It's wild, but I survived 6 years of civil war on the mission field as a civilian kid and young man. I've worked really hard since 1995 to grieve the losses from those times and come to terms with the nightmares and other anxieties I got from that war and its PTSD. Besides hundreds of hours in therapy and support groups, I wrote and published a book on this to understand it. Now today one of the leaders of the rebel side of that war resurfaced alive after being presumed dead for decades. He's doing TV and newspaper interviews! Wha---?!

This is a war in which 2 major battles were fought in my own neighborhood, killing my neighbor the father of my childhood friend and classmate at school. Now this rebel leader has returned as if from the dead, and he's starting to spread rumors about the war and people in my neighborhood, rumors that stir the pot of bad war memories for all of us. He was blamed for being a traitor after he was presumed dead, so now he's getting his revenge naming all kinds of people from my neighborhood as traitors.

It's really stirring up lots of ghosts and making us all revisit stuff from the past we thought we'd put to rest. Stuff I definitely thought I'd put to rest for myself. He's got the reputation of a liar, but he's naming names of people I know now as to who did what back then. Naming names in a way that just makes you doubt them just enough.

It's definitely stirring up the anxiety of PTSD in me. It's all over the newspapers and TV back home just when I was planning on taking a short vacation back home in July to South America to relax. Now I'm almost afraid to go with this media storm this Lazarus back from the dead has started up about the civil war in my home town.

Freaking out a bit, really. Anybody ever have someone connected to their PTSD past suddenly pop up in the present and rock the boat? I mean, this guy was behind a car bombing I survived, the murder of my neighbor, and the bombing a the bowling alley in my neighborhood (I know, what an absurd target for terrorism but that's what I mean....). Among many other things in 6 years of war.

Imagine, say, your PTSD came from a murder and a murder trial. You put it behind you, and then one of the missing players who should have been a witness at the trial shows up. Imagine now he says he was a witness to it all and the verdict was wrong. Imagine he stands the whole trial on its head now that we've accepted it all and try to live with it.

I go between hating this guy and having creepy feelings that maybe he's telling just enough truth to prove I've been a sucker living in denial for years. I'm caught between a rock and a hard place with this guy. Anybody have somebody from your PTSD case pop up and rattle your cage like this?

I've read where others here have mentioned their rapist getting off in court and having to watch them gloat about their "innocence" on TV. With no disrespect intended in case that analogy offends anybody, I mention it to describe how I may feel like you may feel.

I know when I mention war as a source of my PTSD it can really sound foreign to some who haven't been through it. But I invite you not to feel alienated from my PTSD experience if your own PTSD isn't about war. It's about PTSD and how we have that in common. I just want to say that now I feel like I've got POST Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Know what I mean? Post the Post Traumatic Stress. Talk about "Complex" PTSD. Geez!

Ah, PTSD, the gift that finds ever new ways to keep on giving.