The recent suicide of yet another Marine I served with compels me to write this post. It’s a cliff-notes version of the concepts I describe in detail in my book, Continuing Actions, and I add them here in the hopes of reaching even one person suffering in silence.

Don’t Go It Alone

I’ve read an assload of books about PTSD and wrote two books detailing my own struggles with Moral Injury/PTSD that bestselling author and PTSD specialist Dr. Jonathan Shay hailed as valuable and important. In the end, I still needed to talk to someone and the Vet Center was there for me. Self-help is good, but don’t hesitate to talk to a pro.

The Negative Spiral

There’s a giant effing gap between being 100% ok and being all fucked up. Most of us fall in somewhere in the middle: We’re not actively self-destructing but are not doing as well as we could be. Thing is, those little niggling issues get worse if left unattended. They fester, grow, and spread to other parts of your life. We begin making poor decisions, cover up our pain, and push loved ones away. Our life enters an accelerating negative spiral where everything turns to shit and we’re left alone, hurting, and see death as an out. Does that sound like fun? Fuck no. So if you’re not doing as well as you could be yet keep telling yourself you’re okay, quick dicking around on the edge of the cliff and talk to someone. THERE IS NO REQUIREMENT TO RIDE THE NEGATIVE SPIRAL BEFORE GETTING HELP.

Getting Help is Your Duty

Getting help isn’t about you. Getting help is about being there for others. If you do the work to understand how past experiences are messing with your own life, you’ll be in a much better position to help others do the same. I don’t mean you’re gonna become a counsellor, although many Vet Center counsellors are veterans themselves. I mean that you’ll be better equipped to listen, really listen, to your buddy when she needs it the most. This is a situation where one person can literally be the difference between life and death. You would have, or maybe did, charge a machine gun to save your buddy’s life. This is no different.

Don’t Be An Ostrich

You don’t get to decide if you have PTSD, moral injury, or anything else. If it’s there, it’s there, and telling yourself it isn’t only sets you up for failure. Does ignoring a suicide bomber protect you from the blast? Nope. If you’ve got a little c-4-vested bastard sneaking around inside you, it’s best to take him out before he gets close enough to mess you up.

Time Doesn’t Heal Everything

PTSD, Moral injury, and a laundry list of other things don’t go away on their own. Ignored, they fester and grow. Even when you address them, they don’t go away completely. They’re part of us and the only choice we get is how much influence they’re going to have in our lives. Ignore them and they grow into monsters. Address them and you take away their teeth.

 

It doesn’t matter if you’re still serving, came home yesterday, or waded ashore in DaNang wearing a white T-shirt under your cammies: If you’re not operating at 100%, figure out why and do the work to fix it. Your buddies, family, and friends will thank you for it.

Looking for a place to start? Try the Veterans Crisis Line

Thanks for reading, and keep taking care of each other.

 

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