This article, from the NY Times, touches a nerve.
Even if you don't feel like reading the article, skim. Please. It's well written and researched. Unbiased, even for the TIMES.
I don't want to say this journal is for "mature" audiences, but I really don't want to come back and see people calling me names, doing hateful nonsense, and whatever. So if you don't think you can dedicate some time to think and empathize, perhaps this isn't the night to read this blog.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I should tell you, up front, that I have re written this blog about 10x. First, I said too much. Then, I said too little. I could never get the balence right. Because the facts were, and are, these: I live, and have always lived with, depression. Living with my father, violent alcholic that he is, made the depression worse with PTSD. And whenever anyone, it seems, hears these things, the following happens, like chickens laying eggs:
1. You should really forgive your parents.
2. You know your mother was probably very, very, frightenend of the situation she was in, and couldn't do anything; she can't really be held accountable.
3.What medicines are you taking? Are you taking them like your doctor tells you?
4.Your father is very sorry for what he did; he loves you very much; he just can't say it because he's afraid you'll reject him.
5. You should really forgive your parents.
Notice, notice here, right away there's an assumption that my parents, my parents are the victims. Not the responsible party. But the victims. The person listening doesn't have all the facts. But already, I'm to blame. I'm responsible for the family dysfunction. It's my job to solve the situation. Moreover, notice how I'm infantilized and juvanilized. Already, before I say anything, it's like I have to be talked to like a child.
I bring this up (and I feel my skin crawl with rage remembering these replies from people) because I wonder, genuinely, what some of our vets have heard in their quest to recover from the war. Faulkner wrote a short story where a soldier comes back from, presumably, WWI, and the man's little sister (she had to be 11/12ish, and he had to be in his 20's, the age where she adored him, and he dotes on her in a "You hurt her you SOB, I'll f**** kill you. Is everyone clear?" sense) persuades him to come to her softball game. Interrupting the very important discussion of what position she's on, who they're playing, and sis' editorials of the team, Mom walks in and tells her son that he has a date; he will be, from here in, "normal." Further, he has a job interview the following Monday at the hardware store, she's expecting him to get it. As mom apparently drones on, our protagonist realizes that there is a central numbness he feels since coming home; he is the sigular surviving member from his platoon, and the only WWI vet in this neighborhood. No one truly "gets" what leave in Paris was like; what snow in Germany felt like when your boots were filled with mud; or, alternatively, the welcome spring, and the summer! Our character, it seems, decides to leave the town. Out of curtosey, he will go out on the blind date, and of course to the softball game; but he can't stay here, not any longer.
I can't help but wonder if any of our current cycling veterans are living with this sense, or worse, what I often live with (being blamed, being shamed, being humiliated...). NEVER, and I do mean NEVER, have I ever had a veteran or a rape/incest/abuse survivor tell me I "should" do anything, especially in the way of forgiveness. Nor have I ever met a fellow recovering individual suffering from PTSD who has ever had clear answers on the "now." The past is so emotional, and the future so uncertain; living in the present is always...hard?
I know, for me at least, one of the things that will, at least for awhile, fill me with rage, is the reality that no matter what the facts are, people who work with my parents, are friends of my parents, or who simply prefer to not believe the truth, will blame me and defend them. I wonder if veterans today are living with this. If they are being told un truths and half truths and no truths. I wonder, really, if people are telling them to "get a grip" and "get over it." If people try to reassure them.
Because what gets me, is people get uncomfortable. So they say things that are worthless. Meaningless. Things that make them feel better, and hurt me. Things like "you really should forgive your parents." Things like "are you seeing a professional?" Or worse, I get treated like a child.
Even though I'm the one that suffered from their decision, I still get blamed for it. And so I'm trying to imagine what a vet must hear. Because, inevitably, people will try to do the same thing; they'll get uncomfortable, and try to say something that hurts you and makes them feel better. Something like
~"Have you gone to the VA?" or
~"Maybe you should quit drikning?" Or
~"Maybe you should see a therapist, or a psychiatrist?"
They're all great suggestions. But what happens when you're doing all you can and nothing's changed? Then, do the comments become the same? Because the comments become something like,
~"Well, why not get the meds changed?" To what? I can barely pay for the ones I'm getting; and the ones I'm taking make me feel so weak that getting up in the morning needs to be a Olympic medal round event.
~"Are you telling your doctor this?" What else can I tell him? Hey Doc, you know those meds you put me on the last week we talked? Yeah...NOTHING'S DIFFERENT! HELP ME NOW! I'M SICK OF BEING A HOSTAGE TO MY BODY! No one wins when I keep showing up at his office with the same complaints week after week.
~"Are you giving the meds/therapy/etc time to work?" How much time is enough? How many nightmares/flashbacks/panic attacks/etc are enough? Tell me. TELL ME. Tell me when I can go back to the dr and say "I CANNOT live LIKE THIS any MORE."
~"Are you sticking with the exercise plan/diet/sleeping scedule/ etc your dr laid out?"
I'm sorry, as soon as the MEDS and their SIDE EFFECTS wear off I can stick to the WHOLE of the PLAN that you so EFFORTLESSLY ENDORSE!
But I go back to my original question: Are YOU on this PLAN? Have you EVER been on this PLAN? You advocate it so much, you seem to know exactly how it works and where the holes are!
Overwhelmingly, people that have the most brilliant ideas about how to live my life for me 1) have NEVER had my problems--they've never survived incest, domestic violence, family alcholism, major depression, or PTSD. 2) have NEVER had to manage on going, long term effects of my problems--they have never had to face the personal, emotional, physical, and financial effects, on an ongoing 24 hour basis of what it's like to live in my world, in my body, in my psyche; yet they have no conscience about telling me how to do it. 3)Know very little, if ANYTHING about my problems--they have never directly or indirectly (as in a child, spouse, in law, et cetera) had to witness this life, and their experience is limited to TIME Magazine and reality TV.
As the VA struggles to face the reality that we need to fund those in uniform not just "there" but "here," too, maybe we need to face, universally, the fact that prevention is the best cure--and curing our myths, firstly, may be the best prevention mental health has, at all.