SICK WITH WAR

Today I would like to talk about something very personal. When I returned from Iraq the first time I couldn't sleep. I had this crazy lurking fear that something would happen to my family. Without a weapon I felt naked. After I came back I began carrying a knife on me at all times day or night. It was because I was so paranoid that something bad was going to happen to my children or wife. Tara my wife never called me crazy, ever. She would just talk with me about my fears. She would catch me sometimes, crying or just sitting there for a very long time staring with unfocused eyes because I was lost in one of my war memories. She never pried but waited until I was ready to talk.

When she would see me totally break down she never judged me. Instead she would sit on the floor next to me and just hold me until it passed. I felt so ashamed because I knew that none of my friends from combat were weak like that. They held it together. I told my wife this and she told me how one of her best friends' (a wife who's husband had been in Iraq with me) husband was going through the same thing as me. He and I never talked about it, but just knowing that he was dealing with it like me made me feel better inside. It made me less of a freak.

I drank a lot. I would drink to make myself pass out so that my nightmares would go away for a while. My wife never judged me; she would only stand by my side and tell me how it worried her that I was keeping it all in and drinking so much. After a while I stopped drinking like that and would instead talk with her about my thoughts and memories.

She has heard every gory bloody detail about the war as I saw it through my eyes. I told her of the worst things I had seen. I hated myself and was sick with war. Even after hearing the most horrible things she told me how much she loved me, and I began to love myself again.

I had tried talking to a doctor about those feelings and memories and how they had affected me. He told me that it couldn't possibly be PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) because he had seen some soldiers come home and they had attacked people or had done illegal things. He said that since I didn't do those things that I had a sound mind and was ok. I guess I went to him for the wrong reasons, it wasn't a crazy mind that I was suffering from, it was my shattered soul.

There were things that I had seen and participated in that I could never take back. My wife was there for me every step of the way. I don't know what else to say but that she is the best friend I have ever had. She is a damn fine woman and a strong and wonderful mother. My wife has never been over here in Iraq, but in her own way she has seen war. She has helped me put those shattered pieces of myself back together, and I love her for it.

I love you Tara