Are you taking your meds?

The other day a friend unknowingly asked me the wrong question during a PTSD moment. "Are you taking your meds?" Asking a Combat PTSD Veteran if they have taken their medicine during times of stress can often be frowned upon by the wary Vet (attempt at humor); not really a good idea. The only thing she did was ask me if I was taking my meds because she could see I was stressed, that's it. But, to the stressed out Combat PTSD Veteran, timing is everything. I needed to counter-reflect in the moment, which I have love to do, to take myself out of being stressed. So I looked at this occasion as am opportunity to teach someone I love about how my mind works. 

Her question,

But isn't that a natural question? I know if I don't take mine, I get symptoms.

Me, "Yes, and you shouldn't know that its not a good thing to do ask a vet at that time."

Ok, thanks for letting me know. I'll try to remember that. Can I be honest about my opinion of what you just told me?

Me, "Yes. If I am not mad at you its ok to ask if I am taking my meds, if not then ask the next day."

I don't really think that's fair to just say "don't ask if I am taking my meds" I understand that it can cause a reaction. Of course I don't understand because I haven't been where you have been. But if your friend is showing roller coaster moods it seems like a logical question. I want to understand, but I will never be able to truly truly understand, only one who has lived it can understand.

I can explain to most people what I go through and make them understand for the most part.

Anger needs a target for everyone. Anger heeds a object, for without a quarry there is no anger. If we feel angry then we can usually name who or what has triggered this emotion within us. If not, it can manifest as an internal conflict, thereby creating a problematic environment or situation for the Combat PTSD Veteran. Without realizing this internal conflict we can project this struggle onto others we feel emotionally close, for the dissociative mind can confuse the intimacy with loved ones with the intimacy of war.

Peak's and valleys.. PTSD

PTSD...after many years it's still there...WHAMO... it's hit and has left me dazed, again and again.

Nobody knows what to say, what to do... take these pills...now let's forget about it, they say.

Huh?

I am lost...dazed...here somewhere, begging for help. Yet, why ask for help if there is none available right now? It's like asking for something one will never, ever be able to have. Fruitless.

What will become of the many souls we have coming home from "assignments" in areas of "conflict?" How will we help them if we do not get better at this?

I am one...or few. They are very,very many...who is going to help the wailing souls?

Oh, yes... the pharmaceutical companies will befriend them, for a price.

Where's the human hand in this, the one that can soothe if only it knew how? Why are so many just "ducking out" of their "calling" to help?

I have been screaming for help. I am told to take a pill...or two..maybe even three, if needed.

Can't you see the neglect? The failure to respond to other human beings? Where are you?

PTSD...and I struggle one with another, to see who will win. I cry, I pray, I hope, I wait...I crouch, I hide, I'm numb, I die...inside. I am an empty shell... now.

You could have helped me.

Time alone, progress then and now...

June 14, 2010

I am going to try today. I already cleaned my house. Later today I am going to get my best friend’s birthday gift, and then I am going to go to her house. I am not nervous. I am not anxious.

I haven’t slept in a while. I really don’t feel like eating, but the last time I ate was yesterday morning (I think). 

I got coffee. Ahh man. I hate this feeling like I’m going to be killed at any moment. I keep doing these weird things, like making certain sounds with every step, and lying on my floor for hours. I think if you would have walked in on me laying there in silence, eyes wide open, face blank, you would have thought I had passed out or tried to kill myself. I layed half-under my bed for a long time, just because it's where I finally felt relaxed and I didn't want to move as to disrupt that feeling.

I’ve had another flashback yesterday, I shouldn't drink. It was dark outside. I could hear the people in the street. I can remember those few minutes before so clearly, I can smell the air and feel my dirty skin, how tired I was but too much adrenaline to possible sleep. So I lay there with my eyes closed just listening to everything around me and trying to make my body believe that it was okay to relax and sleep. I lied... Suddenly the explosion rattled us and all the calm was gone. 

I don’t know what’s wrong with me right now. I feel like my mind isn’t in my body and I’m just watching myself sit here, typing, from behing a big screen. I want to get back to my body. 

----

Sometimes it's so hard to see how much progress I have made until I go back and read my old journals. I hate counseling but I know it helps. I haven't had a day like above in over 5-6 months and no more than a couple of beers a day and only before 6pm. No one knows the rules and all the negotiations that I have made with the enemy myself to get to this point. I will win this chess match with PTSD, I have my body back, now I want my life back.

Her Last Love Letter

3:30am, I stir in my sleep. Maybe you came to bed already? But my outstretched arm feels no warm body and finds only a cold empty space...

I can see light dancing on the wall coming from the living room as it's reflecting the TV’s flickering images. I slip from your bed and quietly make my way to the living room. As I approach the sofa I already know the scene that awaits. There bathed in the light of the television you are slumped to one side, passed out, empty vodka bottle spilled across your lap while your hand is still clinging to the empty glass. I take a moment to regard this sight putting aside the conflict of emotions I am experiencing (sorrow, anger, love, pity, frustration) and sigh. You look so vulnerable, almost fragile yet strong, and I curse the demons that haunt you so. I know you are so far away from those demons right now but you are also so far away from me right now. 

Leaning forward I take the glass in my hand and gently rub your leg "Sweetheart....babe....come to bed” I speak softly so as not to startle you. The grip on your glass grows tight again and you groan some incomprehensible words of objection. I make my appeal again “its 3:30....come to bed... please”. This time your eyes open briefly, and you utter, “I’ll be right there..... I'll be right there” and you close your eyes again. 

Knowing that you will not "be right there" I turn off the TV, feeling helpless and hopeless I admit defeat and retreat back up to your bed. Sometime later you will find your way to your bed; too drunk to be troubled by the horrific nightmares.

Sleep well my love, sleep well. 

This was her last love letter to me. I guess to outside eyes this doesn't really qualify as a true love letter but to me this is. You see this was the girl back home, she waited for me, she wrote me and she kept her promises to me. After I finally came back "home" we moved in together and she was going to help me get my life started again but it didn't work out that way. I don't blame her and I am not angry at her. Everyone has a limit and I finally pushed her away. She went to some of my therapy appointments and even went through a support group with me. There were husbands that were there without their wives and here was this girl who knew nothing of the Army world and the horrors I had seen was willing to stand by my side while others wives couldn't be there. I loved her for sticking with me. It was there in that support group that it was suggested she also keep a journal of sorts, something to let me read when my mind was clear so that I could understand how it felt to be her. This was her last entry before she moved out, before she had enough, before she couldn't prop me up any longer. I am not angry, it was 2 years of those nights, some better, some worse but they all took their toll. She is still my friend and I know that if I need something I can call her but I won't. 


I love her, I always will but I am not that boy who left with promises of getting married and starting a family. I am forever different and I am working on determining who I am now. 

Then and Now, Purgatory

Thursday, May 14, 2009

I am so frustrated with being here today.. if there is such a thing I believe that this is what purgatory feels like. I was accused of being a malingerer and that I was using my PTSD as an excuse to get out of the Army, etc. which would make me feel worse. I was torn between knowing I needed help and the other part of me that said you are a soldier, you are strong and you can handle this yourself no need to ask for help. I would call home or I would correspond with friends back home, they would reassure me and tell me to seek help as they could tell I wasn't ok but then I would look into talking to someone and I was told ok but not M-W-F because I had firing and not T-TH because I had mandatory duties. So when? 

Was I trying to shirk my commitments? I don't think some of them understand that the Army was going to be my life, my career and its the only thing I ever wanted to do. I was in 3 years and would have made Sgt. in 3 years, I was doing great until this. I have complaints about the staff, not all of them but some. I am mostly frustrated by not being able to move forward until I am seen by an Army doc at the hospital on base and that cant happen until there is a bed available and that is pretty much an open ended equation. Some of the guys have been here waiting for 6 weeks so other than writing my Senator and Congressman there is not much else to do but wait and feel tormented. 

Should I be honest with my doctor or therapist? Part of me says yes but the other part says not to let all the crazy out because I will be deemed incurable, there will be a mark on my permanent record along with the one that haunts my every thoughts. I am just pissed off. 

They put me on seroquel and depakote but I don't feel like they are working but they said I need to give them time - sadly like everything else in the military medications are also hurry up and wait. I did some research today and they were used to treat bipolar and other manic disorders which pissed me off even more because I am not bipolar but when I asked my therapist she said that the treatment for severe PTSD and bipolar is the same except that for bipolar they don't prescribe antidepressants (they will make a true bipolar worse). Maybe I shouldn't have researched the meds at all. I want to get better, I want to believe what everyone tells me that there is a end to this nightmare and that I can make it. I just wanted to be a soldier, I just wanted to serve my country and make my folks proud. I wanted to marry the girl back home, I wanted a life. I didn't want to be sitting here in purgatory. 

-- Skip forward two years. Sunday, May 15, 2011

I am not in that place anymore. I am home, well in that place that I called home but nothing feels like home. My folks are great, my friends are fewer and fewer each day and that girl I wanted to marry well she is gone. I am still in purgatory. I am in treatment and some days I feel glimpses of hope, those glimpses I try to cling to and build off of. 

My most recent therapist suggested I started looking for different support networks online since my anxiety keeps me isolated. My isolation makes my depression worse and its just this nonstop cycle. I ran across a blog of a soldier who after seeing some of the images on his website I realized I recognized his face. Not from war but from the VA clinic, I was strangely and probably pathetically excited to see his life was good. He has two blogs and one is dedicated to his life after the military and he has an older blog that is filled with posts he made while in the military. He has had a rough time and PTSD is part of his life but what I was so excited about was that he looked like he had a full life. He was divorced but he has photo's on his new blog showing his ex-wife, he has two beautiful kids and a dog. He writes, he has been published, he rides motorcycles and he has a girlfriend. He has a full life, he looks happy. He does not look perfect and as I read back through a bunch of posts and see what he has been through I was excited so I decided to comment on one entry. Since I had recognized him I put a few words about talking to his girlfriend at the VA, I told him how inspired I felt after seeing his blogs and I congratulated him on his full life. I hit submit and the comment was sent off into the web for moderation and when I returned later in the morning I saw that it was approved. Maybe I am really broken to feel validated by a stranger simply allowing my comment to exist on his website. I called my sister and asked her about starting my own blog and she said that she was happy to get a call from me with such a positive tone in my voice. (Her and my folks are so completely supportive of me and I don't know what I would do without them in my life!) She said it was a great idea and with that I started researching how to get started with this new idea. 

My pain meds make me sleepy so there really is no such thing as a normal sleep schedule for me. I woke up and got back online, I went to this Vet's blog to see if there was a link to his email address so that I could ask him for advice. I looked at the post where my comment was approved and it was gone. I immediately felt panicked and embarrassed because in what I had written I had included some thoughts on his family, his girlfriend and his photo's but most importantly that I recognized him. He probably was put off by what I said and instead of thinking I was doing something nice I came off as some sort of creep. I immediately emailed him an apology and tried to reaffirm to him that no harm was intended and that I hoped that I did not offend him. I called my sister and told her what happened, she said it was probably some misunderstanding and that I should not take it so hard. It was after all one small comment on a strangers website on this large internet but you see when you don't have much to be happy about any small thing can hit you hard. 

I sat here quietly for awhile and looked at my old journal entries and I saw the one from two years ago and decided that I would use them as my first post on my new blog. You see I could easily use this grain of sand to add to all the negative thoughts in my head or I could stick with the small glimpse of happiness that I had in finding a fellow soldier who was similar to me in so many ways but the big difference being is that he was actually LIVING his life, and what a good life it looks to be! 

I have hope that I will leave purgatory soon.