(After Corps School, on my way to Charleston Naval Hospital)
Blogging friend Should Fish More (Mike Mullins) wrote of an
episode of PTSD-spawned flashback to his service in Vietnam.
As Mike says in a reply to a comment, everyone’s jungle is out there. Maybe my first trip wire was the hospital
ward at Ft. Polk, Louisiana in 1968, where we went to see my brother,
recovering from wounds he received in Vietnam.
Or when I was stationed at Great Lakes, for corps school, and got my
first exposure of the unending stream of walking (wheeling, hobbling, et cetera) wounded. Then there was Charleston Naval Hospital, my
last duty station. None of what I saw
was like being in a kill zone after a firefight, or working in a field hospital tent, but it was more than I
had ever seen in real life before, and was more than I could process. So it lay repressed, in deep cover, for 45
years, waiting for the right moment to ambush.
Sometimes I feel ashamed of myself for having these episodes
when I didn’t see combat or serve close to the front, where the boys I did see
had been patched together enough to send home to stateside hospitals. I can’t imagine what I’d be like if I had
been, and that’s scary to contemplate, considering.
I'm learning about triggers and desensitizing and coping
mechanisms and how the 45-year-old memories that seem to explode from nowhere,
that destroy my serenity, are also door-opening keys to the memories from childhood
forward that I took with me into the Navy.
The memories I can’t look at directly, but only through the lens of my
time in service.
I don’t fully understand the mechanics of PTSD; may never
know. But I’m working on it, getting
better a little bit at a time, one episode at a time. My heart breaks for those whose condition is
far worse than mine, who can’t function in “the world”, who are still lost in
their own jungles (or deserts, or mountains - wherever there was mind-altering trauma). I hope they find the
help they need and deserve…and have earned.
(Thanks, Mike.)
9 comments:
It is my belief that unless one has experienced, one cannot truly understand. I have never had the particular experiences to which you refer in your very moving post. I will, therefore, not pass comment on PTSD and the adult experience of active warfare.
Where perhaps I will make comment is about the tremendous courage you have shown, and continue to show, in dealing with your life experiences. It isn't always those that 'lead the charge', that 'go over the top', that are necessarily the heroes, although they have a their place in our hearts. Many are the heroes and heroines who have to pick up the pieces, attempt to mend others lives as well as their own. You are a worthy member of that loving and courageous band.
There will probably never be any medals for people like you. I doubt that you would want them. But there will always be admiration and a sense of wonder from the rest of us for your determination to come through your own inner battles. I can say no more.
Amen, dream well. I found the dreams, where I re-imagined the past, patched the holes so I don't fall in.
Mike's post was beautifully written, as is yours. I do hope your recovery will eventually be complete.
Meanwhile, the wars go on.
Martha
Well said.
Nobody understands PTSD, our treatment of it has improved since the days of 'battle fatigue' and 'shell shock', insofar as we are more humane in our reactions to it. We don't slap them anymore, like Gen. Patton famously did. But we still have no idea what it is, exactly. Nor why some people don't get it, or why some 'recover' and some don't.
I wish I could tell you with certainty that it will go away, but you know better. We do get better, though. It gets less frequent, less intense.
I've been lucky in escaping most of the harsher effects. It just manifests it's presence by odd things, and is increasingly less frequent.
Cheers to you, lady.
Mike
A neighbor recently told me about what it feels like for him when he drives on a two-lane rural route. This is more than forty years after his service in Vietnam.
It occurs to me that your pain is totally no cause for shame, but rather that it illuminates and honors the pain you have witnessed in other people.
After all, it isn't just the horrors people experience on the front lines that count, it's their ongoing pain after they comes back too
---and the fact that you saw that and, sadly, that it still hurts you, well... as I say, I think it honors that and shows up the myth that the horrors are over once the person leaves the front lines.
Bless you, dear Crow.
"Sometimes I feel ashamed of myself for having these episodes when I didn’t see combat or serve close to the front"
Or you might feel ignoble like me. My RAF training, including what you would call boot camp, lasted a whole year. After which I was theoretically capable of repairing airborne radio kit. I was the sent out to Singapore to do just that where I went down almost immediately with a severe case of tropical athlete's foot . Everything was tried including a fortnight's visit to a hospital up in the mountains in what is now known as Malaysia.
At the time Malaya was coming to the end of a guerilla war and we travelled up through the jungle convoy. in an armed convoy. We were a mixed bunch, army and air force. The army patients were issued with rifles and a clip of ammunition, but it was quite rightly decided not to arm the RAF patients on the grounds that they would probably - in an emergency - have been the source of friendly fire.
Pretty futile, eh?
Nor did the athlete's foot clear up at altitude and they eventually had to fly me back to dear old Blighty. And to tell the truth, I wasn't much good at repairing VJF transmitters/receivers.
Perhaps you may have one small benefit over me - that your military service wasn't an entire waste of time as mine was.
Keep improving even if it is a little bit at a time.
Thank you, all, for your comments.
As Mike said, it does get better, less frequent, less intense.
It'll be all right.
PTSD started as a combat-related diagnosis but it has been widened to include any serious trauma or even vicarious trauma. No shame necessary - you have a right to your own reactions.
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