In the sandtrap. I see people die, sometimes by the hundreds. Ive been diagnosed with PTSD and Thanatos. I keep volunteering to come back. I can't explain why I come back. I feel I will never be normal again. Civilians don't understand us. I've known soldiers who come back from Iraq/Stan and end up homeless on the streets. They don't know how to adapt. People can't adapt to them because they are not the same person they were when they left. These soldiers are too proud to seek help and go to a veterans home, the medals they have won, the sacrifices they have made, and now they sleep on the streets.

Is there an answer? I stay here, bloodstained, shell shocked, alone, doing suicide ops, but always survive. What is going to happen to me when I get too old or if this bullshit conflict ever ends? Guess I get to live on the streets with my brothers.

It doesn't have to be a sandtrap. You do have control over your life. You have more control than you think you do. Tell yourself that fact. I am a Desert Storm vet who got 60% service-connected disability right off active duty, then got 100% disability seven years later, at just 37 years old.

Your life is not over, and you you will not have to sleep on the streets unless you really want to do that. You have options and you make choices. We have PTSD, and we are not normal, but that does not mean that we will be homeless. We choose to ask for help. We get the help we need. We get the help we deserve. We received those medals. Now, we will get the medical treatment we deserve. You are too strong to give up.

How do you handle the flashbacks? The everynight nightmares? This happens 24/7 to me. Im in a unit that if you show ANY weakness your out. When I came here I was a very religious person, now I feel as if I have shamed everything I believe in. I understand people are tired of hearing about this war. But it pisses me off when someone like Brittney Spears gets more attention than the 10 Soldiers I just witnessed get blown into so many pieces that they won't be able to have a proper funeral.

When you were here, how did you handle the non-stop 24/7 sleep/awake flashbacks?

Tactman,

Although I don't feel I have any experience that would help me help you, I want you to know that you are in my thoughts and prayers. I agree that it is pitiful that as a country we send our brave men, like you, away to war but don't have enough help for them when they come home. I hope that you know that there are those of us that do care very much for you and your fellow soldiers, and I wish that I could do something to help you all.

Yes that bothers me also Tactman. Here in Canada, when a soldier dies in Afghanistan it makes the national news. However, when I watch the American news that doesn't seem to be the case? That is sad to me.

You are correct, I personally don't understand why soldiers want to continue to go OS voluntarily, though you are not the only one who feels thusly. My husband went on operations for years and loved it, he only recently retired. My son is currently in Afghanistan also, and was very excited to go.

I agree with 2quilt though, you do have control over your life to an extent and you can choose to help yourself.

Tactman,

You face the flashbacks and the nightmares head on. There is no going around them. You can't bury them, you can't dodge them. They are part of you. You have to face everything, again, and again, and again. You have to feel the emotions that those nightmares, and flashbacks cause. You must relive the trauma over. Feel the fear, the hate, the pain, the raw feeling again. Yes it hurts, it's awful, it's not fair, but it's the only way out of your emotional hell. You have to walk through it.

I am so sorry that you boys/men/women are there. But I am grateful that you are. I would not have the courage to be one of you.


Thank you for who you are, what you do, and thank you for protecting me.

This is a part of healing, Tactman.

To heal, you must first remove yourself from the traumatic situation.

The next step is to start treatment, which for most includes both meds and therapy.

You are not expected to find your way through this alone. No one with PTSD is ... honestly I don't know anyone who's successfully worked through PTSD alone. It's just not realistic. We need help. We need guidance. But we must first make ourselves available to it.

Good. That's the way it should be. That's a normal and reasonable standard. What is not healthy is trying to be something you're not... pretending you are fine when you are not. If you are unwell, the reasonable thing to do is to get help.

When I was unwell, I stopped going on ambulance and fire calls. I realized that I was not strong enough nor healthy enough to emotionally do the job properly anymore... it wasn't fair to me, it wasn't fair to my partners, and it wasn't fair to the people I was supposed to be helping. Going on calls at that point was injurious to me. I recognized straight off that the best thing I could do for myself, my family, everybody, was to pull myself off duty and focus on healing.

It's impossible the heal when you're still being traumatized. It's like asking, "why can't I get this oil and water mix?"

That's something to tackle in therapy. I can tell you though, that that is your perception, it is not fact. You perceive that you have shamed those beliefs, but just because you see it that way doesn't mean you have shamed anyone or anything. Perception does not equal fact.

You'll need to talk to your Cmdr in Chief about that, my friend. ;) He's the one who has stifled press coverage of soldiers' deaths, while doing nothing to hamper coverage of celebrities.

Bailey

Tactman, the answer is to get the help you need.

Sitting there beating your head against the wall, searching your soul for answers that do not exist, cursing everything and everybody around you, is not going to achieve any constructive ends. There is no question you can ask that is your "magic pill." There is no question that will magically get you from where you are to that wonderful, perfect place you want to be.

The reason for this is, you are sick and you need help. And you cannot get that help where you are, doing what you are doing.

The answer to your questions and heartache are to get out of where you are, and start in a new direction where you can begin healing.


Another thing I am reading Tactman, is that your perception of things is crazy-negative because you are PTSD. The PTSD is coloring things really dismally. I realize completely that you are 100% sure it will be as bad as you are convinced it will be... I don't doubt that you believe what you say, that you believe it will work out that way. I don't doubt you because I was the same way, I remember quite distinctly how that felt.

However the facts and truth are that reality very rarely is as bad as we envision it will be. Very rarely.

-- Are you a different person? Yes. So what? That's not the end of the world. Maybe you are coming back a better person. Maybe you are coming back with attributes that some people had wished you had before, but you didn't. Maybe you are coming back to fulfill another mission in life, for which you didn't have the skills and sensitivity to be able to do it, before.

-- Are you going to have some struggles re-adjusting? Yes. So what? That's perfectly normal, expected, and something that you can work through. If you are strong enough to post on this board, you are strong enough to hack through some re-adjustment.

Let's say absolute worst-case scenario, you don't get disability and you're unable to work, and your wife can't help out, and you do end up losing your house. (All of which are very, very, very unlikely.) So what? So rent an apartment. Move in with your parents, inlaws, a sibling for a few months. Get your therapy. Get the rest you need. Appeal and re-appeal your disability. Appeal and re-appeal every benefit and program that's out there. When you are strong enough, try working again, doing something you can do. There are work-at-home jobs. There are part-time jobs. There are work-in-your-PJs-at-3-AM jobs. There are good people who would loan you a computer if they knew you needed it to feed your kids and try to get back on your feet.

None of what you have suggested are reasonable justifications, IMO, for not putting yourself first. So, what, you're just going to stay put and allow this to destroy you just because you might end up being dished some challenging circumstances once you're back stateside? Come on, you've gotta do better than that. Nothing that you have suggested in terms of post-deployment "fallout" is anywhere near as bad as what you are going through right now. I mean NOWHERE NEAR, and I can say that that because I'm going through a bunch of the stuff you're so afraid of. Including foreclosure. And I'm surviving, and it is not even remotely as bad as roaring untreated PTSD.

This stuff, Tactman, it's all just stuff. Stuff comes and stuff goes. Even if the absolute worst happens, you can come back from that. You can heal, you can recover, you can make money again and you can get more stuff. People are doing it every day. Foreclosure is not a death sentence.

Foreclosure is an asshole bank being unhelpful during a hard time, IMO. ;)

See? It's all about perception.

Please don't take my post as being "down" on you Tactman. That's not the case at all!!! I want nothing more than for you to get the help you dearly deserve. Even if you feel you have lost your faith (which is totally understandable), I can't help but wonder if you keep surviving because you are meant to survive. Your job isn't done, my friend... surely this has changed you tremendously, but whoever said that change is bad???

The other thing is, PTSD is not the end of the world. PTSD is treatable. Keep in mind that what you are feeling, you are feeling because your circumstances have caused a chemical and physical change to your brain. You perceive and process things differently because your brain is structurally different than it was before you deployed. It is possible to learn to cope with what you're experiencing. You will learn how. But you can't start down that road until you are out of the war zone. You can only start to recover once you are completely and totally safe. And you will know when you are safe -- you will feel it.


Hope this helps somehow, Tactman. It is good to hear from you. I have often wondered how you are doing.

Bailey

I also think of you, Tactman...am praying for your safety and your healing. Thank you for all you are doing.

Grace

Im blown away, I've never felt so many people had the same problem as me. The words all of you speak hit home.

Ok, Im going to spill it. As brutal as this is, some of you may not want to read this.

The absolute truth of the matter is I have so much aggression, hatred, and rage pent up inside of me. When I kill an insurgent, or a confirmed Al-Queda member, I am happy. I find myself getting more and more aggressive daily. The unit I am with is exactly that, we answer to noone. We are given ops and are to complete them. Sometimes this happens face to face, I can smell the persons breath, smell their blood. When this happens the only way I can explain my feelings is I am happy because this is one animal that will not hurt another one of my brothers or an innocent Iraqi civilian.

I hate to admit this. I'm not fighting for the American people 100%. I fight for the good Iraqi people the majority of the time. The majority of the Iraqi people are good people. I have become friends with some of the locals to find them beheaded. This kills a part of me inside. Equate it to someone you know from work and have known them for a year. On your way home from work you find him lying in an alley with his 4 year old son with his body. In this case I picked the son up and took him to his mother. I had to tell him mother that she had to be strong and take care of the children and what had happened to her husband. I put this man together and with the help of his neighbors carried him to the local morgue. As we carried him his head came loose and fell to the ground. This is one of the nightmares I have that re-occurs.

I knew who murdered this man. Again, I am with a unit that takes orders directly from the Pentagon. When we find insurgents that we can eliminate we have carte blanche to do so. I went to the mans compound who beheaded this man, made entry, alone, and when he saw me he drew a weapon and I shot him. This may sound brutal to some, but I intentionally shot this man in the femoral artery area of this man and I made him look at a picture of the man he beheaded. He began to pray and ask for forgiveness. It took this animal 10 minutes to die and it is one of the things that has not bothered me one bit.

To clarify things, there is no real criminal justice system here. We do our orders as given. We investigate insurgent activity and we eliminate them as we see fit.

I feel like an animal myself. I live like an animal, this feels primal. My team is split apart and we all live alone in secluded remote areas for security reasons. I don't really "sleep", I do more of a really relaxed recouperation which regenerates myself. While I am in this mode I sleep with my rifle on my chest. I wish there were more active combat vets on here or vets who have been here that can give me some input. I want to know that I feel normal.

One of my team mates asked me about a business he wants to start with me when we get out of here. The thought of leaving here isnt even something I have thought. One of the first things I was taught was that to function at this level you need to accept the fact that you are already dead.

I can't thank all of you for all of the help and advice you have shared. You have made me feel somewhat more human and normal. How horrible is it that I am relieved to know other people have the nightmares and flashbacks that I have.

I wish there was a way I could thank you all for your help, your kindness and for the one person who private messaged me to lend an open ear. You people are unreal. You thank me for the job I do here. For the first time I feel good to defend the freedoms that each of you have. I didn't give those rights to you. The men lying in unmarked graves in Arlington and other military cemeteries are the true heroes. These are the men who have given you the freedoms. I am fighting for political reasons, the freedom of the Iraqi people, and democracy. I am going to print out some of these responses and keep them with me. Again, I salute each of you, you are the real heroes. The people fighting their internal battles every minute of every day.