Had you ever been writing a great post and it got longer and longer and better and better. Then for some reason you kill the browser window and loose it all? I hate when that happens!

Why I am posting about PTSD here and how relevant to the first three posts above.

I do not want 'warache' to believe he stands alone. PTSD is so wide-spread it is silly. Warache makes a beautiful point, he says, "I guess they're afraid that I might flip, which at times I feel like doing so." Back in the 80's I felt the same about my ol Vietnam vet roommate and one time he did kinda 'flip' and scared the living snot out of me, I thought he was going to beat me to death [given the angrier he got the farther he moved AWAY from me].

I didn't understand then what I/we know now, but I must confess I have flipped.

'Denimangle' says, "Up until just a few yrs ago I never heard of PTSD and if I was told I had a problem, whoever told me was the problem. 2 or 3 yrs ago, a couple of Marines on 100% disability got ahold of me and started asking all kinds of questions, which turned out to be all the symptoms of ptsd."

Here are samples of what I know a lot of vets have experienced.

By 1993 I began having problems and to this day I still can't tell you what it was I was feeling save for pain. So, not knowing I blamed it on myself and knew something was wrong with ME! I'd barely heard about PTSD... I think so anyway. All I knew was I had a problem and that it was ME! Nothing else.

The following 'shorts' are stories I want to post for two reasons:
First is to reassure our buddy 'warache'he does not stand alone. And second is at present I can't find the CD that contains my little stories folder.

In the fall of 1994 my PTSD broke out in college, IN CLASS for crying out loud. I bolted out of a class full of students and thank God the hall was empty because I had the first enourmous nervous breakdown of MY LIFE, I was over 35 years old! No, this can't be happening to me. I very much thought I was going crazy, was flat nuts and that it was MY PROBLEM BECAUSE MY problem was trivial BECAUSE I never saw combat! I was ADA! I wasn't a groundpounder! I was A LEG!

Months passed before I pulled up the guts to talk to Vietnam Vets.
The first vets I talked to about 'the problem' were:
My cousin a day before July 4. I felt 'skitchy' and needing a shoulder, and for what reason I hadn't a clue. To note I do not do holidays in public anymore, only alone in sorrow, mourning my dead, my dying, my sick, and how badly we f'd the Iraqi people as a result of the war.
At a bar, a vet I never met wearing a hat with a 1st Cav patch I said, "I bet you a shot and a beer you sewed that patch." And I was right.
At a family picnic a cousin's new husband I never met came to me and said, "Only a soldier stands 'at ease'like you are now. But
only a soldier who's been to Iraq would stand behind his family, avoiding his family. Are you ok?" Freaked me out that he could just... tell.

And we can tell things like that, cant we?

This is how I approached 'MY VETS' when I began having those wierd 'Am I going nuts' thoughts in my head. And what happened, which at first was very unexpected.
1. I would always begin apologizing that I felt like an idiot because my issues were menial in comparison to to Vietnam and combat which I have never experienced.
2. Unlike non-combatants [to describe in a moment] out Vietnam vets ALWAYS, ALWAYS looked me straight in the eyes and listened with no emotion until I was finished and they saw in my eyes that I was finished, curious to their thoughts and what was wrong with me.
3. Unlike non-combatant Americans [in a moment] a crack of a serious smile would ALWAYS occur, sometimes a frindly laugh and the words, "There's nothing wrong with you. You're just one of us now." Also I was told, "You don't have to be the one doing the killing or see your buddies killed. It's the war. The war has done it to you."
4. And within seconds My Vietnam Vet would take me by the arm, lead me away from the non-combatants, sit me down, get real close and began speaking quietly, while I listened quietly and eye to eye, MY Vietnam Vets horror story of war of which they had never in twenty or more years felt comfortable enough to tell their wives, children or their closest friends.

Yes, you go to war and America calls us 'heroes' and then abandons their 'heroes' after the war, when it is after war the
horrors from the war plays themselves out.

Oh lookie here in the mid 1990's there is this thing called PTSD that is having its way over my vet buddies! BUT STILL I'M TELLING YOU I DID NOT HAVE PTSD!

Daaah!

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Comedy in the tragedy of the commons:

I now believe that veterans ought to consider there is such an animal as comedy in the tragedy of the commons. Now, while we know there is nothing funny about war even though that while at war we all have little funny stories that could not possibly occur in our American society and our fellow Americans would possibly not understand much less think funny.

At discovering the following I laughed. Laughed because I realized I was not going nuts.

Once upon a day in the late 90's I rolled over a webpage with the symptoms of PTSD and thought to myself, "Na! Not me!" But I thought it oddly interesting how government keeps we vets wrapped up in secrecy in regards to our wars and if we could talk about it that would help a bunch.
Is it not odd that STILL PTSD is quite oddly such an unknown phenomon [considering we vets can easily summate the human condition has been around as long as war, right?] So I saved the file and quickly forgot about it without realizing my researches were based upon finding and discovering what I did not know to satisfy my minds pain.

Months upon months later I discovered that file while weeding out my hard-drive and read it. And then read it again thinking, "Uh oh!" Then again to note just how many 'symptoms'and WHACK upside my own head I said, said it out loud so I'd hear myself say it, "Oh my gawd! THAT'S ME!"

What a relief.

OH how it becomes when we feel that we stand alone [and don't have a great wife like 'yourladyship' to kick us in the hinnies] that we deny ourselves simple, rational thought.

I stopped laughing when I realized knowing is all great and dandy, BUT that knowledge in itself has done little to quell the troubles in our minds, does it?

So I began thinking about how to not offend myself, my integrity my honor, OUR honor. [i.e. instead of my taking offense at the manner in which the grey matter inside my brain-case was handling itself], that possibly it best to begin defending myself as well as our past war veterans, my/our dead, dying and sick from 91 and going back to Vietnam, Korea and both world wars, as well as our present volunteer military from both the benign ignoramus-stupidius non-combatant fellow Americans (whom, yes, we dearly love) and our fairly well developed tratorious government officials (fortunately not all our elected officials are crooks).

The following are What helps me with my PTSD:
1. Writing it down [which is good but goes no farther than that]
2. Telling America [which makes all the difference in the world]
3. Creating epiphanies [which, as a vet, is absolutely the most enjoyable and democratic civic activity I have ever discovered.]

Yea, I know. What about #3.

But consider what 'yourladyship' states above, "I think that they just want us all to go insane waiting so that they can lock us up in the local asylum to keep us quiet and sedated and never have to bother with us again? Too bad that doesn't work for those who never SHUT UP?"

While yes, she is deadly serious and absolutly right on she made me laugh, "Too bad that doesn't work for those who never SHUT UP?"

I have the same problem.