Bart -- You said you thought your readers would
be interested in my forty-year experience with PTSD, and invited me
to write as much or little as I liked. I am taking
you up on your offer, not because I think my struggles are unique or
especially important, but because I saw a report
out of Walter Reed Medical Center a couple of months ago which
indicated that 23% of American service personnel
returning from Iraq are suffering PTSD.
Think about that for a moment. We've had more
than 200,000 people serving in Iraq. That means we have 46,000
veterans already who have come home to a new
war, a lifelong war to retain their sanity. For each of them there will
be
at least six family members and/or friends whose
lives will be turned upside down by that new war. If statistics from
Vietnam hold, fifteen thousand will have taken
their own lives within five years, and another 4000 in the next five years.
Alcoholism and drug addiction will be common
amongst them. For each of them there will be at least six family members
and/or friends whose lives will be turned upside
down. That brings us to a conservative 276,000 people who will be
dealing with this first hand, and each of them
will turn to six more people for support and help. The numbers add up.
So what can I say about PTSD? I am no expert on
the subject. I can only say, this is what it is and has been for me.
I can say it never really goes away. There is
no cure because there is no way to undo the past. What can happen is that
with a lot of self-searching, self-educating,
and self-honesty, and a lot of understanding, tolerance and loving support
from a spouse or family, you can reach a livable
compromise with it. You can never "control" it in the sense of keeping
it
from flaring up, but you can learn to recognize
the symptoms, and you can have strategies in place to deal with the flare
ups
and minimize the harm they bring. And while the
nagging guilts, the sudden inexplicable rages, the depression and grief,
the nightmares, the feelings of worthlessness,
the extreme defensiveness to the slightest criticisms, none of those things
ever go away for good, still, if you do the hard
personal emotional work, you can expect long periods of respite and
quiet and a satisfying and fulfilling life is
possible.
Looking into PTSD (or "combat fatigue" or "shell
shock") figures going back to WW I, I discovered something odd.
The percentages for WW I and WW II were single
digits (from 5-8 percent). In Vietnam, the figure jumped to 16%.
Now, in Iraq, 23%. Some have argued that the
higher figures are based on better diagnosis and lower threshold of
disability for the application of the diagnosis.
I have a different theory.
War, under any circumstances, is brutal and too
often deadly to innocent bystanders. It requires overcoming deep
social conditioning about right and wrong to
take another life. But if what I call the Community-Warrior Compact is
intact; i.e., if the reasons and justifications
for the war are openly and accurately communicated and the conduct and
progress of the war is accurately reported and
the conflict maintains wide community support, then I believe it is
possible for the warrior to create an emotional,
rational, and spiritual construct which provides adequate justification
for war time acts which may have been necessary
but remain nonetheless personally morally repugnant.
When, however, that Community-Warrior Compact
has been broken, as it was in Vietnam and in Iraq, and the warrior
discovers that the reasons and justifications
for the war are at best dubious and at worst outright lies, and further
discovers
that the actual conduct and conditions of the
war are not being accurately reported, then such an emotional, rational
and
spiritual construct of justification can not
be built because such constructs will not stand on a foundation of lies.
And the fundamental source of the betrayal and
trauma is not that one was sent to risk life and limb on the basis of lies.
It is that one was sent to take other lives,
including those of innocent civilians, on the basis of lies.
Hell, most testosterone-filled young men jump
at the chance to risk life and limb. Race cars, football, motocross,
bunji jumping, sky diving, scuba diving, rock
climbing...the list could go on for a long time.
But as one young soldier in Michael Moore's "Farenheit
911" so eloquently and tragically put it:
"When you kill someone you kill a part of your
own soul."
I don't know what else to say about PTSD except
perhaps to give you a glimpse into my experience of it.
So I will close with a poem I wrote a few years
ago.
The writing and sharing of it have been important
steps in my ongoing sanity dance.
Lunch
He came to lunch with me today,
the Vietnamese boy,
sat at the table on my left,
as he always does,
and my hand trembled
as I tried to eat.
I've never known his name.
Odd, because
he's been around so long--
twenty-four years
on the edges of my dreams,
twenty-four years
a silent presence
haunting the sleepless
early-morning hours
that sometimes snatch me still
too-easily alarmed
from sleep--
Fourteen years, maybe fifteen,
(hard to tell with all the blood),
beatified with fierce pride
of new manhood,
childhood innocence
burnished by war
to a hard
metallic sheen.
I've come to love him,
this boy so like myself,
but still
my hand trembled
as I raised my cup to drink--
He didn't eat,
(he never does)
Just watched me
(as he always does)
never speaking,
watched me
silent through his pain--
Silent since that dark
and early-morning hour
twenty-four years ago,
jungle-dark and early-morning hour
when he cried out in warning to his brothers
as we lay tense and trembling,
he and I,
trapped in bloody embrace
in the fear-kissed dark
of the killing field,
cries out again
in warning
and in pain
as I put one hand over
the hole in his gut
to stop the blood,
one over his mouth
to stop the cries--
He writhes,
twisting from my touch,
thrashes in shadow
as I reach again
to silence his cries,
our tortured dance
masking sounds
of his brothers'
advance,
painting us as targets
in the dark--
And the
hiss-whispered order
flung with desperate urgency
from the darkness
on my right:
"Cut that slope’s throat!
Now!"
Shadow-fractured moonlight flows
the cutting edge of knife I draw
with bloody hand.
“Please,” I whisper, “Don't”
lift my hand (“Please!”)
from his lips
(“Please don’t!”) cries
erupt anew
and I raise the blade
and choose --
He's never cried out since,
nor laughed,
this beautiful manchild warrior.
He simply watches me,
like at lunch,
trying to talk, to chew,
to swallow.
No longer seeking escape.
Trying only
to control the trembling--
He came to lunch with me today,
and I don't mind so much any more.
Still,
I wish I knew his name
so I could set him free--
You see
you cannot kill someone
without becoming jailer
to their soul--
Gordon Mustain