Remembering during the holidays

Today is Christmas, today is a day to remember why we are here.  We are here to celebrate our loved ones.  I’ve missed many holidays over the years but I’ve somehow only missed one Christmas in 2004.  I’ve been very fortunate and so I spend holidays with family but then I think of all the people who can’t make it home for the holidays and one thing I love is getting together with people who can’t be around their families and having dinner.  I’m always a little sad because I can’t remember a Christmas in the last 10 years when I didn’t know someone who was overseas away from their families.  I know they are with loved ones and celebrating the best they can.  We see a lot of attention pouring into our efforts to make sure they are remembered but I wish we would remember all the veterans who came home but never really came home.  These men and women often have such a difficulty assimilating into society and refuse to get help.  They often wind up homeless and helpless.  It’s a disturbing thing to know that so many of our nation’s heroes just don’t have the ability to get themselves the help they need. Our nation loves a hero when they need one; we put them on pedestals and turn our men and women in the armed forces into something we can’t live up to.  As members of the military, especially combat arms, we find out what the power of ruling over life and death is.  We find out what it feels like to be thought of as a hero and it makes us uncomfortable.  We often times have trouble dealing with the things we’ve done in the name of good.  It’s not an easy thing to reconcile and causes a serious case of cognitive dissonance when you have to do bad things in the name of good.  We come home and have all the power taken away from us; we are left with our adrenaline addiction and hero complex but no way to satisfy the urges.  We are made sad every day by the things we see with no way to fix them.  We can’t let go of the idea that we had the ability to truly change the world and remove evil.  This causes us to feel isolated and to believe that our loved ones can never understand.  We feel sad for the people who actually can understand because that means they have seen the same horrible things.  As a society we need to be more open to the people we see on street corners, less judgmental and more loving.  That person may not be able to function in a society that doesn’t need them as heroes.  They may feel worthless and useless; they may believe that living that way is all they deserve.  While we remember our heroes abroad during the holidays I would like us all to remember the ones we have here who may never be able to stop fighting the battles in their hearts and minds.

Tomorrow

            Tomorrow is the Marine Corps birthday; it also marks the 11 year mark in my dedication to servicing the needs of the country. In my time in service I have deployed in support of hurricane relief, deployed twice to Iraq and once to Afghanistan, as well as traveling to many other countries.  I have been blessed to meet many quality people who have shaped my views, morals, and ethics.

            I look back at the opportunities I’ve had and the thing that strikes me most is not what has been taken but what has been given to me.  Because of my service I certainly have lost many things but when I look back I don’t see those things. What I see are great memories; I see traveling through Europe with friends, I see sitting on the beach at the Black Sea drinking a beer with my close friends, I see all the pranks we used to play on each other, mostly though I see a group of friends who even if we don’t see each other often would kill for each other to this day.

            Today is the Veterans’ Salute at MTSU’s football game.  This whole weekend is full of things like free meals, parades, celebrations, and many people giving thanks to our service members.  While we certainly love and appreciate all the gestures, there are many veterans who won’t go and get these free meals, some because it doesn’t feel right to take something for free, others are the ones who truly need the meals.

            There are a great many homeless veterans in and around the Murfreesboro area.  It’s an amazing thing to think about, the way many of these homeless are viewed.  So many of the truly homeless you won’t see.  They will stay out of the public eye for the most part.  You won’t see the majority of homeless veterans on the street corner in the middle of the day.  How can so many veterans be homeless?  PTSD takes away your ability to rationalize, it takes away your ability to be motivated, and it takes away your willingness to be a member of society.

            PTSD leads to depression which in turn leads to drinking which then worsens the depression.  It’s a vicious circle that is extremely hard to get out of.  It takes the love and support of family and friends.  It takes people willing to step in and force their love and care on you. I’ve been very lucky, I had people who were concerned and stepped in.  I was lucky enough to have someone I call my sister move in and keep watch over me, cheer me up when I was sad, and to this day remind me daily that life is good and I can be great.

            This weekend isn’t just Veteran’s Day for me.  It’s the time I get to celebrate another year of being a part of something that has given me so much more than it has taken from me.  I see the losses as the price I have to pay to be allowed to continue doing something that means so much to me.

Often times people tell me they wish they could understand what it’s like to live with PTSD.  This isn’t something we want to hear, we don’t want you to know. We want to be very selfish with it because it is our burden.  It is the cross that is born by the men and women who chose to live this life and we don’t want to share it with anyone else.  I’m glad you don’t understand because that would mean that you’ve had to live through something traumatic.  The reason I did it was so that you didn’t have to go through it. So while you want to have empathy, we don’t want you to have to live with it which is the only way to truly understand.