mTBI, PTSD and Stress (Catch All)

[MikeF]

THIS HEART OF STONE

You know you’ve been around and kicked around when your memories playback with a nearly complete Rolling Stones soundtrack. It’s a hard edged, tough music that blocks the silence and fills in the blanks. I can’t hear the Stones, Doors, or Jimi without feeling it; the long strong pull of Nam. Man, when I’ve got “Paint it Black” blasting in my ears I can remember how it felt: the rush of adrenaline, the emotional distance….

Sometimes when I’m out and about, I look around at other people and wonder what soundtrack would describe their life. Can you recognize the one who just never went? He’s probably that smug, self-assured asshole. Playing in a world where people like him made all the rules. You know the type that just didn’t go. I start to hate the mother####er without even knowing him. That’s when I have to say “#### it, it don’t mean ####.” Nam was for sure a bitch, but at least I don’t have to put up with a Barbara Streisand soundtrack playing in my head.

I admit that I’m difficult to be around. I find it difficult to relate, trust, or to even be around other people. I can try to and sometimes succeed in working or just being around people. It can be done but at a price, but who wants to pay. Me, I’m pretty much busted, emotionally broke, and there are few people in my life. Sometimes I want to keep it that way, other times it makes me angry or sad. I know that most of the time people look at each other with a polite smile and mutually agree “#### you.” He looks at me and sees a lowlife proletariat scum. I look at a guy and see and see a slave to the master-crass.

Now and then though you see someone, and they have a presence. When you look into his eyes you can see the “Heart of Stone, and you know you can never break the stone.” It seems that there are still a few of us, and lately more every day and we’re all locked in the same place.

It’s that we are scattered and isolated, stuck in our pasts, and lost in the present. We don’t connect often, that’s probably our intention too. Our collective soul is dark and our karma seems ####ed. However when we stand together, we can remember together. Together we find it possible and safer to go back and re-examine those days. There is a lot to think about; a lot of #### to sort out.


-Steve Boyer, Combat Medic, Vietnam Veteran


[MikeF]

BROTHERS IN ARMS


These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Some day you’ll return to
Your valley and your farms
And you’ll no longer burn
To be brothers in arms
Through these fields of destructions
Baptism of fire
I’ve witnessed all the suffering
As the battles raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms
There’s so many different worlds
So many different suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones
Now the sun’s gone to hell
And the moon’s riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it’s written in the starlight
And every line on your palm
We’re fools to make war
On our own brothers in arms

-Dire Straights

[MikeF]

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine. . .

These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much mine they are nothing or next to nothing,
If they do not enclose everything they are next to nothing. . .
-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

[MikeF]

MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA (SEPT 2007-JAN 2009)

“Once you face death, once you overcome your fears, then you are free to live.* These are the lessons that I've learned....

I will martyr myself with my words so that you may understand, and I may heal.* It would have been simply easier to have died a hero’s death in Turki Village than to wrestle with the demons in my head.* I’ve died over and over again in Iraq.* My bird was shot down in Ramadi.* My tank crashed is As Samawa.* An RPG got me in Baghdad.* Indirect fire struck me in Balad.* A suicide bomber destroyed me in Baqubah.** The grenade got me in Turki Village.* The sniper hit his mark in Zaganiyah.* The moments flash through my mind again and again.*

They brought me home on the C-17, draped my coffin with the American flag, and laid me to rest in Arlington.* The motorcycle boy’s rode in, and some fanatical religious left wing group protested the war.* My friends flew in from all around the world, cried at the funeral, and headed to the pub for beers.* They drank throughout the night in memoriam.* “Mike was such a good dude,” they cried in their heightened state of inebriationated awareness.* They would mourn, remember, and dance.* It would be beautiful.* I’ve replayed this time and time again in my head.*

In the end, there would simply be a grave marker that Taylor Elizabeth Few would eventually visit and wonder who her daddy was.

Physically, I did not die.*

-Considerations on my own death in Iraq

[MikeF]

Until next time...

Walk with me....

Invitation open...

[davidbfpo]

Mike F,

At first I was puzzled and on second reading found some understanding. No good at poetry though. It helps if - even on a small scale - some of the journey has been travelled personally and then the insight comes.

Thanks

davidbfpo

[MikeF]

What is the point of all of this?

This is just my White Paper on PTSD and mTBI.

See as a survivor, I didn't know how to step out of the arena. I had to figure that out myself. So, I did something audacious. You now have a case study to read. Take your time with it.

Now, maybe y'all can figure out what to do.

As for me, I'm actually going home to just be normal for once. Life is way too short to be spent in the insanity of war.

Thank you for your patience and time. I hope that I did not offend anyone.

Peace