Why so little…

 

Time. 

It’s real

And it’s constantly ticking away.  In the last few months I’ve completed two months of group therapy at the Vets Center. It was based on creative writing and it was incredibly insightful for me, and gave me some credibility in my own mind. 

After all, in the back of my

Head for 30+ years has been a feeling of not being worthy of feeling traumatized and heavily impacted by my Navy experience. A previous girlfriend who I opened up to once about PTSD responded; “how can you have that? You were never in a war.” 

It was then I realized #1, she did not understand me, and never would. But it also reinforced that fear, that I had no business seeking help. I wasn’t ever in combat, I never faced kill or be killed. I was in fear for my life more than a few times, as well as in the middle of unfortunate events where people died, but in none of those was anyone shorting at me. 

In group we had veterans of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and me. 

In one writing assignment we wrote about how we wish our thematic experiences had turned out.  

I wrote about being deployed as a rescue swimmer to a pilot who had crashed and how I used my training to calm the pilot down, get him to allow me to pull him to safety.  My last line was something along the lines of, I never had the chance to use that training.  Of all the times I was deployed in the water, not once was I able to engage a survivor. 

I never got to use that part of my training on how to deal with an upset, injured, angry pilot. Never. 

The Vietnam veteran, a Marine who had described seeing some of his friends vaporized by mines and artillery, looked dead at me, and said, “wow, that sucks, and that’s gotta be hard.”  When he said that I got emotional, it was, for me, kind of an acceptance into the brotherhood of military PTSD. 

To feel accepted and be validated by these guys, was truly overwhelming.  I could finally accept for myself  that what I was experiencing was valid. 

Why do we do that to ourselves?  Why do we question our right to feel a certain way? 

I don’t know why I did. 

But I know now, I don’t have to question it - I am allowed to feel however I feel.  Whether validated by brothers or not. 

It was yet another step in this journey. 

Every day is, but with this knowledge each step can be a little more productive than the last.