TALK ABOUT IT

For the first time in all history, soldiers are able to talk about the war instantly, while they are in battle, and when they are “behind lines” as they are in Iraq’s Green Zone.  This talk is coming from satellite phones, camera phones, the internet, blogs and web sites set up by soldiers doing combat time in Iraq.

This from the field talk is not only new and astounding, bringing families and loved ones into battle right alongside the soldier, it is a way of marking what the soldier is going through so people don’t forget.

Yet, the talk that is needed is going to be after the war is over and life goes on. This is where the deep meaning and the conditioned responses need to be understood and heard.

It may be that you don’t want to say a thing about the war. Or your part in it. Maybe you feel somehow disloyal if you say anything that isn’t “right.”

And maybe you think you are just fine, everything’s ok, and it’s the world that “sucks.”  This is the first stage of a reaction to combat, and might not be known to you as PTSD. For some people this stage lasts a long time. This reaction works as long as you can manage to have everything work out your way.

Maybe you do want to talk about it. Maybe you want to have help with this burden of knowing terrible things and having your heart ripped out of you even though you carried weapons that protected you as best as possible.

Be careful. You know that you have seen more than most people see or do in a lifetime. Choose what you want to say.

Those who love you most may not be able to hear your stories.  But don’t discount women. Women are no strangers to pain and suffering. And don’t imagine that men can bear it because they are men.

Even be careful with combat veterans of other wars. Just because they have been in combat does not mean they have settled their own problems. Some may want to impose their story onto yours, and still others might be critical because they didn’t have your experience.

Use your war-honed gut instinct to guide you, no matter how much you want to unload the pressure from within. 

• Link up with older combatants of earlier wars who have lived life after war, if you know any. They have had time to know the full range of combat’s impact, and it’s good to just to be around people to whom you don’t have to explain yourself. 
• Another way to “talk about it” is to keep a journal. Put on paper the images and thoughts crowding in on you. It’s one way to get out the tensions that might be building up. You don’t have to show anyone, and you don’t have to look back on what you wrote if you don’t want. Just keep getting it out of you. Don’t edit, don’t worry about punctuation, or anything that holds you up.
• Try organizations like the Veteran’s of Foreign Wars, Vet Centers in your area, other men who served in the same regiment, and anyone who has warred and who you sense has learned from it.

Talking about your combat experience helps you be real again. 

Talking about the war helps you grasp the reality going on inside you.

Talking about your experiences helps the carefully walled off parts of you soften enough so you can be open to life’s other meanings. 

Go as slowly as you want to, in talking to others.           

And what would you say?

Will you tell your mother that you killed no one? Or that you killed everyone on that overpass, in that house, in that ville, or anyone moving, anyone trapped, or everyone coming at you?

Will you talk about the mission, the strategies and the tactics? What it was like to be in a foreign country, what you liked, what you hated?

Take your time. So much has occurred. Your own story unfolds slowly even to you. Each time you talk with another about the images and memories, and feelings come back to you and you recover those bits and pieces of yourself that you thought had died.