I will make myself safe.

For all of my misery, it does get better. It gets better so frustratingly slow that it is hard to appreciate the progress. I still wake up angry almost every morning, but I don't have as many days where it seems the whole day is one big panic attack.

The hard part is trying not be angry with myself for not being able to wave a magic freaking wand and making it all better. This is not a matter of being "weak" or any of the other incredibly stupid things ignorant people love to toss around. I have zero control over the panic attacks or flash backs, other than hiding out while I work on my therapy. It's easier to handle when you don't feel as though you are being judged.

People like to make sweeping assumptions about all sorts of things they know nothing about. Someone once said something like "Of course bad things happened to you, it was WAR." Oh, my bad. The army trains you to work as a team, and the team is trained to protect the whole team to the best of their ability. I had the same training, so it blew my mind when members of my team hurt me. I was thousands of miles away from home, the team was all I had, and I needed to be able to depend on them, and I couldn't. Believe me that kind of shit, will drive you crazy. War is hard enough, there is no "of course" about it, because nothing in your whole life can really prepare you psychologically for it except living it. When it becomes real, illusions will be shattered, fear and pain thresholds change, and you fall back on whatever you can to hold your sanity together until you either die, or go home.

You can not make sweeping generalizations about that kind of thing, and you are an idiot if you try. That is the truth as I know it, and having lived it, I would know. I also know that picking up the pieces are hard to find and put together after the war is done. It's hard to even recognize the pieces of yourself from before the war, because you aren't the same person you were before. I don't know if I will ever be close to the person I was before, because I don't remember who she was. I've got pictures of her, and I can't relate that image to who I am now.

It is hard to accept the illusion of safety once you are back home. Soldiers never take that kind of thing for granted after war. Even in your own home it is hard to feel safe. For some of us, it is hard to even PRETEND that everything is alright. Even in our dreams, when we sleep, we don't feel safe, because the dreams, the memories, the pain is still there. It really gives a hard new take on the phrase "You can't go home again". I read something somewhere that said something like "It is of the utmost importance to not have to worry about being shot in your own home." This is a simple truth, and it made me laugh. And cry.

Alexander

Once up a time I made a friend, in a country that was torn apart by war. We were soldiers, and very young. My friend's name was Matthew Alexander, and he was very young, not old enough to drink when I met him. He was from Nebraska. He was engaged to his high school sweet heart.

Alex always made me smile, even when I was miserable, frightened, and angry over the horrible things we saw. We saw soldiers and enemies die. We played Dungeons and Dragons in rubble in between missions, so that we could find something that felt normal. We told each other secrets, and we told jokes to make each other smile.

Alex went home for mid-tour leave and married his sweetheart. He emailed me pictures of his wedding. On May 6, 2007, Alex died. They took his body home to Nebraska, to his young widow.

I didn't know him for very long, not even a year. We both knew that we might die, I was too angry to care, but Alex just acknowledged it and tried to make me laugh. When he died, it broke something inside of me. My grief over his death is still as strong today as it was the day I watched his truck get blown to pieces with him inside. He was too far away for me to help him, and there was nothing I could have done to save him anyway.

He was a good kid, and he deserved everything that was good in life.

Curiously furious

The magic medication that made my nightmares stop, isn't working so great anymore. I've had some vicious mood swings, triggered in part by the VA's latest attempt to give me a nervous break-down. I filed an appeal of my initial disability award of 30% for PTSD. I've been living on around $500 a month for the last two years or so, and unable to work due to my disabilities. Specifically, my utter terror of leaving the house alone. They decided that the first year of my appeal they would bump me up to 50%, and for last year they would assign me a 70% rating. I've been alternately raging at the unfairness of it, and becoming resigned and depressed over the whole situation. Not only did I get a rating that would provide me income that I could live off of, but now I have to file a whole lot of other paperwork. Interestingly, every time I start to fill out the appropriate paperwork, I get a migraine within a few minutes.

In general, this has shot my plan of forcing myself to be optimistic all to hell and back. If my past history is any indication, my mood, sleep, and eating habits will be shot to hell for a few weeks to a few months, before I start leveling out again. Someone at some point diagnosed me with Major Depressive Disorder, and something that seems like paranoia which I don't fully understand. It all falls under the broad heading of PTSD anyway, and will not affect my disability rating.

Right now I really want to crawl back into bed, and pretend like today doesn't apply to me. Ironically, my Pandora just started playing "Somewhere over the Rainbow". Curious. The urge to break something has passed, and now I'm only tired.

Dream a little dream....

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

W.B. Yeats

What do you do when all your dreams are taken away, not given freely, but stolen? I haven't been able to forget my dreams, even though now it seems likely that none of them will come true. I've locked myself away in this tower for so long, that looking out at the world is frightening. Two years now, I've been too terrified to leave home and seek out my dreams or search for new ones. I could have done anything before this, I was capable of doing almost anything. I don't even know what to hope for. When I look at class schedules I have panic attacks. What is this? I am 29 years old, and I have no debt and I have a little money saved. There is nothing hanging over my head that should stop me except for these damn anxiety disorders. I can't leave my house under my own power. I can't be around crowds of people, or even walk down the street alone. I'm so confused, and I try hard not to think about it at length, because it makes my throat close up, and my heart beat too fast, and I lose control of my breathing, it's too hot, and I want to run, but where do I go? My chest aches, and now my head is spinning, and oh God where do I go to hide? I can't let people see me like this, I can't let myself get trapped like that, it's too humiliating. When the panic finally stops I start hating myself again for my weakness. I can't get anything accomplished, because I've spent half the day hiding, so now the depression starts. I'll just go crawl back into bed with my favorite blanket, and my teddy bear, and my gun where I feel safe, and rest until I feel better. As soon as I feel better, I'll get some work done, and everything will be fine once again. I end up sleeping for four hours, and the rest of the day has slipped through my fingers. I wake up with a raging headache from so much crying and I feel sick, and angry at myself again, and I just go on feeling like that until everything goes numb. Then I don't want to go to sleep at night, afraid of the dreams, the nightmares, or maybe just wanting to punish myself for being such a failure. Such a failure. I was a combat soldier! I served tea in a firefight, I did air assault missions, and patrols for two weeks straight with no rest, and these little freaking panic attacks are going to hold me back? What a weak pathetic person I've turned into.

For two years. That is what my life has been like for two years. So what dreams am I supposed to reach for now? Where do you go from all of that? I don't even recognize myself half the time anymore. So much time has slipped through my fingers. I've painted myself into a corner, and have very little choice about where to go from here. Try, try, try again. It makes me so tired to think of the future when even the present is almost unbearable some days. The therapists say that I'm not the same person I was before, and that is normal. They say figure out what you want to do and then make a plan. Every day take little tiny baby steps and before you know it you will be running again! Yah! What the hell do they know about anything? They only deal with theoretical situations. God only knows when they will get my brain chemistry sorted out again.

This isn't even as bad as it gets, and I'm pathetically grateful for it. When it gets really bad, I don't even bother getting out of bed. I just lay there and wait, knowing that every day I survive, is one day closer to dying. How bizarre that such a thing would be so comforting.....

Smiles

Since the beginning of my experience with PTSD, I have had difficulty making decisions. Even trivial decisions make me freeze up. I become overwhelmed with doubts, uncertainties, and sometimes even panic. I tend to abdicate any decision making to others. Or I make decisions at random without thinking about them or consulting others.

I spend quite a bit of time carrying on internal monologues to myself. I have to remind myself constantly to acknowledge my feelings but not to react to irrational thoughts or feelings. Some days it feels like I spend the whole day in one never-ending pep talk. It is exhausting. Therapy sucks. I work hard at being non-critical of myself. My life is so self-centric it is kind of ridiculous. I watch others working so hard to take care of me, and it makes me sad.

There are very few people who can grasp the magnitude of what I am going through, and I'm lucky to have people in my life who try so hard to help. I feel like I should be helping those wonderful people in my life more, but I always end up frozen in panic when I try to crawl out of myself long enough to make those kinds of decisions. If I commit to doing something and then fail to accomplish my goals, I end up punishing myself for that failure, which leads to days of withdrawal, depression, and fear of further failure. I have become a Master in the art of ambiguity. Everything is maybe. If I don't make a commitment then I can't fail. How is that for a defense mechanism? Reflexive ambiguity. Oh how the mighty have fallen! Ha! There I go again, time for an hour long internal lecture on the importance of being non-critical of myself, and not punishing myself for things I can't control.

I am being unnecessarily morbid about all of this. Unfortunately this is just how it is now, and I will eventually learn how to deal with it. No room for self-pity, and no taking any crap from judgmental internal voices. I will strive for objective neutrality in all things. I will fake optimism until the fake part falls away. Rah, rah, rah, go Team Me!

People are stupid, even me.

I'm wrung out and exhausted today. Lots of panic attacks and flashbacks. I spent most of today sedating myself into unconsciousness, because I exceeded the tolerable limit for stress. I can't stop thinking about it, all of it. I've recently discovered that I've been punishing myself for years, blaming myself for what happened. I'm generally a fairly self-aware person, and I was shocked when I discovered how morbidly furious I am with myself. It wasn't my fault, none of it was. It was a miracle I survived it. I'm tough. I didn't report any of the incidents which is, in part, why I blame myself. The other part was that I didn't fight very hard to stop it. I was too scared, and I was pissed about it. It was perfectly sensible not to fight off an armed attacker who is also a trained killer. I'm almost always trying to not put blame anywhere for what happened except with myself. It was war, people were dying with tragic frequency, and we were always on missions. I'm not an idiot, I know that everyone was under that kind of stress, and those levels of stress can and do make people go kind of insane. Not an excuse for rape certainly, but certainly justifies why I didn't try to maim and/or kill my attackers. It was not my fault. I was too afraid to do anything to make them stop other than cry.

It was a near constant close call with death for almost fifteen months. I was convinced I was going to die before the unit would be allowed to go home. I was so utterly convinced of it, that when nothing else could comfort me, the reminder that I was going to die soothed me to sleep. Sometimes I almost resent having survived it. The fire fights, the mortars, the IEDs, controlled detonations, the never-ending sexual assaults, the grabbing, the groping, the demands for kisses or other sexual favors, people dying, all of it was enough to really convince me that I was going to die. Or had already died and was in hell. Through all of that I had my job to do, and that was what held me together for the deployment. If I was going to die, then by God I would be remembered as a soldier who got shit done. It is even in the Army motto:

I am an American Soldier.

I am a Warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of the United States and live the Army Values.

I will always place the mission first.

I will never accept defeat.

I will never quit.

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills. I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.

I am an expert and I am a professional.

I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.

I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.

I am an American Soldier.

Ridiculous isn't it? I'd recited or heard this recited so often, that the thought never entered my head to tell the doctors that I was losing my mind because of what was happening. I will never quit. I thought it would be quitting, giving up, violating the oaths I'd sworn. Yeah, so maybe I was a tad bit brainwashed by the Army propaganda. That is what basic training is for after all. I certainly did the close combat part.

You know I hear all the time, you don't seem like a soldier. People definitely wouldn't understand being in Iraq. The truth is I was a soldier, maybe not a very good one. I had problems with authority, given the circumstances I had valid reasons. I don't give a tin shit about being the prime physical specimen, or even getting promoted. One of the reasons people can't see me as a soldier is because I'm a bright girl. I don't know if it is the bright part or the girl part that annoys me more. I have zero tolerance for idiots, and this I picked up in the military. Frankly if I could argue someone higher ranking into a gibbering puddle of confusion, then as far as I was concerned, rank not withstanding, I was the superior soldier. I went on my missions, constantly, sometimes going days without sleep, lugging 80lbs of gear around in 100+ degree heat for dozens of miles a day, and remaining coherent enough to perform my duties. So as far as I was concerned, my performance on my physical fitness tests were entirely moot. Maybe I didn't make a lot of friends in the military (partly because of that zero tolerance for idiots mindset), but I could charm the shit out of people to give me information I needed in order to save American lives, and perform concise and accurate analysis of that information in order to help my unit with their missions. So yeah, I don't seem like a soldier, but so what? I got a few medals, a few awards, saved a few lives. The last part was all that mattered.

At any rate it's all over now, except I can't keep pretending like things didn't happen so I can keep putting one foot in front of the other just to make it through the day.

How to avoid kicking puppies

Despite my very best intentions, I have fallen into the passive-aggressive trap. I have a bizarre resentment of anything that seems even remotely like an obligation. Disassociate is a dangerous pitfall of having so many psychological disorders. Lately anything that distracts me from the wide and varied world in my head, tends to make me want to bite someone's head off. I don't like being this pissy all the time. When you catch yourself yelling at a puppy for being a puppy and exhibiting puppy-like behaviors, you know you've got to straighten yourself out.

The VA has me on new medications, and one medication I take to treat my nightmares. Since I started taking it, I don't have violent nightmares. Instead I have passive-aggressive nightmares. Seriously. Instead of reliving all my worst experience every night in my sleep, my subconscious drops hints, or constructs parables. I actually get regular sleep now, which is a freaking miracle. Unfortunately, I tend to spend my mornings untangling the puzzles of my dreams, which leave a mildly disturbing after taste, that I can't shake.

I have a sweet faced and precious four and a half month old Corgi, whom I adore, when I'm in a half way decent mood. I really just want to yell at someone, or get in a fight, so that I can vent all this confusing pent up stress. Also so I will stop being mad at my helpless and adorable puppy. I resent fucking Christmas for crying out loud. It is exhausting being this angry all the time and not understanding why I am so pissed. Unfortunately for me, I am not in the Army anymore (I know that statement makes no sense if you've read previous entries), and I can't explode all over random people and pick fights to feel better. In the Army it's just par for the course. It is a dangerous mirage, that makes you think, if I could just hit something or scream I would feel better. It wouldn't really make me feel better, the guilt would probably just make me feel worse.

There is always this annoying voice in the back of my head that insists I should be punishing the wicked and saving the poor and downtrodden masses. I can't even save myself. It's the Army reaching out from the great beyond, trying to tell me how I should live my life. It insists that the worse my life gets, the more I should be trying to save the world from itself. Turn the music up, and tune it out. And don't kick the puppy.