I guess I should let you all know a bit about who I am. I was medically retired from the military after getting wounded by an IED in Iraq. I had been in the military just over 15 years. I was a workaholic and my whole identity was wrapped up in the military. After spending sometime in a field hospital in Kuwait and then a brief stopover in Landsthul, I wound up in Hawaii at a rehab hospital there run by the VA. It is a center for aging actually but since I needed to be in the hospital for 10 and a half months I was given a room and then I had 7 surgeries on my left leg. I was also diagnosed with TBI. You all probably know what that is so I will not spell it out for you. I suffer lapses in memory and excruciating headaches about 4 days a week.
I was something of an achiever in the Army. I went to Airborne School and out of 18 women who started the course I was one of only two to graduate. I then went to Ft. Bragg, NC and served in the 82nd ABN DIV. I spent all of my time at Ft. Bragg except for one tour in Hawaii at Wheeler Army Airfield. The it was straight back to the 82nd. I deployed to Iraq 4 times with the 82nd and the fourth time was the charm so to speak. An IED blew up the vehicle in front of ours and the shrapnel was so strong and so thick that it tore right through the engine block of my Humvee. The shrapnel that did the most damage shattered my left tibia and I almost lost my leg. But after 7 surgeries where they basically reconstructed the tibia using cadaver bone, I can sort of walk now. I had to relearn how to walk after not being able to for ten months but I can walk some now. What frustrates me is that I was a marathon runner and now I can barely walk 100m without pain. I have one more surgery and I do not know if that will improve mattters much but I definitely will never run again and that is a hard thing for me.
I was just diagnosed with PTSD about 4 months ago. I am angry about that. I am as level headed as they come and I always thought I could take anything and the fact that I have been proven wrong really pisses me off. I went from being a leadership awardee in Pldc, winning numerous soldier and NCO of the month, quarter and year awards, getting promoted on a fast track and even did a stint for three years as a drill sergeant at Ft. Jackson, SC. Now I am an absolute zero.
How does one rebuild a life? My whole identity for so long was the Army. Now it is gone and if I could go back in tomorrow, as much as I hated Iraq and everything that war stood for, I would go back in a heartbeat. I was somebody even in the sandbox. To the Iraqis who hated US soldiers, I was an Infidel. To the Iraqi's who liked us, I was a hero. To my soldiers, I was a leader. To my officers I was somone they could depend upon. I cannot even keep in touch with any of these people now because I feel like they would think I was a big let-down. Some of them came to seee me in the hospital when they were on leave and I refused to see them. See I was not your average female soldier. I had always worked with men and it took me a long ass time to gain their respect. But once I had it that was it. Now I cannot let them know of the struggles I am going throguh because then that would probably mean I would lose all that respect.
I do not know what to do with my life. I feel like killing myself. But I know I will not do it. However I think about it everyday....it is always right there in the back of my mind. It gets especially hard when the headaches come on.
Part of me thinks I should be on a inpatient ward but I have heard all the horror stories and I just cannot bring myself to voluntarily agree to be locked in anywhere. I have severe claustrophobia and I do not think a locked ward would make that any better.
Sometimes I just want to go out and start a fight with sommeone and hope they kill me first. I almost did just yesterday. I had to go to the VA and on the way there I stopped at the post office. There was no parking in the parking lot so I had to park on the street. I was getting something out of the passenger side of the car when a big truck with a redneck in it came alongside and came close to hitting me. Then he had the gall to act like I was the stupid one. I asked him if he had a problem and if he wanted to settle it, and he just drove off after calling me some name I could not quite hear. I have been thinking of that all day and part of me just wishes against all hope that he had gotten out of his truck and beat the living crap out of me. What is that about...this desire to NOT live. I used to want to do nothing more than live and now I find that I put myself in all sorts of dangerous situations just hoping something will happen.
I think another probloem is that about 3 days before I got hit in Iraq, my mother committed suicide. I got hurt and so I could not come home right away so I missed the funeral and everything. I own the house she lived in and it remained closed until I got out of the hospital for good last year and came home. When I got home I had to clean up the mess from her suicide...she used a gun so it was quite a mess. I felt nothing about cleaning it up. But then I found these journals that she had been keeping and in them she descriobed about how she wished I would die on deployment because then she would get all the attention as the grieving mother. My Mom was not the healthiest person by the way. I tried my best to make sure she was cared for but I fell miserably short somewhere along the way. Little did she know that if she had waited to off herself a few more days at least she would have been able to play the worried mother of a wounded soldier.
Anyway, I just felt like writing. I am not looking for any answers but just thought I might as well share a few things about myself since I just started posting on this forum.
Forgive the typos but with the head injury I tend to reverse a few letter here and there.
Hang Loose ya'll
