Good afternoon and welcome to the Veterans Day celebration. I was thinking the other day that when I first started college that it was my goal to remain invisible, do my time, get my papers, and be discharged. Never in a million years did I think that college would have been a life altering experience and that I would finally come into my own. With that being said, it is a great honor and privilege to address you today.
November 11th was initially known as Armistice Day to mark the day that hostilities temporarily ceased during World War I. The truce occurred on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, and, since then, November 11th was meant to honor and recognize the Veterans that served during the war. After WWII, the name changed to Veterans Day in honor of all Veterans. Veterans Day is a day of celebration to honor America's veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good.
Although many recognize the bravery and sacrifices that men and women made while in the service, they tend to forget about the sacrifices that veterans still make on a regular basis, sacrifices that still haunt us due to the trauma we’ve witnessed while serving our nation. Some of us have never been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, but the lack of diagnosis does not negate our suffering.
PTSD carries a certain stigma. Active duty members fear getting help because they are scared of how the diagnosis will affect their military career. Veterans fear the diagnosis because they are afraid that it will prevent them from getting certain jobs. The only time it’s really mentioned in the news is when a person suffering from PTSD does something horrible that can be blamed on the diagnosis. It’s difficult to talk about the trauma we’ve witnessed, even to those who are close to us. I’ve suffered five traumatic events in my life: one at the age of 5, 6, 9, 11, and 32. Most people don’t know what the traumas were; they just know that they affected my life. Over time, I realized that there was only one constant in my life: functionality. It’s all I know.
I believe that functional is something that we all learn how to become. We do what we have to do to make it through the day, never really letting people know who we are. We may share a detail or two, but we never let people in on the things we have witnessed because we don’t want them to be tainted with the same visions that haunt us. We get used to hiding whom we are in order to survive, and sometimes we are required to do that within our own families. I’d like to share a poem that I believe conveys what I am trying to say: “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To Thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh, the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask.
There comes a time in life when we have to drop the mask, quit hiding who we are, and open up and allow people into our hearts and minds, a time when we must look past the pain of our own experience and share with others the healing that has occurred. The only way that I know how to do that is to share the experience itself. Outside of writing and counseling, this is the first time that I have shared this info, so please bear with me.
July 30th, 2008. I stepped out of the weapons barn, assaulted by the blistering, desert heat. I scanned the terrain, looking for remnants of the latest bombing. Mountains surrounded us; they appeared barren from afar; however, they were densely populated with puny trees. Thick, black smoke drifted into the air. It was outside the wire, roughly twenty-five minutes away. I pointed out the smoke to my colleague, a search and rescue specialist, and he said, “It’s probably someone burning tires. White smoke is natural; black is manmade.” We returned to our duties, loading the day’s ammunition.
Moments later, tires screeched, voices shouted, and we ran out to see what the commotion was about. We raced across the desert floor. There were no roads or at least none we could find. Therefore, we followed the smoke. We plowed down anything in our way. We launched over ravines, crushing the frame of our Humvees. I was the lone medic with three search and rescue men as part of my crew. There was no immediate help. We were it, the only ones available for another forty-five minutes. We followed the smoke, the thick, black smoke.
The plane crashed into a gorge on the other side of the mountain ridge. We skidded to a halt, teetering on the edge of the gorge. We grabbed our gear and rushed down to the crash site. The air was thick with JP-8, hydrazine, and smoke. My lungs seized, and my vision blurred, but I still searched for signs of life. We found the cockpit seats about twenty feet in front of the plane, and the pilot was still strapped into the forward seat. Amidst the fuel vapors, smoke, and the flames that ravaged his body, I saw his arms flail in the air; I heard him scream over and over. We tried to find a way to get to him, but we were ordered to stand down. His arms continued to flail about. His screams pierced my ears. And I did nothing, could do nothing. I fixated on that scene and saw and heard the same thing night after night after night. I only knew of one way to drown the noise, so I drank.
A month had passed before I heard the results of his autopsy: dead on impact. The two-thousand foot drop crushed every bone in his body, and his lungs exhibited no signs of smoke inhalation. There was no way that he could have screamed or flailed about. But knowing that truth did not change what I saw and heard. I’ve carried the guilt of that day for five years, always wondering if I had defied orders and gone in to save him, would he have survived.
The events of that day altered my life forever. I realized the other day that my focus has always been on the one I couldn’t save and never on the one that I did. We found him walking around aimlessly looking for his friend, the pilot. While attempting to triage him, he kept insisting that he was fine and that I should be out looking for his friend: “Did y’all find him yet?” he asked. I turned away, took a deep breath, and looked back at him: “No,” I said. “They’re still looking for him.” I turned away, trying to keep my composure. “You alright, Sarge?” he asked. “Yeah, just smoke and dust burning my eyes,” I said. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his friend was dead, that he was still strapped into the burning wreckage, and that I couldn’t save him. That was the second hardest thing I had to do that day, lying and pretending that I didn’t just witness a man burn while he screamed and flailed about.
I’ve always taken great pride in the fact that I’m a survivor. I have been for five, ten, twenty, thirty years now. The images that haunt me—well, I force them down, burying them where I think they belong. Over time, the pain dulls. Functionality is all I know. I learned to categorize my emotions, file the ones I didn’t need, and only use the ones that were a necessity. I learned to laugh and smile at everything and nothing so no one would notice the emptiness within. The drinks kept coming and the laughs kept rolling. It wasn’t as if I drank before work to make it through the day—well, at least not all of the time, just on the really bad days. I've seen too much trauma for such a short life. But I’m a fighter. I’m strong. I can push it down. After a while, I pushed it down so far that I never felt the pain again.
It had been a year since last he screamed for me. It was the year before my father died. I no longer had the urge to drink to block him out. I found a new avenue to deal with my pain. I began to write. The more I wrote, the more I began to awaken to the emotion buried within me. Under the guidance of my mentor, I wrote stories about the trauma that haunted me. Writing helped me rationalize the events. I was finally able to understand that he was dead, and it wouldn’t have mattered had I defied those orders. But still, I know what I saw. I know what I heard. The guilt of his death weighed me down for years, weighed me down to the point where I was as dead as he was.
It was not until the death of my father that I saw him again, that I heard the plane overhead, and that I woke from a dead sleep to the strong smell of smoke. The death of my father brought back the guilt and visions associated with the plane crash, as well as the flashbacks from the trauma I had sustained earlier in life. Fragmented images bombarded my mind and everything began to blur together—thirty years of trauma all at once. It was too much to bear. I contemplated dropping out of school and found myself sinking into a depression, a place I knew well.
It was my mentor who first recognized my descent into hell. She finally convinced me to seek counseling. Although I didn’t really want to go, I respected her enough to at least try. The last year has been the most difficult and painful in my life. We lanced the psychological wounds, and the pus began to drain. Over time, the infection slowly dissipated. We’ve peeled back the layers of my memories one at a time and examined my thoughts and feelings. It didn’t matter how much we examined though, the guilt was still there. It was not until recently that I finally released myself from the guilt. After witnessing another veteran breakdown, my heart broke for him because he blamed himself for things that were out of his control. Later that night, as I drifted off to sleep, a revelation occurred. I realized that, just like him, I was not to blame either. The guilt I carried like a badge of honor was not mine to own. I also realized that by assigning guilt to myself, I have dishonored the memory of the dead pilot by negating his bravery and sacrifice. I had to ask myself, is it more honorable to own the guilt or to celebrate the life he led?
It was my mentor who first recognized my descent into hell. She finally convinced me to seek counseling. Although I didn’t really want to go, I respected her enough to at least try. The last year has been the most difficult and painful in my life. We lanced the psychological wounds, and the pus began to drain. Over time, the infection slowly dissipated. We’ve peeled back the layers of my memories one at a time and examined my thoughts and feelings. It didn’t matter how much we examined though, the guilt was still there. It was not until recently that I finally released myself from the guilt. After witnessing another veteran breakdown, my heart broke for him because he blamed himself for things that were out of his control. Later that night, as I drifted off to sleep, a revelation occurred. I realized that, just like him, I was not to blame either. The guilt I carried like a badge of honor was not mine to own. I also realized that by assigning guilt to myself, I have dishonored the memory of the dead pilot by negating his bravery and sacrifice. I had to ask myself, is it more honorable to own the guilt or to celebrate the life he led?
I’ve learned a lot about myself the last year, one of those things being how strong I truly am. I realize now that the strength I always claimed as my own is a fallacy. Forcing things down in order to make it through the day is not strong. Numbing the pain until the point of death is not strong. I called myself a survivor, but I was not. I was a manager. I managed to make it through life, and, although I was dead inside, I was still here. It was not strength I exhibited all those years but weakness. I’ve come to realize that strength is not found in isolation but in unity. You see, life is like a spool of thread. Wrapped on the spool, we are strong and unified because we have support, a foundation. However, when we unroll from the spool, drifting into darkness, we find ourselves in isolation. Each trauma, each flashback chips away at the thread, breaking down individual fibers, until eventually, the thread breaks. However, if we wrap the thread back around the spool, it begins to mend because there is strength in unity.
I look back over the years saddened by what I’ve lost by owning guilt that is not mine to own, how much life I’ve missed because I was emotionally dead. I walked into my counselor’s office that first day to pacify a professor who cared about me. I walk into her office now ready to do the heavy lifting. I’ll be honest. Counseling is painful, but, in the words of Toni Morrison, “anything dead is [painful] when it comes back to life.” I plowed the fields last fall, dug up the roots, and discarded the weeds I no longer needed. And in the spring, I reaped the benefits of the harvest. And the thanks—well, it belongs to the one who cared enough to persuade me to seek counseling and to the one who challenged my heart, thoughts, and perception. It’s not a thank you for giving me back my life, but a thank you for giving me a life I’m proud to call my own.
Today I’d like to say thank you to those veterans, past and present. Thank you for defending your country and ensuring the freedom of America and her people. You have done your part and made the sacrifices you had to. But you’re not required to do that anymore. You’re sacrifices have been at the expense of your family, friends, and happiness. Now is the time for you to fight for the freedom that you deserve, freedom from a past that prevents you from moving on with your future.
I’m reminded of the Psalm, “Weeping may endure in the night, but joy comes in the morning.” I’m thankful I’m finally able to see the sunrise, thankful that joy has entered my life. I’m able to claim that joy because of writing and counseling. I’ve wasted too many years wearing a mask, pretending to be someone I’m not. I’m thankful that, even when I thought God was removed from the situation, He still sent angels to guide me out of darkness. And to those angels who are the core of my spool of thread, you are forever etched in my heart. Dr. Beard (my mentor), I’m grateful to you for helping me find my voice, and, Mrs. Janice (my counselor), I’m grateful to you for giving me the courage to use it. You’ve both given me a strength that I could have never found on my own and that strength has provided an opportunity for healing to occur. Thank you for the good and the bad because it is only by braving the storm that I can finally claim a future for myself. Thank you and God Bless!
I look back over the years saddened by what I’ve lost by owning guilt that is not mine to own, how much life I’ve missed because I was emotionally dead. I walked into my counselor’s office that first day to pacify a professor who cared about me. I walk into her office now ready to do the heavy lifting. I’ll be honest. Counseling is painful, but, in the words of Toni Morrison, “anything dead is [painful] when it comes back to life.” I plowed the fields last fall, dug up the roots, and discarded the weeds I no longer needed. And in the spring, I reaped the benefits of the harvest. And the thanks—well, it belongs to the one who cared enough to persuade me to seek counseling and to the one who challenged my heart, thoughts, and perception. It’s not a thank you for giving me back my life, but a thank you for giving me a life I’m proud to call my own.
Today I’d like to say thank you to those veterans, past and present. Thank you for defending your country and ensuring the freedom of America and her people. You have done your part and made the sacrifices you had to. But you’re not required to do that anymore. You’re sacrifices have been at the expense of your family, friends, and happiness. Now is the time for you to fight for the freedom that you deserve, freedom from a past that prevents you from moving on with your future.
I’m reminded of the Psalm, “Weeping may endure in the night, but joy comes in the morning.” I’m thankful I’m finally able to see the sunrise, thankful that joy has entered my life. I’m able to claim that joy because of writing and counseling. I’ve wasted too many years wearing a mask, pretending to be someone I’m not. I’m thankful that, even when I thought God was removed from the situation, He still sent angels to guide me out of darkness. And to those angels who are the core of my spool of thread, you are forever etched in my heart. Dr. Beard (my mentor), I’m grateful to you for helping me find my voice, and, Mrs. Janice (my counselor), I’m grateful to you for giving me the courage to use it. You’ve both given me a strength that I could have never found on my own and that strength has provided an opportunity for healing to occur. Thank you for the good and the bad because it is only by braving the storm that I can finally claim a future for myself. Thank you and God Bless!
