Trent,
This post is for you. The symptoms you describe that are intolerable to you, I believe, is your mind's way of trying to cope with memories that it doesn't want to acknowledge even happened. It's part of the recovery, the cleansing process. I've cried a river of tears, talking about the things I hid for years. A real man cries when he hurts bad enough, not from physical pain, mostly from pain in his soul, pain that a pill can't touch, pain that a doctor can't see, test for, or administer to. It takes alot of courage to face those ghosts, and alot of time to chase em away. When the act of crying in front of a group of your peers becomes preferable to living the rest of your life with those goblins running around in your mind, then you're ready to recover. It takes a strong man to go to war. It takes a stronger man to recover from the effects of war. Please don't stop with the job halfway done, recover from it.
Almost eight years ago, I was sitting in front of my computer on Memorial Day, and I started thinking about how much that Day Had changed in meaning for me over the years. Remember when Memorial Day simply meant that school was about over and the summer vacation was starting? Those were the good days, weren't they? That is how my humble poem begins, and it describes the changes of Memorial Day's meaning that occurred with me since those innocent years til now, but especially the therapy that brought those changes. Here it is. I hope you like it and I also hope that it brings new hope that you can recover too: