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I posted this under the hey, veterans thread today, but after reading it there I noticed I mentioned how helpful it was for me to post here this past July when I revisited my war battlefields overseas for exposure therapy. It was Memorial Day today, so I figured I would ask more directly for help here now like I did this past July. Thank you. Heres the post:
As everyone who knows me knows here at DS, Im not a soldier veteran, but a civilian veteran of the Uruguayan Tupamaro War of 1966-1972. One of those many Third World wars that seems to be sputtering along at any given time somewhere on the planet but doesnt get much press.
Much of the war took place in my neighborhood, so I saw a steady stream of close urban combat involving small arms, bombings, kidnappings, and torture. Over time all of those involved me. I went back to Uruguay this past July and visited my old battlefields on the streets of my town, emailing back here to DS PTSD as I went through my exposure therapy my PTSD counselor had me do. It really helped.
Im grateful I can come here and say what I just said above and be accepted. Today being Memorial Day it was a little hard for me in public. At work at the college where I teach, my faculty friends were in the mood to talk about war, naturally, given the holiday.
None of my colleagues present and talking at my lunch table today were ever in combat themselves. So they told of lot of those second hand war stories theyve gathered from movies, books, and hearsay.
I can usually handle my own war memories. I have a way of trying to choose just one to process when they return, which is in a series of flashbacks of something like that daily. Working on that one memory and processing it all the way through, I can reaffirm a lesson I learned from it all and make the memory make sense for me somehow. But with so many war stories coming at me at lunch today I got overwhelmed. There was also something about their being second hand stories that got to me, too.
People who havent been in combat have every right to talk about war as much as anybody else. I guess its just that they dont feel what they describe in the same way as those of us who have been in combat do. Second hand combat talk comes at me raw or something. I dont know. When Im talking to a friend who has actually been in combat its done in smaller more chewable bytes, to put it in arfies wonderful terms. Slower.
I just got overwhelmed with my combat memories from Memorial Day talk today, is what Im trying to say. I dont want to disrespect the holiday for anyone, I really dont. Its just that its hard for me to remember a lot of combat all at once sometimes on days like today.
If I offend anyones patriotism, I really dont mean to, as I consider myself patriotic, too. Its just that when I got home from work today I just kind of felt tired and sick to my stomach with too much war memory to process alone. I wanted to get it out here so I could move on and do a good job at work tomorrow.
My eyes are tearing up a little as I write this. Im really not a coward, thats not why, its not fear. Its sadness. Its just that six years of memories of constant combat are sad. It was just so sad, so tragic, so violent, so much war. So nonstop and so mean. By the vague ending of the war, both sides had fought so much and done so much to each other that everybodys ideals were tarnished. Those of us civilians caught in the middle lost our innocence, too.
God bless those who understand. Thank you.
As everyone who knows me knows here at DS, Im not a soldier veteran, but a civilian veteran of the Uruguayan Tupamaro War of 1966-1972. One of those many Third World wars that seems to be sputtering along at any given time somewhere on the planet but doesnt get much press.
Much of the war took place in my neighborhood, so I saw a steady stream of close urban combat involving small arms, bombings, kidnappings, and torture. Over time all of those involved me. I went back to Uruguay this past July and visited my old battlefields on the streets of my town, emailing back here to DS PTSD as I went through my exposure therapy my PTSD counselor had me do. It really helped.
Im grateful I can come here and say what I just said above and be accepted. Today being Memorial Day it was a little hard for me in public. At work at the college where I teach, my faculty friends were in the mood to talk about war, naturally, given the holiday.
None of my colleagues present and talking at my lunch table today were ever in combat themselves. So they told of lot of those second hand war stories theyve gathered from movies, books, and hearsay.
I can usually handle my own war memories. I have a way of trying to choose just one to process when they return, which is in a series of flashbacks of something like that daily. Working on that one memory and processing it all the way through, I can reaffirm a lesson I learned from it all and make the memory make sense for me somehow. But with so many war stories coming at me at lunch today I got overwhelmed. There was also something about their being second hand stories that got to me, too.
People who havent been in combat have every right to talk about war as much as anybody else. I guess its just that they dont feel what they describe in the same way as those of us who have been in combat do. Second hand combat talk comes at me raw or something. I dont know. When Im talking to a friend who has actually been in combat its done in smaller more chewable bytes, to put it in arfies wonderful terms. Slower.
I just got overwhelmed with my combat memories from Memorial Day talk today, is what Im trying to say. I dont want to disrespect the holiday for anyone, I really dont. Its just that its hard for me to remember a lot of combat all at once sometimes on days like today.
If I offend anyones patriotism, I really dont mean to, as I consider myself patriotic, too. Its just that when I got home from work today I just kind of felt tired and sick to my stomach with too much war memory to process alone. I wanted to get it out here so I could move on and do a good job at work tomorrow.
My eyes are tearing up a little as I write this. Im really not a coward, thats not why, its not fear. Its sadness. Its just that six years of memories of constant combat are sad. It was just so sad, so tragic, so violent, so much war. So nonstop and so mean. By the vague ending of the war, both sides had fought so much and done so much to each other that everybodys ideals were tarnished. Those of us civilians caught in the middle lost our innocence, too.
God bless those who understand. Thank you.
It is true that my youth is a big factor, too. I read somewhere that another term used for complex PTSD is "developmental" PTSD. That would certainly be true of my child development in war. I guess that's where that sadness at innocence lost comes in.
I appreciate how you take it that I mention the second hand war stories of others. I don't mean to act superior to them. It's just that is really is different when we discuss traumatic experiences amongst ourselves as those who've survived them.
I'm so, so grateful to be able to speak here. There's nothing like it.
Thank you.
I woke this morn to war stories on the history Channel, I fell asleep with TV on. So I have been drawing most of the afternoon.
My father was also treated foe what was then shell shock.
So my heart to all that are here, that felt pain in today's remembrances.