(inspired by and based loosely upon Imogen Heap’s song The Moment I Said It)

He stumbles in drunk again. It’s 3:12am. I know because I heard him trip over the coffee table. Again. He starts cursing which wakes up the baby.

I quiet the baby and meet him in the hall. I do not yell at him or get mad because he woke the baby up. I’ve learned my lesson about that. In fact, I still have the bruises to show for it. I try to take him in my arms to comfort him, but he just pushes me away. I try again, in vain. This time, I get a slap across the face for my trouble.

“Why do you do this every night?” I ask.

“Because I CAN!” he yells back. “I don’t know why! Why do you have to question me all the time?”

“Because I love you John,” I reply. “I want you to get better.”

“There’s nothing WRONG WITH ME!” he screams back at me.

The baby starts crying again, but John doesn’t hear it. It’s only been 3 weeks since John got back from Iraq. Our baby was born February 23rd. His tour ended July 15th. Since he’s returned we’ve done nothing but fight. At times, I’ve woken up in the middle of the night and found him rocking in a corner of the living room crying. I wish I knew how to help him.

“You can’t fix me, Charlene!”

“Can’t I at least try?” I ask. “When you come home like this you scare me, John!”

“You don’t know the meaning of the word scared,” he snarls.

“Then tell me, John. Tell me what scared is.”

“Why don’t you just shut the fuck up and go back to bed?” he screams.

He starts toward me. I can see the rage in his eyes. This is not the man I married. Before he shipped to Iraq, John was the sweetest, most caring man a woman could ask for. Now, I don’t know who he is anymore. He scares me every time he gets drunk like this. John never used to drink more than a beer or two before the war. Now, he’ll easily down a fifth of Jack Daniels in a matter of hours.

“How many times have I told you to stop hassling me, Charlene?”

“I’m sorry, John. I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me.”

He take another step toward me and finally grabs me by the throat.

“How many times, Charlene?”

I can barely breathe with his hand so tight around my neck. He flings me into the wall. I slump to the floor bleeding from a gash on the back of my head where I shattered our wedding picture. I wait curled up on the floor for the beating I fully expect him to deliver. I see him pacing our tiny living room randomly smashing things as he mutters to himself.

“John, please. Please calm down. You love me, baby. Remember?”

For a moment this seems to get through to him. I watch him struggle with himself as tears begin to stream down his cheeks. His clenched fists start shaking at his sides.

“Please, John, let’s just go to bed, baby. I’ll comfort you. I promise. We can talk about what’s wrong in the morning, ” I plead.

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME!” he shouts.

The tears begin to flow faster now as his whole body trembles. I’ve never seen him this bad before. If he doesn’t get some help and soon, I’m afraid of what will happen.

In one quick motion he has the gun up and pointed at me. It shakes in his hand. I scramble away from him crying and screaming at him at the same time.

“John, NO! Please, NO, BABY! Please don’t,” I cry.

I’ll never forget how loud that gun sounded in our tiny apartment as it went off. Instead of killing me, he shot himself, not wanting to live with the turmoil in his head. The ambulance and police came a few minutes later to take him away and to get a statement from me. It’s 4:35am, I’m a widow and our child has no father. All because of PTSD and John’s pride.

One of my favorite Christmas tunes…

Let’s hope that the new Congress rebuffs the President’s plan to greatly increase the number of troops in Iraq next year. God knows those men and women deserve to come home. That would be one of the best Christmas presents ever.

By now, most of my regular readers know that I’ve had two family members serve over in Iraq. Fortunately, both of them arrived home in one piece physically. Unfortunately, their minds weren’t so lucky. Take for instance, Road Rage. The last time I saw him, which consequently was the first time I saw him since he returned, we were talking and he said something about his people skills being left on a road about 30 miles north of Baghdad. I haven’t pressed him on what exactly this means, but I can guess. Since he drove truck while he was there, it is probably safe to assume that his convoy was the target of an IED that most likely killed some of the guys he knew and worked with. Road Rage didn’t get his nickname by accident as he’s always been an agressive driver, but now it holds an entirely different, more truthful meaning. Anger is just one of the ways that PTSD manifests itself, especially anger for no apparent reason. I don’t know what happened on that day in Iraq, but I do know that it changed my brother in ways I could never imagine. The machismo that seems to be part and parcel of soldierly life tends to prevent one from getting the mental health care they so desparately need because many see needing help as a flaw or that they are less of a man or woman. My brother seems to be more capable than most at dealing with, or at least internalizing, the shit he saw and did while in Iraq. After all, he did pull over 20 years of National Guard service and had been deployed before. I feel he needs to get some help, but he’ll never admit that and neither will many of the thousands of troops that have served or are serving now in Iraq.

Now let’s take my other family member. For the time being, he will remain nameless here for privacy reasons. Having come from a similar background as I did, there weren’t many opportunities available for him. So, like I did, he joined the military after hearing the recruiter go on and on about how exciting and challenging and rewarding military service was. The whole Army of One speech. I’m not sure what his actual MOS (military occupational specialty) is but it’s probably infantry-related. He was assigned to a very famous unit in Army history. Fast forward a couple of months and he’s sitting in Baghdad going on daily patrols. One day, while on patrol, an IED gets detonated a few yards ahead of him injuring several of his platoon members. He was trained for this and reacted almost without thinking as he began applying combat first aid to his platoon sergeant. He ended up carrying the litter as another of his squad-members placed the severed arm of his platoon sergeant on top of the lifeless body now laying on the combat stretcher. All of this occurred before he even turned 19 years old.

Now, he’s been home for some time and is struggling with that incident. It repeats itself over and over in his mind’s eye all day long and into the night. He gets barely 3 hours of fitful sleep a night. He has broken up with his girlfriend over fears that he’ll end up hurting her. He, like many combat veterans before him, tries to drown these thoughts and memories in alcohol each and every weekend and most every night as well. For those of you who’ve seen combat, be it Vietnam, Iraq during Gulf War I, any of the lesser campaigns over the years, and even some of you old-timers from Korea, you know the hell this kid is going through. How do you deal with something like this?

Well, the first answer is to acknowledge that something isn’t right. Although I am not a certified, licensed psychiatrist or psychologist, I counseled him back in August shortly after he returned. At Thanksgiving, I counseled him again urging him to talk to his First Sergeant about getting admitted to an inpatient program specifically designed to treat the effects of PTSD. I’ve told him that he is by far the bigger man by admitting he has a problem and getting the required mental health care to deal with it. I also suggested keeping some sort of a journal to put to paper his thoughts and fears and recollections of that day in Baghdad.

I’ll see him again over Christmas and will again reiterate the need for him to get help. I can’t cure his condition, but by being understanding and talking to him about it, I hope to make him comfortable enough to get help. Most likely, he will end up being placed on medication to help him sleep and to alleviate the constant anxiety he feels. At best, he will be discharged and allowed to come back home. We have a VA Hospital here in Milwaukee that can provide him with some of the help he needs and I’ve opened up my home to him should he need a place to stay while getting treatment. While he’s at it, it would be good for him to get treatment for alcohol abuse as well. Drowning your problems with beer or liquor only takes the pain away for a limited time, but when the hangover comes, the problems remain.

It’s stories like these that will be Bush’s legacy when his presidency ends, be it by impeachment or end of term. These are the things that I hope will haunt him the rest of his life, not to mention the thousands upon thousands of dead and wounded Americans and Iraqis. Yet he will never know the pain of dealing with PTSD first-hand or having to adapt to using a wheelchair for the rest of his life because his legs were blown off in a land far away for a cause that was unjust and unneeded. He will never have to mourn a son or daughter or husband or wife the way thousands of military families do every single day of their life since their loved one was killed. All the little memories and reminders flood their minds each and every day. Bush will never, EVER, know what that feels like. He will never know what to do when PTSD hits home.

Hello again everybody. I’m back. No, I didn’t die. I wasn’t seriously injured, nor did anything else happen that prevented me from posting.

As those of you with your own blogs can attest, you just get tired of posting every once in awhile. So it was with me. I took a much, much needed break and spent some time with my family (something my wife tells me I don’t do enough of when I’m on the damn computer-her words!). Anyway, I’m back and boy if I didn’t miss a whole heap of stuff from the political realm. John Bolton, the Walrus, is boltin’ so to speak. Looks like with all the bitching moaning and complaining our legislators finally listened to us when we said he’s got the diplomatic skills of Tourette’s patient. Lots more has happened too, but you guys (and girls) probably know more about it all than I do.

Whilst enjoying my time off, I also missed an important milestone for this place here. My 2nd Blogiversary. December 5th was the actual day and I missed it. Good thing this site isn’t like a pissed off wife or I’d really be in the doghouse, eh? Speaking of wives, I did not miss my wedding anniversary on Monday. My beautiful wife and I have been married for 7 years now. All with no itch, too! Honestly I don’t know how she puts up with me at times.

So that’s the long and short of it concerning my absence. Didja miss me? I know D. did as he gave me a ring the other day just to make sure I’m still alive and kicking. It feels kinda good to be back. With Congress on break now and the Dems ready to be sworn in after the holidays (that’s Happy Hanukwanzmas to you!), January ought to prove to be a very interesting time. I look forward to slamming the fickle Dems almost as much as I did the Republicans. Hopefully they live up to our expectations of them and get some shit accomplished next year. So with that, I’ll end this little post here by saying thank you to all of you who were worried about me. It’s nice to know that people who don’t even know me in the flesh care.

 Bulldog