Dealing With PTSD as a Veteran (and other random shit)

I was speaking with someone recently about all the stuff I do and how I am. He pointed out that he felt that I had almost two “personalities”….. not in a bad way like you’d think though.

He pointed out that while I have a gruff exterior and can be somewhat off-putting, that I also do other things like cooking, sewing, bread making and other things. To an outsider I suppose it looks like a dichotomy. But I explained to him that where he sees a dividing line I see it as a continuation. His wife actually hit the nail on the head when she said it was an “evolution”.

Let me explain it a little if I can. I was diagnosed with severe PTSD years ago by the VA. I fought against the diagnosis fairly hard because of the connotations that come with this label. To my thinking it evinces weakness or mental instability. That I’m “broken” and in need of being fixed somehow. No…. This is not factual at all. It simply means that I don’t fit into the social norms of society today. What many people consider acceptable I do not. It means that I see things differently than the majority of people in general.

The reason that I do so many different unrelated things is to keep my mind occupied. I’ve found that over the years if I don’t stay busy with positive thoughts, my mind goes into some pretty dark places. And dwelling on dark thoughts can spiral down into depression and anxiety for me. I don’t want to be like the typical veteran and be medicated into being a zombie. That’s not living. For years I was a borderline drunk. I thought that I could just drown out the noise in my head but that only lead to more problems with my health. I had a strict policy of no driving while I was blitzed and I felt this was acceptable — but it wasn’t. So I ended up going the other direction. I started getting busy with everything and anything that I felt remotely curious about. That’s why I started studying and learning to build things. I had spent my entire young adult life perfecting destruction so I got busy learning how to create. I don’t see it as doing penance — it’s just to keep me thinking about other things.

So here’s my question to other vets. What are you doing for yourself ? Instead of sitting on the couch and watching your life swirl around the proverbial drain and into the bottom of a bottle — what are YOU doing for yourselves to avoid that blackness ? Some vets go to counseling and it works for them. Others take the drugs that the VA prescribes. There’s nothing wrong with that at all if it’s working out for you. But in my case none of that worked for me. I got tired of going to meetings of the “Crying Veteran’s Club” as I’ve come to call it. You show up in a class, or these days it’s on a Zoom meeting, and you listen to the garbage these other guys are spewing. And the counselor has you doing breathing exercises or some other anger management foofey crap. There’s so much negativity in those sessions and to be honest — every single one of them I ended up at only served to make me more angry. It just fed the bad emotions that I was having and just made it worse.

When you look in the mirror when you wake up in the morning and you’re not happy with what you see, it’s time to reassess your life. It’s not about worrying about the legacy you leave behind in this world. We’re all going to be forgotten within a few years of passing way. It’s about what you make of the life you have right now. It’s about learning to do new things and being as self reliant as you can in as many small ways as you can. You can bitch and moan about how life ain’t fair and you deserve better, or you can go out and do something productive to make your life better. I got a news flash for you. There’s nothing fair in life. You are not owed a thing. You are not more special than anyone else. “Fair” is that thing that comes to town in the Fall of the year and sometimes they have neat little rides you can get on, and little games to play.

Your life is what you make of it.