LETTER TO AN EX

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 1/6^th 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.