Back to Reality

The last two months have been monumentally hard for me. Right around the time my husband came out of his funk, I was heading into my own. I was depressed, but more than that I was angry. I was pissed off at the world – pissed off at humanity.

People I didn’t know just had to look at me wrong to set me off.  I ignored friends’ texts and even deactivated my Facebook account because I felt like everyone around me was suffocating me.

I decided to take some time off from being social and just focus on me and my family. I made a point to exercise about an hour a day and focus on my studies. It took a few weeks for me to start feeling somewhat better and nearly a month to start feeling like myself again.

In retrospect, it was probably more about stress than the people around me. I had just reached my limit and needed time to unplug. Now that I’ve completed my degree, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders and I’m ready to get back to reality – to join the world and be social again.

The Funk

 

It's back - the depression. I felt it slowly seeping in after your VA appointment. Her attitude had made you angry and her lack of caring had pissed you off. All you wanted to do was talk to her about your PTSD, but to her you were just another appointment - just another vet to send on their way after answering her yes or no questions. You never even got the 5 minutes she promised at the end of your session to speak. So you left, even more closed off than you already were.

 

I knew it was coming, because it always comes in cycles, but she sent you spiraling. Now my word's fall on deaf ears and the blank stares and numbness are back. You don't want to do anything or go anywhere. You're worried she's going to take away your benefits and without them you'll have to drop out of school and find a dead end job to help provide for your family. The idea has consumed your thoughts.

 

It's unfair to have such a lack of instability; of unknowing. It's been two years since you've been medically retired and you've just now settled and became comfortable in your path to become a nurse so you can help other veterans like you. Now you're having to deal with the idea of it all changing..again. And to top it off, not even a week later the Army called about your re-evaluation of your TDRL and you may have to travel to Colorado, but they don't know when.

 

I just wish so hard that I could help and I pray everyday for God to show me how, but you tell me there's nothing I can do - that you will make it through just like all the other times. So I will patiently wait, holding your hand in silence waiting for you to come back to me.

Sports Therapy

To call my husband sports obsessed is an understatement. He watches ESPN during any free time he has, can spout off random stats of most players from nearly every sport, and for the longest time I wasn't even allowed to touch the remote on Saturdays. Even in the off season, or a night where nothing is on, he watches old games on the Classic ESPN channel.

 

This can get quite annoying when you don't want to hear whistles blowing, shoes squeaking, or cheerleaders cheering 24/7. Even more so when he ends up getting so emotionally invested in each game that he's yelling at the TV when the refs blow a call or a player makes a bad play. Things get thrown. Profanity gets yelled. (Not every time. This is worse case scenario.)

 

I use to really complain about it, a lot.  There were things I wanted to watch instead. He wasn't paying attention to me or our daughter. Stop getting so upset it's just a game.  It wasn't until someone brought up just how obsessed he was, because they were worried, that it dawned on me.

 

Sports is his therapy. It is his way of zoning out/clearing his head. It is his time to forget for a moment what he's been through and what he faces in the future. Why am I trying to take that away from him?

 

So this season, no more complaining. Instead, I'll sit beside him and watch the games and enjoy the time together.

Meet Me

Hi, my name is Amber. I am the wife of a medically retired soldier battling post-traumatic stress disorder. He was diagnosed six months after the birth of our daughter and the years since have been full of depression cycles, isolation, black outs, public blow ups, health issues, hyper-vigilance, and emotional numbing.

Not knowing how to handle a newborn baby and a husband battling PTSD, I did the only thing I could. I went on auto-drive, survival mode, and I stuck my head in the sand. I completely checked out of life and just focused on my baby girl; and for that I lost countless friends and upset family, but most of all I wasn't there for my husband.  

At some point in the three years since, I snapped out of my 'coma', but I didn’t become what I call proactive until an incident involving my aunt. My husband had posted a comment on Facebook as a response to people putting the flag upside down after Obama was elected and she responded that she was completely appalled by his language and preceded to break down his character by judging every action he’s ever done that she didn’t approve of. To make a long story short, she said his PTSD stressed her out and she cut him out of her life.

After that incident I immersed myself into researching anything I could regarding PTSD. While I found valuable knowledge and various therapies, I have to say the most eye opening of everything I read was how people treat veterans with PTSD. I realized it wasn’t just me and my family - it was happening to everyone. I wasn’t the only wife who felt completely isolated from not only her husband, but her friends and family too. My husband wasn’t the only one dealing with the backlash from family, friends, and strangers because they didn’t or wouldn’t understand.

After my epiphany I resolved to do whatever I could to help the families like us and to educate the people who didn’t understand. That is how I ended up here - in hopes that by telling our story and reaching out to other people in similar situations, like you reading this, to let you know you are not alone.