Today is the second anniversary of the start of my adventures with PTSD and I had to go to the regional VA hospital abut 75 minutes from my home. There are a couple of ways that I know of to get there: using the Pennsylvania Turnpike; or, taking US Route 30 by-pass around York over to Lancaster; then up through a handful of small towns and farming communities; past a few large convenience-store-gas-megaplexes; driving within drooling distance of an outstanding BBQ joint;
then left onto Lincoln Avenue in Lebanon, where you turn to the right down a long, tree-lined lane, past a phalanx of American flags (made in China - I kid you not!) snapping to attention in the breeze; finally, left into the parking lot in front of the building where the decked-out lobby pictured above awaits visitors and patients.
Guess which way I went. (Hint: I didn't have coins for the turnpike toll.)
The Field. New Year's Eve, 2013, I had an appointment to have labs done at the VA Outreach clinic in York. That was my second visit to the clinic for the same thing because they couldn't get blood out of me the first time. I think I've written before about how it felt like old home week sitting in the waiting room with all the other veterans, that I felt like I was where I belonged. (Don't have a clue why that was. It is what it is.)
Chatting with the nurse trying to draw blood again, we talked about my time in service, which branch, where I was stationed, what I did - just chit-chat. I began to feel sad, began remembering things I hadn't thought about in 45 years. Felt like crying, sick to my stomach. I wanted to get out of that room, out of the clinic as fast as I could.
I managed to hold it together until she helped me with my coat, patted me on my back and thanked me for my service. No one had ever said that to me before. Tears welled up and I had trouble breathing. By the time I reached the waiting room door, those tears were running down my face. By the time I was outside, I was sobbing uncontrollably and couldn't see clearly.
Halfway home, I pulled off the highway next to a field. I couldn't see well, couldn't focus mentally on driving, was crossing into the opposing lane, driving erratically. I was terrified, had no idea what was happening to me. Nothing made any sense. Between sobs, these animal sounds came out of my mouth - howling, moaning, shrieking - which added to the terror.
There was movement at the passenger side of my car: a woman was walking toward the field, her head turned toward a house on the far side. I was surprised into silence, watched her step across a shallow ditch and onto the field. She walked about halfway across, fell to her knees, pulled a gun from her jacket pocket and blew her brains out. I screamed.
My brain started saying, over and over, "This isn't happening, it isn't real, you aren't seeing this!"
My eyes did not transmit that image to my brain, but I saw it. I heard the report of the shot, saw the side of her face blow away from her head, saw her fall forward to the ground, her butt in the air. I screamed again and looked away for a split second. When I looked back, she was gone. I understood that I was that woman. My mind was answering my unspoken plea for someone to stop the grief and confusion, the fear and pain I had been feeling for the last half hour.
"That wasn't you. That didn't happen, it was not real!"
For two years, every time I had to go to York or Lebanon for treatment and tests, I dreaded passing The Field. Anxiety began setting in as far as two miles before I got to the field. My daughter went to Lebanon a couple of times with me and I pointed out the field to her as we went by. The third time, she said I needed to tell my therapist about the field because it obviously was a trigger and I needed to manage it. (They don't talk about curing or controlling triggers, just about managing them. How about teaching me how to eradicate the little SOBs, wipe them off the face of the earth?!)
For two years, I drove past The Field as fast as I could, as fast as traffic would allow. Sometimes I'd close my field-side eye until I either had passed the airport going east, or could see the Labott Road sign ahead going west. That way I knew The Field was no longer in my line of sight.
I didn't do that today. Today, I bearded the lion. I pulled off the highway at the same place I had two years ago. I sat quietly until the pain in my chest stopped and the knot in my stomach let go. After a few more minutes, I grabbed my camera, got out and walked along the side of the road to the spot where that woman had stepped across the ditch.
Facing the Labott Road sign, I studied it until the negative image started shimmering around the edge. I photographed it. It became an ordinary road sign, had no effect on me.
I turned to The Field and photographed it, too, focusing on the spot where the woman had dropped to her knees. This year the owner grew soybeans instead of corn. Maybe next spring he/she will plant timothy or wheat.
See? It's just an ordinary field.
13 comments:
Can't comment! Just want to reach out and hug you!
Martha, I can't say anything that doesn't sound banal or glib. I'm just so glad you have survived, and have faced that field.
Wishing you well for the coming year.
There is something about having been military, and hanging out chatting with others who have served. A strange sort of kinship, like meeting someone who speaks the same obscure language in an unexpected place.
That was quite a fearsome demon haunting that field. She *was* real, until you banished her. With the help of a Divine Swine on Hogmany, perhaps? Very smart of you to produce photographic evidence, and technological spells of eradication at the same time.
First footing your blog, btw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-foot
That was a very emotionally charged story, Martha. I'm sorry it's had such a powerful affect on your life but I'm glad to know that your efforts to face the horror the nightmare have brought some balance.
Tom and Lucy: Thank you both for your hug and good wishes. There isn't much to say, really, but you two said what matters. You offered friendship.
Zhoen: I knew you'd get what I was trying to explain about being in the company of other vets, whether you know there names or their stories or not. There is this silent acceptance of each other.
Divine Swine on Hogmany...of course! I'd promised myself, every time I went past the restaurant on the way home from Lebanon, that I had to stop in someday. Yesterday was the day. There are three great BBQers in my family (a sister and two brothers) who unwittingly followed our father's example and became 'smokers'. I sat at the counter speaking Q with the staff while eating some of the best stuff the cuisine can provide. Talk about feeling at home!
Thank you for the link to First-Foot. So cool! Thank you for honoring my blog with the first blog you visited in the new year. Surely, good fortune came in on every footstep.
Susan: I had written this post twice before I finally posted this deeply edited version. All the others had way too much detail about that day, which continued on into the next one and the next several weeks, to an ever decreasing degree. I was on the edge of a fathomless darkness that bode no return, that threatened a complete and permanent break from reality.
Forty-five years of untreated, unacknowledged pain and sadness dumped in your lap in the span of ten minutes is an emotionally charged story. This story isn't over for me, and what I wrote about here is just the prologue. Lot of work still to be done. Thank you for your kind words.
The other day a young(ish) woman who works at the coffee shop where I spend a lot of time (am there now) got talking with an older man, a Vietnam vet, who is a regular and it turned out she is a vet too.
It was moving to witness their connection, these two people who in many other ways seem socially very different. (She's a tattooed hipster type, he's a crew-cutted Marine.)
Thank you for writing about your ongoing story.
It is hard work, sometimes, to be human among the humans, and sometimes even just to stay alive...
I am sorry for your burden of pain and sadness, but I am grateful for the way you dare to write about it, which helps all of us who also carry pain and sadness.
Best wishes for healing and dare I say, happiness! in 2016!
Frex = Fresca
Good BBQ will cure nearly anything! Or at least, it's a damn fine start.
Martha, I appreciate your courage and honesty in sharing this story. I am glad that the field is now an ordinary field.
You've done the sadness and the terror; I find myself desperately wanting to say something positive. This horrible experience was overwhelmingly powerful, yet power itself is a neutral measurement neither good nor bad. Is it too much to hope that power might also be applied to an experience that was treasurable and beneficial. That these two extremes might be contained within the same person? Nature, after all, doesn't thrive on imbalance; surely you're entitled to both ends of the spectrum. I hope so, nobody deserves it more.
What an amazing story. I, too, live with the ongoing challenges of PTSD. My episodes are often wild and frightening. My mind is an undiscovered country... a landscape both terrible and wonderful.
I loved that you got out and walked into it... yes, it is 'only a field' but, for sure, it is NOT. And you walked into it,found a way to capture its image and share it with us, sharing all that it is and is not. Wow.
I'd say that a BBQ feast is in order, at the very least.
and, whatever celebration/s you feel like. In addition to your self, of course; you are a celebration.
A lot of good comments here Martha, as you know. I've come back now three times to read this, first time was less than an hour after posting time. Didn't know then and don't know now what to say, except, yeah....been there in some respects, but different. I'm deeply sorry, m'dear, that you've got this to bear. But I hope this helps, this visualization. I can see that it might.
Best,
Mike
At the very beginning of these comments, Martha, Tom said it all. This was a powerful post and I hope that the act of writing it was cathartic. Although I have never experienced PTSD I have been in the army and still consort with old army friends (we are all in our 70's and 80's now)and know how this terrible, hidden affliction can disrupt a life. Thank God it is now recognised - for years it was not. I wonder what subsequent lives those had who went throught the hell of World War One?
"Divine Swine", I love it!
I know we've talked about this before, but to read your description...it puts it in a different light. Maybe it's because, having gotten my love of the written word from you, I'm able to really envision what you saw.
It drives it home even deeper for me. My heart aches for you, for what you have experienced.
Know this...I'm always here for you, I love you with all my heart, I understand (I can never "know" what you felt), and...you are my hero! I can't accurately put into words just how proud I am of you for facing this. I know this was not easy for you...you are braver & stronger than many others realize....perhaps even more than you realize, too...and I thank you for being my Momma, for instilling the same strength in me & for helping ME find my own strength to face all of my own demons.
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