Ask Me If I Care

[Woodman]

ya know I have to say that, excuse me and I know I'm not alone, but when I was in nam guys got killed all the freakin time. They were dismembered, burned, shot, blown up. I've seen limbs and torso's w/o limbs. We carried a bloody dead guy full of friendly fire UP a shit creek, at night, in the dark except for popups and mortar illumination rounds, while they were dropping napalm in the distance. Guy's screaming in pain and dead. gooks thrown out the back of a 56 for not talkin, sometimes a 45 shut them the f*ck up. f*ck this shit. sorry but some times I simply don't f*cking care about a god damn thing.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

[Sleeping Dragon]

All the things that made me a warrior were the things that allowed me to survive what you describe. I cling to those things, and keep them a part of me because I will never trust this world again.

But, if I can't control the warrior inside the warrior will control me. And, that warrior blocks out love, compassion, joy and my beautiful sunsets.

I HAVE TO CARE TO KEEP MY SUNSETS. I GOTTA HAVE THOSE SUNSETS!!!!!!!!!!!!

SD

 

[atilla]

The very thing that attempts to control my life has made me strong enough to keep it from controling my life. I am still a warrior. we still survive. I cant let the beast for one minute control me..i'll hurt everyone i love or ruin what little peace i have now...have to care about that, I'm not ready to give up.

 

[combatgs]

We do not go into combat and come back broken men. We go into combat and come back CHANGED men. We will never be the same men we were before. We are changed and we will remain so. Every single symptom of PTSD is a skill we had to learn in order to survive. The challenge is to accept that fact. Every person who experiences combat develops PTSD. I know because I lived with combat veterans for years after my last tour. I am still being treated but the treatment is worthless. All treatment is designed to fix something that isn't broke. The answer is to evaluate each symptom you experience and relate it to the aspect of combat it helped you survive. Once you are able to understand the combat survival reason behind the symptom, you are on the road to acceptance. You have become exactly the soldier the military wanted you to be. You are hyper-vigilant, hyper reactive, sometimes depressed, unemotional, able to control fear and have nightmares about situations in which you experienced a loss of control. You can look at blood and gore and not be moved. You can go days without food or sleep. You trust no one and are suspicious of everyone. Your brain has been permanently, physically changed by your experience. You have become the perfect combat soldier.

 

[Friday]

Troops ain't bitching, something's wrong.

Been angry at every damn thing today... For about 20 seconds. Then, shrug. Who f*ckin cares? I'm only angry in the first place as a distraction from the real thing I'm avoiding. After something like 5 million false starts today, even I can see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine. Clearly I'm not doing so hot avoiding the BigBad when I can't even maintain the thing I usually have to keep on a short leash. Let the leash all the way out and maybe I can eke a few more seconds of anger. Nothing more. Damn.

All these little flare ups, little vents? Business as usual.

It's when things are so f*cked you don't even care about the bitchable problems?

Something's wrong.

 

[Aprooster74]

WTF!
ONCE A SOLDIER ALWAYS A SOLDIER!!!!

Have all of you just thrown your f*cking training away because the enemy has changed????????? YES, when each of us faced that SOB raghead, hagi, gook, vc, Mo-Fo with a f*ckin weapon we were fully locked/loaded/armored and capable. That was there, and there we knew how to dance without question!!!!!!!!!

Now we are here in a world where "locked/loaded/armored and capable" has a different mission op. Here we are the SOB's! You f*ckin SOB's!!! Here we are the one's that have to take that training we all received and direct it towards the 'civilian' populace. The difference is that these civilian's are not trying to KILL US! They are just living their lives, the lives that WE ENSURED! So, how do we exist in that world? The exact same way we existed in the other world. We were all trained to deal with an uncountable number of scenario's and accountable number of unknowns. Did we not do the same thing overseas? Adapt and Overcome? Did we not make it work? How did we do that?

The only reason a soldier cannot adapt to existence in the "CIVILIAN" word is because they forgot one single truth.

'Once a Soldier Always a Soldier' (and we are adaptive :-)