In God we Trust

I am a legally blind wounded Veteran. I remember the last time I had the opportunity to be seen by a civilian Ophthalmologist. After a brief “Good Morning”, which was more of a formality, he got me prepared and properly dilated then quickly went to work to get the full advantage of the medicine in my eyes. He went to get a glance of the back of my eye just to abruptly stop.  He said to me, “My Son, how did you do this to your eyes, what has happened to you?’  I respond to him with “It was a road side bomb in Iraq that exploded too close to my head and a hot sharpened piece of metal penetrated my left eye.”  End of conversation.

To say that the beginning of my day starts when I wake up in the morning is not accurate. I must consider what kind of struggles I went through the night before to fall asleep. The tossing and turning, going up and down on a train of thought that should not necessarily be about the pestilence and wars but perhaps about the different situations that may have happened that day or even years ago.

I am constantly thinking and analyzing how things actually happen, how I would have preferred it to happen, alternative endings such as the most traumatic and catastrophic ending for that particular road trip. By the time I realize I did not get to sleep is just when the first ray of light starts to conquer our marital room. Then comes the first guilty conscience of the day because I realize that my wife may not have slept at all either. Now she needs to wake up and get our children ready for school. Meanwhile, I can either succumb to the tiredness of a long night of sad visualizations or just continue pushing forward.  I am a Soldier and my biggest critic.

Because of my visual impairment, most of the time I reject the glimpses of reality that life offers me when I’m out in the open.  Trying to focus on anything three feet from me is too much to ask of the full, thick macular hole that I have on my left eye retina.  This is my good eye.  I have no light perception in my right eye due to an optical neuropathy.  My optical nerve was crushed so anything more than that distance will just be a surreal reproduction, a cubism interpretation of that world that I love so much so I’d rather just close my eyes. Sometimes I fall to sleep, giving my back one more time to my wife and loved ones- I only hope they don’t feel like I’m running away from them. The truth is that as traumatic and catastrophic as my injury sounds for me, there is nothing worse than the severe symptoms of the post-traumatic stress disorder that my family suffers through me. Because of my blindness, I get to use this reasoning and compensate accordingly. But, how do you compensate accordingly?  How do you fight a silent hunter that is waiting for his best opportunity to attack? That is PTSD.  Having PTSD does not mean you are spoken, it merely means you were put to a test and did not fail. It is hard for me to concentrate on a single task without having to think about the worst thing that has ever happened to me, and the possibility of not having the opportunity to be alive in the present.

It is just not normal to be seated at your dining table listening to your child telling a story about her great day at school all while you are feeling like you are about to bungee jump from a platform.  It’s not right and it’s just not fair for them.  So you seclude yourself, going into your own misery, trying to find a repetitive action or something to do, or just listening to your favorite music to get some relief to the pressure you feel in your chest, the actual physical pain.  Then, how do you get around the guilty conscience of the realization that by this time, your loved ones are asking themselves, “What went wrong?” or “What did I say that made him go away one more time?’



I could not say that God leaves me behind or that he does not care about me. As you can see in the picture, He has been with me since the beginning of this odyssey. I still count on the unconditional love from my wife and my baby girls to get me through. I count on the warm touch from my wife when I just need her to put her hands on my head so that I can feel that I am alive as her touch brings me back to the present, to the now. It takes an exceptional person to love a warrior, especially a warrior who’s war will never cease.

Also, I praise my Lord for the great therapeutic benefit I get to receive from the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes because of my participation in the Heroes Thanking Heroes program. I am able to call donors just to say “Thank you” for their present or past donations for the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes. We never ask for another gift.  The opportunity helps me feel productive again but most importantly, during my time on the phone, I am talking to American Patriots and focusing on the task I am doing in front of my computer. I do not give my mind the chance to get a ticket with no return on the train of unwanted thoughts.

For a Veteran like myself, there will be no other way possible to maintain and retain a regular job if it is not because of flexible time conditions that the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes is promoting through this great program, the Heroes Thanking Heroes program.

My intentions with this manifest are to let everybody know how it is like to live with this silent hunter with the PTSD and the challenges that the wounded military family goes through during their personal road to recovery. Until then, in God we trust.

SPC. Hugo L. Gonzalez