Post Traumatic Stress is a Slow Death

I feel the sadness and the pain, every second of the day.
I wish I could be like you, carefree and pain free too.

My stomach is tied up in twisted knots.
I remember the smiling faces on the little tots.

I see visions in my sleep, I dont want to be alive.
My defenses all around me seem weak, How will I survive?

Loneliness follows grief, every day of the week.
Stress is a slow death, consuming you from inside.

I have to be someone Im not.
Put on a faade, grimace with a smile that is not.

The sweat pours off me, as I hear the rounds hitting near.
My wife startles me awake, saying your only dreaming dear.

My heart is racing out of control.
My senses are heightened and ready to go.

But I really cant.
Its fight, flight or freeze.

There are days I want to die.
So many it would make you cry.

The drugs are eaten way too much.
The pain is still there, I feel out of touch.

I cant sleep without my pills.
I feel this is my ultimate bill.

I hate the words I understand.
Unless you where beside me every day.

Your life would not be good tainted this way.
I ask only for a bit of empathy.

Recognizing the terror in lands far away.
Theyre very real to me every minute of the day.

I scream out in the night.
I want to kill those demons I fight.

I dont leave my house at all.
I just stare at the wall.

If I could be like you, never tested never blue.
Maybe I would not understand, what its like to be this type of man.

The smell of death is thick in the air.
The corpses lying in a grave, thrown in make shift boxes without a care.

I disassociate to be like you.
My joking masks my sorrow and pain.

I feel disrespect, and shame.
Its driving me insane.

Sometimes to get back to reality I cut with a knife.
PTSD will remain with me for the rest of my life.

Thanks for reading Grant