Quote:
Originally Posted by Nadeest
Apocalistic, thank you for putting out that list of possible symptoms. I've never been diagnosed except by a general practitioner in the VA system. She suspected that I had it, but wasn't certain. Mine stems from a single event caused by a family member and my reactions to his actions.
Sometimes I think that it would have been easier on me, emotionally, had I had to deal with the aftermath of an extremely severe mortar attack on my company; one that either killed or wounded most of the company. I'd have been better prepared to deal with that, in a lot of ways, as that was part of the job, in the first place.  |
Because you understand (in a way others
may not) the deep seated pain and horror that comes from attacks and losses in the course of one's work, I have the utmost respect for what you've said about a loss of trust from a source closer to home. Thank you for minimizing neither. I've heard people (elsewhere) say one is worse than the other. I think that the abusers of the world enjoy that sort of debate. It always serves to negate certain of their behaviors.
My father (also military) used to tell me that things like patriotism and honor weren't the sole possession of those in the military. I think it was his way of acknowledging that people who didn't choose service to a country as their work or as their method of expressing support for their community/culture were just as likely to feel and experience things typically attributed to military folk. I know that he felt some of my childhood experiences and the resultant PTSD rivaled some of the things he'd seen in more than 2 decades of service. His opinions were validating and that's a requirement in my life, even now. The need for external validation is one of the more debilitating (and humiliating) scars left on me. I am fortunate to know how to work inside that need in a healthy manner ---
most of the time. Years later, I still experience periods of panic if I cannot find that input from the people that matter to me. I can think of a particular instance that is present, every day, in my mind right now. It's like a gaping wound that no amount of therapy can heal. Perhaps it is worse because I have had a hand in creating my current circumstances myself.
Your post made me go searching through my mementos for something my father wrote to me when I was in my mid-20s. I'd been engaged in a bout of masochistic, self-destructive behavior after my mum died and I'd been sexually assaulted and he chose to come to my rescue
again. In one of his prolific letters, written a month or so after the dust settled, he said,
"Some of the things you've experienced are worse than many men I work with could comprehend. I can't understand it sometimes and I'm the person that saw you as a child, understood what was happening and put a stop to it. The first doctor we took you to was the one that explained it to your mother and I in terms we understood. He told us that shell shocked soldiers go through phases that dictate when they can and cannot tolerate input from the world. He warned us that the triggers come from obvious places or even from nothing obvious at all and that men who were effected would sometimes behave in ways their families did not recognize in order to get away from the pain. He called it "building mazes in the mind". (You have to remember that no one had given PTSD a name yet and it certainly wasn't talked about in children. Even your mother's boss didn't want to hear her reasons for needing time from work because it wasn't "polite".) I was ready for a phase when your mother died and ready too in November. I thought we handled it all pretty well, you and I. If the only further price to pay for all that was lost is a failed term at school, a lost job and a totaled car then I count us lucky. The other costs have been high enough for one small girl. You're alive and that's all I asked God for. That brings us to now. Now you've gone someplac [sic] I won't follow. You're the force behind this phase. This is not PTSD acting alone. This is you and I get to be bloody damned angry at you for abusing my child. Being hurt by others doesn't provide you license to perpetuate the damage that's been done but that's exactly what you're doing. You're abusing yourself by continuing the abuse someone else started and you need to stop it. I don't care for your opinion or how you see it, as long as you do see it. I didn't work hard to save you when you were 6 or 15 or 23 so you could take up the reins and pull against me now at 25. We've been through nearly twenty years of effort together. You and your mother and I, we did good work. You're a better person because of your hard work and I'm a better person because of you. Come home for a tick and find north again. It will take nothing from you to be by me. Choose to stop hurting yourself now. Just stop what you're doing and come home."
I felt respected by him in that moment. He held me capable when I was so willing to believe that I wasn't, so willing to believe that I was worthless and therefore deserved abuse even at my own hand. At a time when I was spiraling out of control my father made me feel like everything I "knew" about my life was real, rather than not, and that I didn't have to be a prisoner to it. I suppose it's the particular curse of survivors -- the way they often struggle to believe that something that's happened to them is real enough to matter, no matter how well it is documented, no matter how many witnesses exist. No matter the proof of internal and (more obvious) external scars, we fight tooth and nail with our own credulity. Why we should doubt ourselves is a peculiar kind of hell and aptly named at that. Doubt makes all things worse. He also reminded me that coming home would "take nothing from [me]" which was a coping "game" he taught me when I was young. To be reminded of that game as an adult was one of the best things that could have happened to me, then and now. I've already played the game in my head today and, though I'd forgotten it (again) some time ago, I'm going to try and play it every day.
I don't know why I'm writing. I've forgotten my point. Sorry.