Watched a great documentary last night, one hour long, originally broadcast on "The History Channel." The documentary was "Vietnam: Homecoming," and I rented it on Netflix, in their instantly-playable section. They describe it in the following manner:
"This moving documentary follows Pervis Crowe, Stanley Parker, John Hedrick and Mike Cook -- who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder -- as they prepare to attend Operation Homecoming, a gathering in Branson, Mo., to help Vietnam veterans mend. Through poignant interviews, these anguished men share their personal stories of the pain and torment that scarred their psyches and forever changed their lives."
Good stuff. Because I've been privileged to have two years of in-depth, daily conversations with one suffering Vietnam vet, as well as having read his life story, mostly focusing around combat in Vietnam and its aftermath in his life as PTSD, which he sent me two years ago this week, I was astounded by the compelling similarities in what I heard on the screen with what I knew in real life.
Every veteran shared something meaningful. In the conversation illustrated above, a Vietnam vet and his wife exhibited typical conflict over, "you were only there for such a short time...how is it that you can't get over it yet?" frustration. As the wife said, pointedly,
"As your spouse, I don't want you to have to relive it. I want it buried. I just want it over with, and buried."
Unfortunately, that's not likely to be the case. She had "stuck by her man," -- whereas most of the wives in the documentary had not -- and yet, there were tremendous issues. In a suicide note this veteran had left, ironically with his combat brothers, he had mentioned how not only was he expecting to die, but also his wife and their daughter -- a fact that troubled his family members, not unexpectedly, quite a bit when they learned what he had said.
Another veteran, a black soldier, talked about how he managed to keep PTSD at bay until his daughter went off to college. Then his inborn conditioning that "if you get close to someone, they die" kicked in, and he became unrealistically fearful for her safety. At 50 years old, he checked in with what the VA had to offer, the first time he'd realized what an impact PTSD had made on his life, despite the decades of being afraid to get close to people or show his emotion.
Another Vietnam veteran, Marine, sat on his single bed in what looked like a hotel room, and grabbed his shaving kit of medications. This vet's "backstory" was that he was an entrepreneur, a businessman who created a company from scratch that went on to be worth millions. As he described it, he went from rags to riches, and then suddenly at age 50, he couldn't handle it anymore. The empire he built came crashing down, because his PTSD kicked in, and he couldn't run from it, couldn't keep it at bay anymore. And now he was single, marriage destroyed, dependent on pharmaceutical medications to keep his anxiety and sleepness at bay. As he sat on the bed, he took out large pill bottle after large pill bottle, filled with prescription medications, and described his dependence on each one, to help him sleep and help him cope.
I remember the second time I met with the Vietnam vet, Marine, who sought me out for help. He gave me his single-spaced, typewritten list of medications that he was on, 58 in a day, and I almost fainted. Some of them were just for the side-effects of other medications he was on! I was horrified, and sobered. No wonder he had an upset stomach all the time...
A year later, he was down to eight medications from the original 58. Gone was the pain patch, the Oxycodone, the night sweats, the nightmares, the muffled screams, the crappy sleep. Progress is possible. But it started, ironically, with listening to what the veteran went through. "No one wants to hear my story," he said. "They think I should be over it by now. I was only there for two years," he said, "they can't understand why it's the dominant experience in m life, and they're bored with it. Why can't I just move on?"
I heard echoes of that last night in the documentary, with the wife's question: "Why can't this just be buried?" I don't know if I have the stature to comment on this, but this is what I'd say. Honestly, he's not the same person you thought he was. War changed him; combat changed him. And if you can't accept that...you can't accept HIM. He's different now. And whether and how he chooses to show that, it's affected him to the core of his being. He can get better, and he can "improve," and be happier and healthier, by all external metrics...but seriously, if you don't value the core of what he experienced, and why it changed him...you are missing something very, very important. It's key to who he is. And if you wanted someone who wasn't affected by combat, well, that's not who you have right in front of you. It permanently expanded, and blew out, the boundaries of who you knew, and changed him into who he IS. And that is the veteran you can embrace, or not. The choice is yours. The experience was his (or hers). And he (or she) can share it with you, to the extent that you're open to accepting it. Be open. Work on it, if you're not. The payoff is immense. Because you will KNOW who the other person really IS.