"Want to know why that's good? Let me tell you about scared. Your heart is beating so hard, I can feel it through your hands. So much blood and oxygen pumping through your brain, it's like rocket fuel. Right now, you can run faster, and you can fight harder, you can jump higher than ever in your life. You are so alert, it's like you can slow down time. What's wrong with scared? Scared is a superpower. It's your superpower. There is a danger in this room, and guess what? It's you! You feel it?" – The 12th Doctor (BBC’s Doctor Who)
11 years, Wow, where did it go? Today marks 11 years since I married my veteran. I often joke and say I didn’t have a choice, he followed me home. But honestly, as I told him this morning, 10 out of 10, would marry again.
Yes, PTSD and all.
Everyone’s experience with PTSD is going to be different, and anything I write is solely my own and my husband’s experience. But I recall some time ago reading an article that referred to PTSD as a monster. I couldn’t help but stop and think to myself about how I view it. Do I see PTSD as a monster in our marriage? I can think of many things that are monstrous. War is a monster. Death is a monster, TBI’s can be monstrous, but is PTSD a monster in our home? Would I ask for it to be taken away with the wave of a magic wand? And I can’t say that I would. I would ask that the events that caused my husband's PTSD to be taken away. But if he had to experience them, then as weird as it might sound, I am glad for his PTSD. I tried to explain it to a friend not so long ago... When I look at my husband, and I see his Post-traumatic Stress, I see proof of his humanity, I see proof of love for his unit, I see proof of his love for God, I see proof of his soul being a little bruised and a little burdened, but I see that it is intact.
My husband was an infantryman, the United States Army worked very hard to make him that. Like all infantrymen, they took him, they broke him down, and rebuilt him as they wanted him because he had a very specific job to do. They needed soldiers who would follow orders, engage enemies, save lives, take lives, defend freedom and not stop to count the cost until the smoke cleared. I don’t begrudge them that fact, he willingly and knowingly signed up to serve his nation, and would again if given a chance, and knowing the outcome.
Yes, PTSD and all.
Everyone’s experience with PTSD is going to be different, and anything I write is solely my own and my husband’s experience. But I recall some time ago reading an article that referred to PTSD as a monster. I couldn’t help but stop and think to myself about how I view it. Do I see PTSD as a monster in our marriage? I can think of many things that are monstrous. War is a monster. Death is a monster, TBI’s can be monstrous, but is PTSD a monster in our home? Would I ask for it to be taken away with the wave of a magic wand? And I can’t say that I would. I would ask that the events that caused my husband's PTSD to be taken away. But if he had to experience them, then as weird as it might sound, I am glad for his PTSD. I tried to explain it to a friend not so long ago... When I look at my husband, and I see his Post-traumatic Stress, I see proof of his humanity, I see proof of love for his unit, I see proof of his love for God, I see proof of his soul being a little bruised and a little burdened, but I see that it is intact.
My husband was an infantryman, the United States Army worked very hard to make him that. Like all infantrymen, they took him, they broke him down, and rebuilt him as they wanted him because he had a very specific job to do. They needed soldiers who would follow orders, engage enemies, save lives, take lives, defend freedom and not stop to count the cost until the smoke cleared. I don’t begrudge them that fact, he willingly and knowingly signed up to serve his nation, and would again if given a chance, and knowing the outcome.
What his PTSD tells me though, is that while the breaking down and rebuilding did its job, and it saved his life (for which I am eternally grateful), it didn’t make deep roots. Post-traumatic stress is a natural human response to an experience that you know is abnormal. It might come after combat, the loss of a friend or family member, the loss of a child, a car accident that causes extensive injuries, sexual trauma, a weather event or natural disaster in which you are displaced, and each case is going to come with its own unique set of symptoms and challenges. But it is always going to be in response to an event that the human mind, as intricate and brilliant as it is, can not (and should not have to) comprehend.
We sometimes joke that it’s my husband's superpower. PTSD is frustrating, and maddening, and tiring, but it has some benefits. The first being that it protected my husband when he first returned from war. It built a wall around his mind while he worked through what he had seen and done. It separated him from the events that nearly took his life, and did take the life of several of his brothers. Of course, maintaining this wall is difficult. It's tiring, cracks form, feelings spill out in ways they shouldn’t, tempers are short, attention spans are shorter, good emotions are accidentally shoved behind it too. Sometimes the grief doesn’t care how tall you build the wall, it’ll find a way over it, and try to swallow you whole again. Sometimes the wall tumbles down while you sleep, and everything comes out in your dreams, sometimes the wall gives way entirely, and you are left trying to find your spouse in the middle of a flood, and devastatingly sometimes your veteran gets caught up behind the wall too and is trapped with everything his mind wanted to protect him from or sometimes it doesn’t hold at all. (It’s not a perfect superpower, he would rather be able to fly.)
PTSD also gives my husband heightened senses (The VA, of course, will call this hypervigilance, we like to call it spidey sense, to-may-to to-mah-to.). He is always ready in an emergency – his adrenaline kicks in fast and hard. (Sometimes he’s ready when it’s not an emergency, more often than not but who’s counting.)
He is fiercely protective of our children (which at 5 and 8 is fantastic, ask me again when they’re teenagers). When he displays emotions you know, they were hard-won and that much sweeter. I tell him he has a resting annoyed face - in which the default setting on his face is annoyed, so laughter and sadness are always genuine. He is kind, and generous with his time because he knows that he nearly didn’t have anymore. He knows what the evils of the world look like, and has no desire to see them again, but would if it meant protecting those he loves. He is far from perfect, and life is far from a stroll in the park, but it's ours, and if I had to do it all over again, I’d still choose him.
We sometimes joke that it’s my husband's superpower. PTSD is frustrating, and maddening, and tiring, but it has some benefits. The first being that it protected my husband when he first returned from war. It built a wall around his mind while he worked through what he had seen and done. It separated him from the events that nearly took his life, and did take the life of several of his brothers. Of course, maintaining this wall is difficult. It's tiring, cracks form, feelings spill out in ways they shouldn’t, tempers are short, attention spans are shorter, good emotions are accidentally shoved behind it too. Sometimes the grief doesn’t care how tall you build the wall, it’ll find a way over it, and try to swallow you whole again. Sometimes the wall tumbles down while you sleep, and everything comes out in your dreams, sometimes the wall gives way entirely, and you are left trying to find your spouse in the middle of a flood, and devastatingly sometimes your veteran gets caught up behind the wall too and is trapped with everything his mind wanted to protect him from or sometimes it doesn’t hold at all. (It’s not a perfect superpower, he would rather be able to fly.)
PTSD also gives my husband heightened senses (The VA, of course, will call this hypervigilance, we like to call it spidey sense, to-may-to to-mah-to.). He is always ready in an emergency – his adrenaline kicks in fast and hard. (Sometimes he’s ready when it’s not an emergency, more often than not but who’s counting.)
He is fiercely protective of our children (which at 5 and 8 is fantastic, ask me again when they’re teenagers). When he displays emotions you know, they were hard-won and that much sweeter. I tell him he has a resting annoyed face - in which the default setting on his face is annoyed, so laughter and sadness are always genuine. He is kind, and generous with his time because he knows that he nearly didn’t have anymore. He knows what the evils of the world look like, and has no desire to see them again, but would if it meant protecting those he loves. He is far from perfect, and life is far from a stroll in the park, but it's ours, and if I had to do it all over again, I’d still choose him.
-Antoinette B.
Well written and thought through Antoinette.
ReplyDeleteThat's written extremely well. The day jim got shot,I can't explain the sheer terror that I felt. For the first time ever I was truely shaken to the soul. I had to go back ....back to iraq ...revenge. But with 2 more deployments done I still do not feel like I got any kind of Retribution whatsoever so it's my big brother I'm very sorry I let you down. Sgt. Jason Batchelor Ret.
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