Tough Shit – PTSD : Chapter 2

Here we continue with this multi chapter series about PTSD and all of the things. To sum up the previous post; I went to Afghanistan with the national guard, had some issues upon coming back, but then they subsided after about 6 months. Then a few years later I became a cop, and was still in the guard with the hope of deploying again. In the interest of reducing the recurrence of such issues after returning next time, I preemptively sought out some therapy. At least that was the excuse I used to justify asking for help back then. But then I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyways…

It was a rocky start. I was lucky to find a free local counseling service that catered to survivors of violence, and had a few specialists dealing with vets. The first therapist they set me up with was reserved and standoffish. After a few sessions she told me she would never be able to trust a cop because she believed we were all racist. I requested a new therapist, and things went better. We started digging deeper, and kept circling back to that stuff I was not discussing that had happened over there that really wasn’t a big deal so hey let’s not talk about it okay? And after she pestered me a few thousand more times, I finally opened up.

What had happened was…

Remember when I was a bodyguard for that dickhole for like three months whilst over there? Part of that bodyguard gig was escorting pay missions. You see, in Afghanistan, we had tried to install a professional army of local soldiers that would help us fight our combined enemy. They were called the Afghan National Army(ANA), and we provided a lot of support to keep that whole thing going. Aside from training and leading them, the US also paid them. 

Living for over a year in a third world country, actually among the locals, was a great eye opening experience that I recommend to anyone from a more wealthy country. One thing you quickly realize is that, like many of the impoverished over here, many people over there don’t/can’t use banks. So the US paid the ANA in cash, every couple weeks. On the ground at my level, this meant we would shove some army accountant with a shit ton of local currency in one of our humvees, and drive all over one of the most violent regions of the country to meet large groups of ANA soldiers to pay them in person. This was done on a regular schedule, and everyone in the ANA knew this schedule. Because duh, they wanted to get paid on the reg just like everyone else.

Did I mention we had some trust issues with the ANA? They had a nasty habit of deserting and then being found among enemy combatants after an attack on one of our forces. Everyone pretty much assumed that if you told the ANA something, the Taliban found out the same day.

This made our pay missions precarious. We had to stick to a schedule and a certain route (step 1 of planning an ambush: know when and where your enemy is going to be.). Plus we were giving the enemy plenty of motive to attack us. If they could take us out, the ANA wouldn’t get paid. ANA soldiers frequently quit because they didn’t feel like playing army that day, and one of the few things that kept many of them sticking around was a frequent and steady paycheck. In the eyes of our foes, these pay missions were considered a high value target. 

We did what we could to mitigate the risk. One of our major rules was that we didn’t stop the convoy for shit. Leave one base, drive like hell to another secure base, and only stop when we were behind tall walls and machine guns. 

One particular pay mission some stuff happened. I, like most always, was a humvee turret gunner. I stood on the center console platform, through a hole cut in the roof, behind a machine gun mounted on a giant ring which could rotate in any direction. On this mission, I happened to be in the last truck of the convoy, which meant I was covering our six in case anyone tried to come up behind and attack us. It was not uncommon for a suicide bomber to drive a car bomb right into the last vehicle of a convoy. I was under order to attempt to wave off any approaching vehicle, and if they didn’t back off, light them up. This day that did not happen. Instead, we passed a jingle truck packed full of kids. 

A jingle truck is a colorfully decorated stake bed truck common to that region. Used to haul just about anything, and as ubiquitous as semis are over here. Kids over there were common too, and one of the rare bright points of any overt mission. Any time we saw them they were always smiling and waving. Sure, they were probably motivated by the candy and water we always threw to them, and we knew some operated as look outs for enemy forces, but the friendly warmth they radiated was a welcome respite from the constant scanning for threats. 

These kids were different. No happy here. As we passed the open bed of the jingle truck, I saw they radiated pure despair, their eyes hollow and dead. I had never seen looks like that before, it burned me to my soul. A look I would come to know later as cop when called to child abuse and rape incidents. The two guys up front driving the truck? Different story. Intense, with narrow eyes. I saw the wooden stock of an AK tucked under the dash next to the guy riding shotgun. This guy sees me checking him out, then smiles some shit eating grin at me. 

Time slowed. This whole thing probably took less than a minute but it felt like hours. I quickly put two and two together. 

Every night, our leader would get briefed on various types of intelligence, and then he would summon us all, relaying what he learned. For months he relayed that human trafficking was rampant in the region we were operating in. Impoverished parents under strain and with a vastly different value system routinely would sell some of their kids to traffickers, where they would be trucked over the nearby border to be sold into sex slavery. The life expectancy was low for the kids, which was almost a blessing considering the depravity they were subject to. The US cared because the proceeds were being used to fund our opposition. We were to keep a look out for large groups of kids being transported by only a few men, and report it up. Maybe detain them if the situation allowed.

There was not a doubt in my mind. The 30 some kids in the back of that jingle truck we just passed were on their way to hell. I let my team leader know via our internal radio system, and immediately requested  our truck break off and conduct a vehicle interdiction on said jingle truck. My request was denied just as fast. I requested permission to at least disable the truck with my .50 caliber machine gun and have another team follow up with a detention mission. Denied. I switched from the .50 cal to my smaller M249 SAW machine gun strapped next to me, and using the magnified sight, put the crosshairs on the passenger with the AK next to him. I relayed what I had, and requested that I at least be allowed to dispatch these fuckers selling kids to sex slavery. I figured the smaller 5.56 from my SAW wouldn’t over penetrate my targets like the big .50 cal would, and we could at least give those kids a fighting chance to escape their horrible situation. By now my team leader was pissed (to his, and everyone else’s credit, due to the lack of rear windows on our armored humvees, and the way our team’s visual attention was purposely divided into specific sectors, I was the only one who saw clear as day the human trafficking situation in that jingle truck). He asked if the guy rolling shotgun was pointing the AK, because, hello, this is fucking Afghanistan and everyone and their mother has a fucking rifle. Of course my boss knew the answer to this; if that dude had been pointing the AK, I wouldn’t be asking, I’d be actively engaging the threat. While my boss was saying this, that fucker sitting in the passenger seat waved, and his devious grin grew wider. He probably knew our rules of engagement better than we did. He knew I wasn’t allowed to do shit. Over my headphone, my normally chill boss barked in my ear “You know the the fucking deal! It’s a pay mission-we don’t stop for anything. Shut the fuck up and keep scanning for threats.” 

Our armor laden humvee slowly pulled away from the jingle truck. At this rate, they’d still be in my range for a little bit more. I kept the crosshairs on that fucker’s head. My finger found the safety. I was preparing to slow my breathing before depressing the trigger so I could get a steady shot. In that moment, I knew I had the power to stop the suffering of those kids and end those fuckers who had transported who knows how many child slaves. I also knew that I had no articulable immediate threat. If I killed those two assholes, it would definately be murder, and probably a war crime. I’d be spending the rest of my life in a military prison if Uncle Sam didn’t just put me down. What was my life in comparison to all of those kids though, especially considering the hell I was condemning them to if I did nothing?

We slowly rolled out of range, and that fuckers head became a tiny blur in my scope. My finger came off the safety, my finger never having depressed the trigger. I lowered my SAW, switched back to the .50, and started scanning again for threats. In that moment, I followed orders, and I stuck to the rule of law, that thing purporting to tell us what is right and just. My soul found little solace in this.

When I told my therapist of all this, my voice shook, I was covered in sweat, and my mind looped a perfect tortuous replay of my horrible inaction repeatedly. I held on tight to keep from breaking down into a soppy wreck. The same thing is happening now as I write this, just like any time that I think about that incident. I’d never noticed those physical attributes in myself when thoughts of that incident occasionally wouldn’t leave me alone, but her pointing them out finally made them obvious. What exactly she said afterwards are lost on me, and I’m sure it was much more sensitive than the following, but her statement could be summed up with: “yeah, that’s a fucking flashback and you have PTSD, moron. Now lets stop beating around the bush and fucking deal with it”. 

So we did. It took about a year’s work, the flashbacks never went away but the volume was turned down. I learned to process a few other things that had happened over there, like watching some coalition soldiers burn alive, and watching a taxi full of civilians accidentally vaporized by friendly mortars. I learned I had to not bottle shit like that up, and quit trying to avoid ruminating on such thoughts in the future. Doing so had led me to where I was, and if I was to reduce the likelihood of future traumatic events impacting me, I had to let myself feel the occasional emotion instead of constantly forcing them down. 

That was the plan at least. My therapist and I agreed we made some good progress, she wished me luck, and we parted ways.

Then stuff at work slowly built up. I got on the SWAT team, which was lots of fun. So much fun, that I finally got out of the national guard. No time for that, and it seemed like the war was winding down anyways. I also became a detective, and was therefore on call for two separate responsibilities. This led to little time outside of work, and more frequent life or death situations.

I got shot at some more. A mentor on the department went off the deep end, and we were called in to try and keep him from suicide by cop. I was the designated guy to shoot him if things went sideways when we took him into custody. Luckily I didn’t have to do that. People tried to kill me in new, interesting ways. Like one dude hit me in the head dozens of times with clothes iron (yay for helmets!). The work schedule made sleep a rare occurrence. I guess I didn’t feel like I was getting enough stress, so I started grad school. I got involved in a shooting where the suspect shot me and some of my teammates. Months after I got out of the hospital from that shooting, another guy randomly tried to shoot up a car full of teenage girls in front of me. When I yelled at him to stop, he spun and shot at me. This led to the second person I shot that year. Later in the year I also got married, which while a net positive, was still a stressful life transition. 

Towards the end of that intense year, I celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday with my family, and a wave of depression knocked me on my ass from nowhere while I sat at the dinner table. It was scary. I had never felt that down. Went into employer provided therapy, attempted to process the above. Felt somewhat better, and got back out there.

Things kept going at work. Got shot at some more. By then the SWAT thing had turned into a full time job, and we basically raced from one side of the city to the other trying to keep a lid on the constant crazy. My wife was pregnant with our first kid when I got shot at by some dude holding his own infant son hostage. This happened on a halloween; afterwards I got home in the early afternoon, and found my house empty as my wife was working a long shift. I’ll admit, previously getting shot at was equally terrifying and exciting. My warped mind almost enjoyed it. Normally the elation of dodging death was immense. This Halloween incident was different though. I realized that I’d come extremely close to never meeting my son; the stakes were suddenly much higher. Normally I prided myself in giving out treats to the neighborhood kids; this time I couldn’t bear to interact with anyone. Even watching television was too much. I dumped the bag of treats in a bowl outside my door, closed the curtains, and laid face down in my bed sinking into a deep depression.

Things kept rolling and so did I. No time to stop. I watched a fellow veteran shoot herself in a standoff with us. I’ve watched other people shoot themselves, but that one sucked more for some reason. I’d been put in charge of a large component of our SWAT training, and didn’t have time to think about all this stuff, let alone try to process it. Then I was promoted, put in charge of a good portion of the SWAT team, and a few days later my son was born. 

If sleep was minimal before, a newborn sure as hell didn’t help. I knew I was hitting a breaking point. I took myself back into employer provided therapy, and it was little help. Her suggestion was I just carve out some time to play with my son. I told her I didn’t want to do that; I just wanted to sleep. She didn’t seem to understand, my employer-provided six session limit ran out, so I sucked it up and gutted it out.

I was put in charge of almost all operational responsibilities of the SWAT team, a promotion in title but not in rank. My workload cranked up higher. One day we were searching an apartment used to sell heroin. The dealer was in back, and his young son was in the front room.  This boy, about the same age as my son, was playing with the same kind of toy we had at home. I heard my teammates a few rooms away, yelling at this kid’s father to keep his hands off a gun. By their tone of voice I knew they had it under control, and the best thing I could do was keep this kid occupied so he didn’t wander in between my fellow officers and his father. Took my helmet off, and sat down on the other side of the toy. I hit a few buttons on the toy, generating some lights and noises, and the kid smiled. I smiled back. Cute kid. I heard the dealer being put into cuffs, and was glad things hadn’t gone worse. I played with the kid and the toy until the detectives came in and took over. Another kid in a helpless situation. The detectives called for child services, and I walked out knowing the high probability of that cute kid ending up like his father, if not worse.

I walked out of the apartment, and I felt like glass on the verge of shattering into a thousand pieces. Climbed into the back of our unmarked raid van, and stared at the floor. A longtime friend of mine asked if I was ok. “No. I think I’m done.” I answered. He would later tell me that he’d never seen that look on my face before. Judging by the despair I felt, I imagine the look was similar to what I saw on those kids in the back of that jingle truck. 

Something had clicked, and I knew I was done with the SWAT life. I had never wanted to be in a leadership position on the team, but got guilt tripped into it by people higher up the chain of command. The subsequent work pace increase due to my supervisory duties; combined with the increased child rearing responsibilities at home pushed me to a bleak, desolate place. The next day I randomly ran into a guy who had previously held my current leadership position before moving on to greener pastures from the team. Noticing my lack of affect, he said to me “once you’re done, you’re done. There’s nothing you can do to make it better.” His statement resonated with me deeply. 

That weekend was rough. I felt very down, and couldn’t shake the funk. I drove with my family to a neighborhood fair, and as my wife and son got out to go play, I stopped my wife. I told her I needed some time alone. She gave me a fearful look, later she confided that she thought perhaps I was suicidal. I assured her I just needed a break, and wanted to try some coping stuff. I went home, worked out hard, and ate some eggs and bacon. Sat by myself for a bit, then headed back to pick up my family. I’d made my decision, I was leaving the team.

I turned in all of my gear soon after, and with the help of some other former members got some strings pulled so my slot would be filled by a very competent recent promotee. Feeling that I hadn’t left my teammates completely hanging, I moved on.

I went and got some more work provided therapy. As before, I was limited to six sessions. It was ok, the therapist basically said I was severely burnt out, and helped me to come to terms with me leaving the tight knit tactical team that had been my home for the past eight years. I stopped getting called out every hour of the night, and my phone stopped ringing constantly. A huge weight slipped from my shoulders. At work, I moved into administrative roles for a couple of years. The barely 40 hour week workload was laughable. My biggest problem was boredom.

All of the above was almost 4 years ago now, and there’s still plenty left to get into next time. The above covers the majority of the shit I got into, and the rest of the story is mostly me dealing with it. We’ll get into that next time.

Thanks for reading so far. If this story resonates with you, and you’re in a dark place, please get help. Though my experiences with therapy weren’t always rainbows and unicorns, all total it’s helped me pull out of the black and make my life worth living. Don’t give up; hope is not a plan, but positive shit can happen if you put in the work.

Here’s the next part, PTSD Chapter 3