How Has PTSD Changed You?

Camp Books 122 rocket strike on bunker Tet 1968

(from the S-2 Report Newsletter by Dennis Latham)

How has PTSD changed you?

  I have long term PTSD. I don’t drink and I’ve never done drugs. I have to maintain iron control and always be ready to defend my perimeter. I’m most at ease around other combat vets. Combat vets are my extended family.

  I can’t go to bed until I’ve checked the perimeter and set the alarm. I refuse to be ambushed. My dog stays up all night on 100% alert. I would sleep a lot less if she wasn’t there to stand watch. When I wake up, I’m up fast and fully alert. I’ve trained myself to respond within a few seconds.

  Strangers are like objects to me. If threatened, I would try to avoid the situation, but would feel no regrets about taking them out because in my military mind they are not human.

  I couldn’t live in a crowded subdivision or in the city so I remain isolated. I don’t understand people who have never been in the military and don’t feel the need to have a weapon. I guess that’s a carefree way to live, but from my viewpoint, not very realistic. If something happens, they will be the first to suffer because they can’t protect themselves. I have a weapon within reach anywhere I go in my house: guns, swords, hatchets, knives.

  Before I was married and had heavy curtains, I taped dark garbage bags over many of my downstairs living room windows. I couldn’t sit in that room at night on the lower floors just knowing someone could see inside and possibly ambush me. I know this may seem crazy, but this was the way I had to live at the time.

  I’ve known others who are more extreme. I knew a Nam vet in Alaska who had a shooting range in his living room. I have a range in my yard. I like to go shooting with my Nam vet Marine friend Rocky. I feel comfortable around him.

  We all deal with PTSD in our own way. It’s unfortunate that many combat veterans deal with PTSD by alcohol and drug addiction. When that’s added to anti-depressants, often mixed all together, the results can be deadly.

  The worse thing I face with PTSD, despite thinking about Vietnam each day, is knowing that I’m a different person than I could have been had the war not intruded on my life. I look at the few old pictures of myself from before the war, and I don’t even remember that guy.

  I could see the change years later in the few pictures I had from Vietnam, taken well into my tour. I looked different. My eyes looked almost hollow, like there was nothing behind them or I was hiding something from the camera. I had changed forever. Time marched on, but inside, I still struggle to find the person I was before the war.