Stressing Out

THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN MILITARY personnel have been killed in combat since nine one one, mostly of course in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Taliban, emulating the North Vietnamese, have simply been awaiting the inevitable American withdrawal to retake what they consider to be their country. Four times the number of combat deaths have been self inflicted violence, suicides. Th epidemic of suicide among service personnel and veterans has been ongoing for decades, in fact since the nation's inception, unspoken, shameful, hidden. Like General Sherman said: "war is hell", even when its over. At least one million American soldiers have died in combat in American history more than that have died by suicide, victims of accumulated anxiety from exposure to never ending nightmares. The term "PT which continuously ravage the American west create the same problem; heroes torn apart emotionally by unendurable conditions. The resulting high rate of self destruction , the last resort of people subjected to endless misery, creates depression, an endless black hole for a future, and.....death. Folks brainwashed into  an impossible to maintain strength by a hyper masculine culture of self denial, a tough guy culture of make believe imperviousness, produce the depression, the silence, the withdrawal, the unwillingness and incapability to seek urgently necessary pyschiatric assistance...eventually... inevitably break, alone. I spent three weeks ten years ago digging through the rubble of the remains of a mid sized city destroyed by a super, killer tornado, yet another gift of human made climate change. A hundred thousand of us volunteered to endure the nightmare. One day I became dehydrated and depressed, and lost; with no street signs and nothing but unrelenting ruins all around me, I had no idea where I was, in the ninety five degree heat and humidity. My cell phone rang, in my pocket, with an inane, lilting tune.  It was the principal of the high school where I was teaching, asking me about my "vacation", which I had abandoned, unbeknownst to him. "How in the hell am I doing?! I'm standing in the middle of a pile of rubble, lost, hungry, thirsty, alone, lost, and I can't see another person , anywhere! How in the hell do you think I'm doing?!".......I'll check back with you later, he said. have a nice day. Later, back home, I began to notice that I was behaving strangely, hiding under my bed at the approach of a cumulus cloud, my short term memory gone, wandering around the grocery store for an hour without putting anything in my shopping cart, then getting home and discovering that I had shop lifted, a can of tuna in my pocket. I knew I needed help. The psychiatrist gave me extensive testing. Then he told me that, no, contrary to my suspicions,  I am not bipolar but the bad news was that I had the worst case of "PTSD" of anyone he had ever treated who did not serve in Afghanistan. My two choices were extensive psycho therapy, or, as he put it, to "man up". It was much less expensive to man up.