It's called PTSD by proxy, and it affects more veterans than you might think

A lot of veterans may not even be aware they have it - or that there's help

In early 2003, my ship deployed for the Arabian Gulf with more than 1,000 Marines on board. Those Marines would march from Kuwait to Baghdad, and begin Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Meanwhile, myself and the other Sailors on USS BOXER (LHD 4) would sit in the Gulf, in a constant state of high alert, waiting for our turn to either enter the battle (thank God it never found us), or return to San Diego.

We knew, when we left for the Gulf, that war was coming.

We all knew.

What we didn’t know — what nobody could know sailing into harm’s way — was what that meant for us.

We didn’t know we would be safe throughout our six-month deployment.

We didn’t know we would have a chemical warfare threat that would — thankfully — turn out to be a false alarm.

We didn’t know we would be fired on; in fact, I didn’t even know we were fired on, until years later when one of my shipmates casually mentioned it to me over Facebook Messenger.

We didn’t know if any of us were going to come back home.

Most of the leadership on board refused to acknowledge, or address, the fact that we could potentially see combat — that we could conceivably die. Instead they lectured us about our duty, proudly proclaiming, “This is what we signed up for!”

(Spoiler: although we agree to die protecting our country when we enlist, most of us actually signed up for free college, or for the chance to see the world… most of us didn’t sign up hoping or expecting to actually go to war.)

My friends on the ship, most of whom were junior to me, told me they were afraid for their lives. I think I told them, “I understand,” or something along those lines.

I wish I had told them, “So am I.” But I’d already been in for four years, and it’d been ingrained into me that we don’t show fear… that in fact, we don’t show any emotion at all.

And yet, with each passing day, I found myself feeling more afraid. I was afraid for my own life, and for the life and wellbeing of my shipmates. And I was conflicted as to why we were going to war in the first place.

I was trying to understand why war with Iraq was necessary. I knew that President Bush claimed it was to protect the world from Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. And maybe it was…

But in my experience, very few people believed that was the reason.

I was so conflicted that I explored the option of conscientious objection. I met with my ship’s chaplain, who explained to me that I could turn in the paperwork, if I truly objected to the coming war… but the paperwork has to be approved by D.C. and the process would take longer than our six-month deployment… and meanwhile I’d have to deploy, anyway…

So I might as well just suck it up and finish my enlistment.

(Which, I ultimately did decide to do. After all, I had taken an oath… and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t honor it, just because I was afraid.)

The thing that got me, though, was that even the chaplain told me (in his explanation of why the war was necessary), that we need to ensure we keep getting oil from the Middle East… that it’s in America’s best interests… that we have to fight for the resources we need, and that they’re worth fighting for…

Which, at an abstract level, I understand and agree with — America needs gas and oil in order to keep all our lights on. And some of those lights are in hospitals, agriculture, manufacturing, cancer research… things that are essential to our way of life.

Where I struggled as an active duty Sailor was in knowing that to secure our rights to buy Arabian oil, we were going to war — and some unknown number of unwilling participants would die in the fight.

But, as an active duty Sailor, “Ours is not to question why.”

Besides, I don’t honestly know that was the reason we started the war. I do know it was one of the reasons the leadership was giving us. The other big reason was, of course, those horrible weapons of mass destruction… which, had that been as bad as the President was claiming, may have been cause enough to justify the lives that were lost. I don’t honestly know.

I grapple with those questions… but in the final analysis those questions are not for me to answer… so I’m gonna try to stick to what I can talk about: my experience… my fears… my thoughts and feelings as we approached the Gulf and war loomed ever closer.

I worked alone on my ship for most of that deployment. Sometime before we left the Gulf, I got a new chief… but for a long time, I was the only journalist on board. I had probably a dozen friends I interacted with on a regular basis, and as a journalist, I had a working relationship with dozens, if not hundreds more… and I swear to you I 100% believed that every one of them was brave, and strong, and determined to do their duty.

And I alone was afraid, and uncertain, and wishing we weren’t sailing into harm’s way… and I didn’t want anybody, on either side, to have to die.

The Navy teaches us to bury our emotions and to do what we’re told without question. And my emotions were in my face, every day, calling me by name, telling me I couldn’t handle going to war and that I wasn’t brave like everybody else was. And I didn’t think I could tell anybody else that I was afraid, because I thought it would ID me as “one who doesn’t belong.”

Like, look at JO2 Glenn, trembling in his boots… obviously he’s not really one of us…

So I didn’t tell anybody on my ship that I was afraid, or that I had any questions or doubts. I couldn’t. I needed to be like everybody else — and everybody else appeared to have it all together.

When I started waking up in my bunk, feeling unable to even get out of bed… I buried those feelings and I went to work… and I put up walls and I closed myself off and I did what I had to do to survive.

Inside, my mind was frantic and frenzied, panicking, screaming that we were all in terrible danger and were making a horrible mistake — but that part of my mind had to go somewhere else so that I wouldn’t lose it all, and have a complete mental breakdown in the middle of deployment.

That would’ve been a sure way to get an other-than-honorable discharge… and that would’ve been a fate worse than death, in my opinion.

So I put a wall between my panic, my fear, my insecurities, and my outward persona. I did my job, and I agreed with everyone else, and I said “yes sir” and “no sir” at all the appropriate times…

And meanwhile my heart was breaking and my mind was spiraling out of control… and there was nothing to be done about it.

When we offloaded the Marines, and they began their march into Baghdad, and our ship started “doing doughnuts” in the Gulf, my mental state got worse. Because now, we had nothing to do but sit on the water, waiting each day for who knows what to happen, not fully knowing what the Marines on the ground were getting into (and some of those Marines had become our friends on the way over…)

A lot of us went into a prolonged, heightened state of alert, expecting to face dangers and threats to our ship that, thankfully, never came… but there was no way we could’ve known that beforehand. For all we knew, each day could have easily been our last day alive. That this wasn’t our fate, made it that much harder for me to accept that it was the fate of so many soldiers and Marines on the front lines.

It didn’t seem fair, that when our deployment was over, we got to go home… and they never did.

The fears I’d faced so far, the questions I wrestled with on our way to the Gulf, the heightened alert while we were there… the reports we did receive on the ground efforts…

I was a shell of a man by the time we were ready to leave the Gulf, and return to San Diego.

We brought a new group of Marines on board, to take home with us. And I heard a lot of their stories — never enough to fully know or appreciate what they’d seen… but more than enough to feel everything they were bringing back, that their own leaders had taught them to bottle up, but that as a journalist, and an empath, was easy for me to pick up on, and try to take on my own.

When we left the Gulf… when we exited the Straits of Hormuz — the most dangerous passage we could go through in the whole Middle East…

When we knew we were out of danger… and my mind finally felt safe…

The moment they announced over the ship’s PA system that we were back in international waters and headed home…

My mind came out of high alert… and all the thoughts and emotions I’d been bottling up came rushing in all at once… and my first and only thought was, “We should all be dead for what we’ve just done… for what we’ve just been part of…”

That thought haunted me all the way home.

I was in the Navy for five years… and I tried to hide that fact from everyone around me for the next twenty.

Getting PTSD — but not getting it in combat, but instead simply by “hanging out in the Gulf where, it turns out, we were perfectly safe and no fighting ever happened” — left me deeply afraid, embarrassed, and ashamed.

I kept those shameful feelings to myself for the next 18 years, until I was finally ready to admit that something was wrong, and something had been wrong for a long, long time, and it wasn’t going to change just by ignoring it and waiting for it to go away.

I never wanted to face my trauma! After all, it was bad enough the first time around. It was so bad, I came home and immediately withdrew from the world around me, cut off almost all contact with my friends and family, and started passively throwing my life away… not exactly looking for ways to die… but certainly not taking any steps toward wanting to go on living…

The things I’d experienced, and the stories my Marine friends told me…

Nobody should have to go through that.

But I hadn’t seen combat, myself. I was never in danger, in all the time I was in the Navy. So I knew when I came home, that I was messed up, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit that the Navy — the war — was responsible for messing up. I just thought I hadn’t been brave enough, and I couldn’t hack it.

I blamed myself for getting PTSD, and I thought if anybody else found out I had it, they would blame me, too.

I couldn’t handle anything that reminded me of the war. I couldn’t say the words, “I was in the Navy,” because I knew if I did, it would trigger me and I would spiral out of control. I thought if I could deny that part of my history, it wouldn’t hurt me.

I thought I could keep it all bottled up forever, and that one day, maybe it would finally subside, and I could eke out a normal existence.

I thought I could just keep running, and that if I ran far enough, maybe it wouldn’t be able to find me.

I thought if I ever did decide to face it, it would overpower me and I’d never be able to recover.

I thought I couldn’t overcome it, and I was doomed to feel that way forever.

I was wrong on all counts.

Keeping it inside only made it stronger.

Trying to avoid it, or hide from the pain, only added to my duress.

Waiting for it to go away only made it that much harder for me to finally ask for the help I need.

At first, I thought I was getting by. I was trying to build some kind of life. I was talking like everything was great and I was gonna grab the future and shape it into something really incredible and rewarding! But I knew that was a lie.

When my whole world came crashing down, five years after I left the Navy, I knew that trying to go it alone was never going to work. But it would take me the next thirteen years before I’d ever think to apply for disability, and start to seek the help I really need.

Because of the way I got PTSD… and because of the way the military essentially ignored PTSD, when I got it… I never once believed it was the Navy’s responsibility. I had sold myself the lie that “I got PTSD because I wasn’t good enough to handle the pressures of war.”

Until very recently, I never considered that I got PTSD because I was subjected to prolonged conditions that no one should have to endure, and that getting PTSD is just what happens to people who go through traumatic events.

It had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with the environment I was in. The environment the Navy had placed me in… and then failed to identify and address, before I separated from military service and went home knowing something was wrong inside, but not being able to identify what.

When the VA came to essentially the same conclusion, and decided to award me full disability for mental health — what some would consider shameful or embarrassing, I consider to be confirmation that, yes, my experience in the Navy directly shaped my PTSD and my long-term mental health, to the point that I am unable to function the same way as somebody who doesn’t share the same mental health struggles as me.

It opened up resources, and possibilities, that weren’t available to me before.

I finally got into therapy to address my problems.

Having my own money again gave me the desire to move out of my parent’s house and reclaim my independence.

Acknowledging that my PTSD wasn’t a result of my own shortcomings empowered me to start to rise above it (as much as anyone can).

Struggling with my mental health alone, for so long before I went to the VA, and then experiencing the miracles I’ve witnessed since I started asking for help…

Gives me the knowledge and hope that I can help others who currently are where I used to be: stuck, miserable, alone, and with no hope of ever changing.

I know my story isn’t unique among noncombat veterans. But I think it can be harder for us to ask for help, because of mistaken ideas like, “Well I never saw combat, so I’m not as deserving as the ones who did.”

I have high regard for combat veterans. They took risks I never would’ve. They saw things I didn’t have to. I sleep safe at night, now, as a civilian, because of combat veterans.

Yet, every veteran is deserving of the support and help we need. If you signed your name, and swore the oath… you’re one of us. You belong. We’re all responsible for each other.

If you’ve seen combat, or if you haven’t… if you’ve got mental health issues that you know are holding you back in life…

You need to reach out for help.

You need to go to the VA (if you haven’t already), and you need to stay on them until they come through for you.

You need to build your own support system, of friends, families, peers, and professionals, who can help you through the dark days.

You need to stay connected to the world around you, and the people that you love.

You need to slay your demons, one by one… until you’re back to the person you were before the trauma.

We need you to get better. Your fellow veterans need you. Your friends and family need you. Your communities need you.

But equally important:

You need you to get better. You deserve to get the help you need. Lord knows you earned it! You need your fellow veterans to help you. You need your family and friends to cheer you. You need to know you’re a valued, needed member of your community.

You can have that… but you need to ask for help, first. Every person and every resource you need to get yourself back on track to who you really are — it’s all out there, within your reach, waiting for you to claim it.

You may have limits other people don’t.

You may face challenges most others won’t.

You may not ever have the perfect life you feel you’ve lost along the way. (But let’s be real, no one ever does.)

But you have a chance to improve. The potential to make tomorrow a little better — or, at least, a little less painful — than today.

Your fight isn’t over until your final breath.

If you want to change, you can. It’ll take a long time and a lot of help that you won’t want to ask for… but you can change, with help.

I know; I did.

I was in the Navy.

Twenty years ago, I didn’t want people to know that. I didn’t want to be triggered by the memory of it all. But that was twenty years ago. Today, I can talk about it freely. I can feel proud of the fact I served. I can hold my head high, secure in the knowledge that being in the Navy was one of the greatest things I ever did.

I loved being in the Navy.

It gave me purpose, direction, and meaning. I liked who I was in that uniform.

Denying that part of myself just because I got PTSD, just isn’t right.

I got PTSD in the Navy.

And for nearly twenty years, my PTSD controlled every decision I made… and I lost a lot of friends and a lot of opportunities because I didn’t know how to handle it.

But before I got PTSD, I was brave. I was strong. I loved the men and women I served with. I believed in what we were doing. I was the image of myself that I think my PTSD stole away, and that I don’t believe I’ll ever be again.

Allowing my PTSD to overshadow all of that is the biggest mistake I ever made.

I’m not “messed up.”

I’m not useless.

I’m not a basket case, completely gone, with no hope of ever changing.

That’s just what my mind wants me to believe.

But underneath that, I am the brave, strong, capable, confident, loving man I always was, before I got PTSD. No amount of pain or suffering can extinguish that part of me. It’s who I really am. I can’t deny it anymore.

You can’t deny it anymore, either: YOU are not your PTSD.

You don’t have to go on living the way you have been. Maybe it doesn’t ever go away; I don’t know. But, it can get better. You can turn it around, and you can do more tomorrow than what you think you’re capable of, today.

And you don’t have to do it alone. You can join my group, or one like it. There are veterans out there that want to help you succeed. There are resources and organizations dedicated to helping you succeed.

You’re worth whatever price has to be paid to get you healthy again.

To get you as healthy as you can be, so that you can turn around and help someone else… so that you can be an inspiration to your community, and a role model for your family. You’re worth it.

I don’t want to see you suffer, when I know real and lasting change is possible.

I can’t move forward in my life, if I’m leaving somebody else behind. As much as I can, I need to bring other people forward with me. I’m not going to stop telling my story until every veteran I know has all the help, resources, and support they need.

I hope I’m gonna help the veteran community tell our story. Because it’s definitely one that needs to be told.

I’m ready to make an impact. I’m ready to help somebody save their own life. I’m not gonna stop until the work is done.

You can join me here.

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