So, you want to know what PTSD is like ?

[PLOTUS]

Its like standing inside a tunnel looking out into the light.....staring....motionless. It can creep up on you where your internal dialogue relives right along with your mind, events, moments, things you saw or did. Things etched into your head, your mind. Sounds or events  can remind you, they can quickly take you over and render you sloppy and dull. Sometimes shaking your head from side to side multiple times....... closing your eyes and shaking it out of your head as though it were a rock or chunk of something. And by shaking it, you could dispatch it from your mind and memory for the moment. But at some point it always comes back. At times, new terrors command your mind. But you have learned to be numb to it, to ignore it for great lengths of time. But it always creeps in.... My minds been bent, smoked, twisted and seen all manner of wonders or perversions. You just live with it, just shake it off when necessary and quickly change thoughts if you can. Weed can help, but I think it might well encourage flashbacks. Flashbacks of what ? Being a door gunner, behind a 60 machinegun.  And at times as a Grunt, from my earliest times. Our job was to insert platoons into the 'bush' and retrieve them. We also flew chase for B52's which amounted to parking five birds on a landing pad. A Cobra, a Loach and three Slicks. Playing Rummy or Spades was the usual pastime. So it wasn't all bad, but there were events and minutes spent in terror, a terror that would leave imprints. There was beauty, something timeless and colorful. In truth, most days were kind of like every other. Nothing making the rounds, no one injured or killed, and no monsoon rains to be out in doing guard with nothing but the moon to light your field of vision. Guarding an ammo dump. Something that could go up like a million roman candles, ending in one large blast. Of Course your vaporized. So yea, guard duty was a nervous and dangerous. Sapper Gooks were always trying to sneak in and toss satchel bag bombs all over, causing lots of hairy scary... I paid attention on guard, and occasionally popped a flare and fired off a couple bursts or lit the whole area up while we were under attack. Our places were usually large with as much underbrush removed as possible, and if possible on higher ground. But you know, this is my story, there are a thousand others from different locations and different people. Some like me, others completely unlike me. In thoughts and attitudes. My Moral character was still forming, I knew right from wrong. And it all happens quickly, a blast, or AK, the sound printed on your brain. Things like this happened once in a while, a couple times a month, sometimes more. Daytime was more secure, and many many were spent on some distant Firebase. Sometimes we would fly the distance our tanks would carry us and then refuel to be able to get back. Those were the easy days. There were night time attacks. Before you think us dark and sinister, we were your kids, your brothers and sisters, we were once  innocents.


And today I await. It lives in my mind and has been much tamed but it can't be undone. I just live with it 51 years later.  I remember much of it clear in my mind but foggy in a distance in my field of view. If I hear a Helicopter at any distance, I react. Time has become like riding on a board on marbles on a skateboard on the up and downhill sidewalk. Nothing is steady.