LETTER TO AN EX
I thought I would do something different for a
change and say thank you this time. Since losing my friend in November my life
has began a total transformation. This transformation, I recently realized,
began with you. Although reluctant at first I have began making drastic changes
in the way in which I now live. After months of therapy and education I have
learned a lot about myself as well as a condition which six months ago I would
have denied even having. The condition I am speaking of is best known as Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder. In addition to this I have also been diagnosed with
General Anxiety Disorder.
Through treatment and education I have only
recently learned how to best describe the last few years of my life. Over the
course of a six year span from 2005 to 2011 I spent a total of close to 40 non
consecutive months deployed in a Combat Theater of Operation. In addition to
these 40 months I spent close to 24 (also non consecutive) months training, or
training others for these tours of duty in a combat zone. That equates to
roughly 1/6th of my life being dedicated to the act of war. As
with all wars this meant a front row seat to an inundation of violence,
destruction, and death. With the exception of sociopaths, these three traits do
not come naturally to human beings.
In order to adapt to this lifestyle, most
Soldiers must develop somewhat of an alter ego, or personality as it were. The
development of this alter ego comes naturally the first time a Soldier finds
himself surrounded by the horrific atrocities he sees his fellow man visiting
upon one and other. In past wars, many American Soldiers were deployed once for
an indefinite amount of time into a combat zone. They hardened themselves and
did everything they could to survive these long periods of deployment away from
home. They fought until the war was won, they were injured too severely to
continue fighting, or God forbid, they gave their lives for the conflict in
which they were engaged. For many of those Soldiers who made it home they knew
they had served their time and would probably never again have to face the
evils with which they would spend the rest of their lives trying to forget.
They buried those evils and did their best to never think, speak, or even dream
of them again. As we have learned in recent years, this has had an extremely
detrimental effect on our brothers and sisters who found themselves in harms
way for love of their country and way of life. Sadly, many suffered their
entire lives in silence and took their issues and memories to the grave, that
was what they believed was the right thing to do. Many felt it was their
responsibility to bear these burdens inside so that those who had not seen the
ugliness of war could be protected from it.
Having seen the negative effects combat can
have on the human psyche, the military attempted to avoid similar problems in
our most recent conflicts across the Middle East.
They attempted to treat and diagnose these problems early on in these conflicts
as if they were the same in nature to the wars preceding them. In many ways
they were quite similar, however, given the size of our current military force
and the nature of a war on an ideal, not an organization, we are only recently
seeing many extreme differences which are having a negative impact on our
brothers and sisters in arms. This brings me back to that alter ego our service
members develop as a coping mechanism for dealing with these stresses. In
previous wars, these alter egos were created and utilized as a tool for the
duration of the Soldiers deployment. Once the war was won, or they came home
(generally permanently) and that tool became something they packed away with
their awards, uniforms, weapons, and war trophies in a chest in the attic. They
had used it for the purpose of war, and now that they were home they would
never need it again.
Enter the war on terror, a seemingly endless
war on an ideal, not an organization. Not Nazis, North Vietnamese, Koreans, or
Japanese. To some extent we placed the face of the Muslim nation on it, but
that did not change the situation. The problem we are now seeing and beginning
to understand is the detrimental effect of multiple deployments. It didn’t
matter if you were a Navy seal or a National Guard Admin Clerk, you knew beyond
a reasonable doubt that if you came home from the first deployment, you were
facing a second, third, fourth, or even fifth. Here in lies the problem. Once a
Soldier returned from their deployment they kept their combat gear, equipment
and tools to include their new found alter egos. There was no cedar chest to
place in the attic with these things, but instead wall lockers and contico
boxes kept readily accessible for the inevitable return to the sandbox.
Knowingly or not, this creates a interior
battle ground within the Soldiers mind. Prior to war we poses basic ideals of
right and wrong, good and bad. By the time we reach the age of becoming
eligible for Military service we have, for the most part, developed our sense
of self. For most Americans this sense of self does not include the necessity
of visiting violence upon our fellow man. It does not include an instruction
manual for processing the feelings which accompany the taking of a life, it
does not prepare us for the day to day stress of waking up each morning and
wondering if that day will in fact, be our last. Or could that be the day we
are required to send a .50 Caliber machine gun round straight through the
engine block (and every occupant in its line of trajectory) of an oncoming
vehicle which only failed to slow down on account of the driver being
distracted by the rowdy children in the back seat? There is no way for us to
prepare for these things, we can only do our best to process each unique
situation as it unfolds before us, day in and day out. So we do what we have to
in order to justify these varying actions. We harden ourselves and bury all
emotions with the exception of anger and hatred towards the enemy. We try and
convince our fellow comrades that we are tough enough to do whatever it takes
to get them and ourselves home, that these violent actions are commonplace for
warriors on the battle field and emotionally have no more toll on us than
eating breakfast. These are just the things warriors and Soldiers do, and if
you are affected by them in a lasting manner, then you are weak and not fit to
fight alongside your brothers in arms.
And then we go home with the knowledge of all
that we have done, good, bad, and indifferent. Furthermore, we become acutely
aware that we will soon be called upon again, to return to the sandbox, to
relive that hell of a groundhog day of violence and destruction. This makes it
all but impossible to revert back to that original sense of innocent self. That
self was weak and unprepared for the rigors of combat. We’ll be damned if we are
going to let that self come up for a breath of air so long as the possibility
of the need for the hardened self should arise again. We then act accordingly,
we bury that innocent self, we pretend that it does not exist, for if it does,
we expose a weaker more vulnerable persona to the world which we have come to
view in a very negative light. Before we know it, this hardened, angry,
confused version of our self begins to run our lives, making all decisions
based on a life or death scenario. And for those of us who came back, once,
twice or five times, that means the hardened self has succeeded in its mission
of keeping us alive. It is now our dominant self whose soul interest and
purpose is preservation of self and those other poor souls who have arrived at
the same conclusion. We form a tight knit family which we know those who have
not been there cannot hope to even begin to understand.
This creates a very unique, dangerous, and
often destructive situation. This hardened self does not understand love, compassion,
happiness, or even sadness. It understands fear, which it has labeled as the
enemy. The appropriate response to the enemy is anger, hatred, violence, and
aggression. We then seek out fear, for without it, our hardened self has no
true purpose. So we volunteer to keep going back to the sandbox, we pick fights
with our friends, family, and loved ones to feed that need to fuel the only
self we recognize any more. And we bury the innocent self a little bit more
each day that we fuel this fire. And a conflict begins to rage out of control
because no matter how hard we try to kill that innocent self image, it fights
to remain part of us. We become even more confused, not knowing which persona
to let rule each day of our lives, and I can personally attest to the absolute
madness this causes internally. So we drink, we do drugs, we commit crimes, we
become violent and short tempered. Anything to try and numb that confusing
battle raging within ourselves. Unfortunately, many times it becomes to much to
bear and we see the destruction it has caused in our lives, the relationships
its ruined along with our credit scores and ability to function in public. And
unfortunately many of us see the only solution to this very temporary problem
as the permanent solution of suicide.
I thought my innocent self was gone, destroyed
by the better part of my adult life being spent at war. But I tried to pretend
that I was just fine and the same guy I was before round one in the sandbox.
And then we met. And on two separate occasions you looked into my eyes and all
I saw was love, and kindness, and compassion, and this love and kindness and
compassion was for me, who definitely did not deserve it, or so my hardened
persona thought. The first time I saw you look at me like that woke up my
innocent self, and a month or so later the second look gave it reason to fight
to rejoin the ranks of the human race. At this point the battle inside my mind
between these two personas began to rage both internally and externally and
sadly, I tried to take it all out on you. Picking fights and saying the most
hurtful things I could muster, anything to drive you and the feeble foothold of
a normal life away so as to let the easier, more familiar hardened self destroy
what was left of my soul.
I can never unsay, or undue any of the hurtful
things I said to and drug you through. I can no longer apologize as apologies
have become meaningless, weightless words. All I can do is thank you, you were
a single ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak and pitch black existence. You
were the shooting star who was kind enough to let me rope your tail and who
ultimately carried me out of that dark place. You may not know it, but you
saved my life. For that I will be eternally in your debt, you will always have
a special place in my heart and I will never stop regretting the hell I put you
through. Thank You.
