attack landed me at the ER in the summer of 1998. I thought I was having a heart attack. After hours of tests the doctor came in and told me I had a severe anxiety attack. There were many contributing stressors: caring for my mother after she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, I was about to have major surgery myself, and looking at less than a year left until retirement and not knowing what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, plus the fact that I was still invisible. It took a while, but I quit drinking and now take medication to mask the symptoms.

      For thirty years I lied about who I was; twenty years in the Air Force and ten years in the corporate world. Gays didn’t fit into the grand scheme of how things should be. Some of the best analysts and linguists I’ve ever worked with are gay. We have gone places. We have done things. And we have done it twice as well, because we’re dedicated to the job and mission. We had to prove to our straight counterparts that we were just as good as, if not better than, they were. It’s always been a challenge. Lesbians and gays in the military have always been more motivated to doing a better job. I don’t know if it’s just a sense of pride in ourselves, or if we’re just overachievers.