Tough Shit – PTSD : Chapter 1

Welcome to yet another installment in this series, inspired by the awesome Kevin Smith book of the same name, where I attempt to describe some tough shit that led to me learning something/hopefully getting more better. I should note that this series got a bit out of control. Initially this was going to be one post, but man, this thing just kept going. So I’m splitting the whole thing up into multiple chapters. 

In this mash of posts I’ll be describing some PTSD related shit, and discussing how learning to better manage it has allowed me to greatly decrease my time to FIRE. Like instead of retiring 6 years from now, I’m bouncing out this bitch in a few months (long story short, with lots of work through therapy, I realized I was way over saving to satisfy a never ending need for more security, and having dealt with that, decided to get out before my health or relationships were damaged). More importantly than FIRE related nonsense though, coming to terms with this crap has improved my life. I hope that comes through in my blathering below. 

I’m putting this all out there partially to get it out of my system, but more so to try and help others that might be going through similar shit. Ultimately I think things are better now that I’ve gotten some help, though it’s been an interesting journey. There’s a lot of stigma in the vet and the first responder communities against even admitting that some of the shit we get into can adversely effect our mental health, and we all would prefer to just tough it out despite the consequences. I hope that if you’re struggling, you’ll get help and not fall into this bullshit idea that we’re all supposed to be too macho or whatever to ask for it. I’ve been to enough funerals due to suicide to realize that constantly shoving it down because of this stupid suffer in silence ideal just does not work.

Anywho, here we go:

Yup, there I was. It was like 1am, I was working yet another sweltering summer night. I’d let my dog out of my car kennel for a break in a wooded area next to an inner city school, and found a nice open area with a downed tree as we walked away from where we parked. I sat on the tree and looked up into the night sky, barely able to make out any stars amidst the city’s light pollution. My dog, who’s usually hyper as all hell, could tell something was wrong. Instead of trying to yank my arm off and chase rabbits, he put his head on my lap and nuzzled me for some pets. The thought entered my mind as I scratched his floppy ear “I could just kill myself ”. A nanosecond letter another thought kicked open the door to my mind palace and screamed  “FUCK NO!!!” My mind raced with all the reasons I absolutely will never ever off myself. Many, many reasons.  Not giving up, ever. Even if everything goes to hell I just want to see what’s going to happen next. Most of all no way in hell am I doing that to my family. Plus I’ve legit watched people try to kill themselves, some of which succeeded, and seen the aftermath. No fucking way man. Also, I know that stats. Everyone who tries and survives regrets the attempt, and the likelihood your kid will make an attempt increase dramatically if you complete the act. 

The mere presence of that thought scared the shit out of me. And for the first time in my life, it fleeted through my thoughts. And kept popping in there like some annoying neighbor who just won’t stop dropping by to talk about meaningless whatever but really just wants attention because they’re lonely and life can suck. I felt like I was moving through mud, but simultaneously adrift across a deep suffocating abyss. I felt down. Fuck, I felt straight depressed. And shit was not getting better. I knew what I had to do. Time to get my ass in for some more help.

Before that, stuff happened. Afterwards, more stuff. This next part will attempt to describe all that stuff, and my journey of how I’ve dealt with it. Hopefully it helps someone else out there. BT dubs, if you’re in a bad spot, call this crisis line number: 1-800-273-8255. If you’re a vet, press 1. If not, that’s cool, just stay on the line. Anywhos, here we go.

When we got back from Afghanistan, they sequestered us in a shitty state side base and forced us to fill out a bunch of paperwork before they’d let us go home. One of which was some form asking if we had seen any specific events, like dead people, major medical trauma, risk to our lives or others, if we had to use force or had seen force used, etc. We all filled it out, and then each one of us had to sit down with a chaplain for like two minutes. Can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something to the effect of it being a near certainty that everyone in our unit had PTSD, and if we needed any help here’s a flier with some numbers to call. God, Jesus, or whatever will always be there for us; alright, good luck out there.

I scoffed at that dude and his ridiculous conclusion. If anything, the deployment to Afghanistan had been anticlimactic. I was a child of action movies; I went into the deployment with the hollywood influenced notion that every day would be like the Normandy invasion scene from Saving Private Ryan. I thought terrorist would be trying to kill us on the reg, and thought it was even money if I’d make it home alive. I figured if I did, I’d probably have to watch at least a few friends die, and be witness to all sorts of horrible shit. 

My real life service in a combat zone was much more tame. Now given, this is not indicative of every vet out there. The guy who initially trained me later made it into the military version of the Jedi Knights, then came home a triple amputee after a deployment with his elite unit. I have some friends who didn’t make it back. Others that served in Fallujah, which by even their modest accounts sound like a hellish nightmare that dwarfs any movie bullshit. 

Me, not much to write home about. I was on a few convoys where IED’s hit a convoy either a few minutes in front or behind us. Some soldiers in country I didn’t know were killed occasionally, and we all realized that could have been us. Sometimes we saw the effects of the IEDs if they hit the convoy in front of us, including what remained of the soldiers. The few times our unit took gunfire, it was very light and exceedingly inaccurate. We took occasional indirect fire(mortars, rockets)to the FOBs we stayed at, but it rarely damaged anything important let alone caused much injury. We lost 4 men in our battalion to an IED. Some other stuff happened, but it didn’t feel like a big deal at the time. It sure as hell wasn’t storming the beach at Normandy. I shrugged off what the chaplain said. Bunch of cake ass bullshit. If anything I felt guilty I hadn’t been involved in nastier shit. I felt like I got off easy.

As I mentioned before here, I was in the national guard for ten years, a little less than half of that on active duty. So after I got back from Afghanistan, I immediately enrolled back in College to get some more credits before the next call up, training, or whatever. Luckily they had one compressed section of a summer semester left, so I squeezed into that. 

I felt pretty normal, but did feel the need to live it up a bit after returning. After all, I had just spent over a year stuck in a pretty crazy living situation. While we were never in heavy combat, due spurts in our operational tempo and shit going down we often went days without sleep, patrolled long distances carrying fuck tons of weight over unforgiving terrain in either furnace level heat or icicles forming from your nose cold. And the constantly being on watch for someone trying to kill you just got kind of old. The drastic shift from military privations to free college life was amazing, yet jarring. Plus I was in my very early twenties, and not the most mature. Healthy coping skills have I did not.

While I drank a bunch before the deployment, I doubled down when I got back. Just to make things more interesting, I’d take a few pulls upon waking, and finish every night off the same way. I drove like I did in Afghanistan, which is to say I sped like crazy and generally like a dick. I didn’t start any fights; but I deliberately interjected myself into situations that would likely lead to someone taking a swing at me. You know, go dance with a girl who looks unhappy with her date, date of which clearly signaling that he’s highly ego driven. I seemed to get angry a lot, and then wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about some stuff that had happened over there. Stuff being things that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. Luckily, many of the guys in my unit were also back attending nearby universities. Most times I went drinking, I was with them. We did some stupid shit together, but we also kept each other from going to far. Looking back, I’m eternally grateful for this. Think this kept us out of jail or worse.

After about six or so months of that shit, things slowly faded and we all seemed a bit more chill. I still drank, but not in the morning, not to blackout, and not everyday. Fights stopped being interesting and became rare. I seemed less angry. 

I didn’t constantly think about some stuff that happened, with the events stuck on a constant loop playing in my head. The volume got turned down a bit on those things, and it only happened once or twice a month instead of every day. Just over six months after getting back, I recall sort of emerging from a funk, looking back on it, shrugging my shoulders; thinking “huh”. 

And then I got on with my life.

We had all volunteered for our unit, and had volunteered for our Afghanistan deployment. We’d actually volunteered for multiple deployments before that one, but inconceivable bureaucratic issues far above our pay grades kept sending other less specialized units involuntarily instead of our highly motivated and willing team. After returning, our unit continued to volunteer for more combat deployments, with the same confounding rejection. We all figured it was just a matter of time until we got to go back. Hell, we couldn’t wait. It’s what we joined up for, and it’s the reason we did way more than the normal amount of national guard level training. Somewhere along the line, I graduated college and became a cop. In theory, and somewhat in practice, I grew up a bit.

I’d been a cop for a little over a year, and things were pretty nuts on the job. I got shot at one of my first nights working, the rounds striking the patrol car I was sitting in while filling out paperwork. My rookie year some people tried to stab me, and another dude bent on shooting a cop had the drop on me but luckily his gun got hung up in his holster. This all seemed like more of the same to me. Like Afghanistan, but different. People trying to kill me, but instead of large impersonal explosives going off somewhere every day, this was a more personal level attack coming every few weeks. 

A friend of mine had some major issues, and she was in therapy working through it. During a heated argument about I can’t remember what, she said she saw some of the same issues in me, and I should get some help. Something about her tone of voice and the way she looked at me cut deep, and I realized she was being genuine; it made me think. 

Looking back, the idea of help was very appealing and I knew I needed it. But I had layers of repression, so I had to justify it to myself in a way that didn’t quite go to the core of the issue. I came up with this rationale: I had years left in the national guard, and it was almost a given that I would get deployed again. Last time I got back, I was kind of messed up there for six months, and then things faded away. What lingered was manageable. But those six months were dicey; at the time my behavior was just barely acceptable as a college kid. That kind of stupidity would be a major no go now that I was a cop. No way could I afford to have another six months of that shit next time I got back; I’d probably get my ass fired or worse. Maybe some preemptive therapy could help me mitigate such a recurrence? With my pragmatic justification found, I set off to get me some help. 

Tune in next time to see how my first foray into the magical land of therapy went!

PTSD Chapter 2 here