Hanging Out With the Dead

It’s not always, or even that particularly often that it happens, but when it happens it is intense. I think everyone who has read prior posts on this site of shenanigans kinda gets where I come from, but for the others: Just read on.

Last night was another such instance where I was hanging out with old friends in my dream and we were having a great time. I recognized many people from different times of the past eight or so years and we were all having a great time. Now this is where it gets strange; usually I interact with the people in the dreams, but I couldn’t this time. One person who was silent and inactive was my friend Karl; he died from heart failure the morning my youngest son was born. It was sad moment in a joyous day.

Karl was sitting in a chair and he looked like a hologram of dark light and looked like he was wearing a mask of some sort. It looked like a version of a fighter pilot’s mask and he was also wearing his body armor from the Army for some reason. Before he died, he was out of the Army for a while, but in the Army is the last time I saw him. I have never met or spoken to his parents, but they were there.

Everyone else was having a blast drinking and smoking and whatever else. Music was playing and for some reason there was a truck in this place. Karl’s father, whom I have never seen even a picture of, was sitting in the bed towards the cab. I walked up to him and shook his hand and tried to tell him who I am and that I missed his son. I didn’t even get the words out before I began to sob and quiver. Even now it is strange to me that I am somehow sad about not seeing someone that I once knew, but may well have never seen again. Is him being gone such a travesty or just something I am stuck on for my own reasons? I have no idea.

This type of thing happens from time to time, but this time was unique because my lost friend was not talking to me or doing anything for that matter. He sat in a wooden chair, wearing body armor and a grim-looking mask that covered his whole face; I didn’t even SEE his face, but still knew is was him.

Then comes reality in the morning and it hurts less knowing what is and what isn’t. I forced myself to concentrate on the road and not the prior hours. Just another senseless posting here… hope it was worth the effort.

Whitewashing Over Mental Illness

When I came back from Iraq in September 2005, we were sent through a series of redeployment screenings. The most horrific of all things I witnessed of the red tape while in the Army was the way they herded us through and passively suggested we lie about our conditions. They rewarded those who lied and "checked the block" let them go home earlier than those who told the truth.
The test was one that asked a series of questions that relate to what we had experienced the previous year. We were infantryman and they were treating us like Girl Scouts; if we did what they said, we got a reward. I was among the few who got no reward due to my truthful nature.
I had, and still am without, no shame about telling a stranger about what I did. I committed murder in the name of freedom. I pulled innocent people from their homes because we were terrified that they may be bad. I helped make enemies out of people who just wanted to go about their lives. Men whose heads had been cut off had been blown up, from IEDs under them, when family went to retrieve the body; these horrors are commonplace in war in my experience.
When we rounded up the men, we treated them like cattle; ultimate hypocrisy on my part in that I would never let people do to me what I've done to others. We did it to protect ourselves, and sometimes we may have been right, but more often than not we were recreating the horrible events that the nazis did in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s. The pleas of the old men are haunting, just as the screams of the children as we took away their fathers and brothers.
Back to the screenings: those of us who answered truthfully about what we did, saw, felt and experienced while we sleep were kept there for several hours more. We had to speak to a series of counselors, social workers and a chaplain. we were the bastards who told what we saw.
The next part is how they asked us to explain away our nightmares, flashbacks, violent tendencies, suicidal thoughts and murderous dreams. I answered "yes" to the question, "in the past two weeks, have you thought about hurting yourself or someone else?" The person whom I spoke with later was happy to remove the red flag once I told them my logic; I may imagine it, but it doesn't mean I'm really going to do it. She was happy to do this with every red flag on my sheet.
Over the course of the time, they managed to get me to explain all my symptoms away and suddenly, according to my medical records, i was 100% fine and dandy. Of the men who were made to take this same course, three are dead today. One sought out death by repeated deployments and two others took their own lives with firearms. The point is that they should have been more prudent with the data given on testing.
The modern stigma that exists about soldiers seeking help is one of the worst ones that can exist. The men and women who are experiencing bloodshed and who are taken from their loved ones deserve to be looked after. Instead, we get wrung out like a sponge and promptly discarded.
I found out about the extent of the cover-up when I went to the VA (department of veterans affairs) after getting out of the service. They told me that I had no evidence of having nightmares, flashbacks or of being hyper-vigilant. This shocked me and was only taken seriously once they interviewed my wife. She told them how I am, which may not be so bad most of the time, and how I manage to wake up screaming or gasping from time to time.
While few people will read this and do anything with it, those who have loved ones coming back from war or who have problems now, will know how serious it is. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is as deadly as a round from an AK-47 or an IED. If you know someone who suffers from this disease, be there to listen to them. Also, don't be scared to act.
In August of 2010 a man, who used to be a soldier of mine, killed himself after he was refused psychiatric help. He wanted to see his daughter after a year-long deployment and his ex-wife insisted upon getting counseling. He tried....