4

Marriage Is Difficult (But Not In The Ways People Assume)

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I love my husband, but even if your marriage is so strong that it makes the eternal love of Disney characters look like festering garbage, years of sporadically supported PTSD puts a serious strain on it. For starters, if you think sex is the most intimate physical act a couple can engage in, try being a small woman doing her best to prevent her gigantic husband from choking during a seizure while he loses control of his body and shits himself. While that does earn me a lot of relationship karma ("Oh, you don't feel like doing the dishes tonight? Well maybe I won't feel like keeping you from biting your tongue off"), I'd rather spend our nights watching Netflix.

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Ideally, something without shots or explosions.

What, you didn't know that seizures could go hand-in-hand with PTSD? You're not the only one. You can imagine our surprise. Other times, he doesn't remember who I am. Sometimes he freaks out at imaginary mortar fire. Between the seizures and panic attacks, our constant frustration with the US government (more on that later), and the fact that we've moved more than bank robbers on the run from the FBI, our marriage is a tad more stressed than one in which the couple's greatest concern is which bespoke diaper bag to buy. It's not easy for Warren, either. He's said that he wants a divorce several times -- not because he no longer loves me, but because PTSD can put you in a place where you feel like nothing but a burden (he's not, by a long shot).

He's thrice tried to, let's say, "unilaterally enact" a divorce with extreme prejudice. The first time, he tried to hang himself, and I was able to get him down. Then he tried to shoot himself but failed. Twice. Outsiders don't see these challenges, so instead they make a very different assumption. Once, I was visiting Warren during his stay in the psych ward, and when I had to leave, I cried because I wanted more time. A nurse walked me to the elevator and said "I know what you're going through. Abuse is very hard to deal with. If you ever need help, there's a group for battered women like you." In a moment of what I think is truly heroic self-restraint, I didn't growl, "You want to see abuse?" before spin-kicking her down the elevator shaft.

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"The fact that we're on the first floor saved your life."

3

Even Other Soldiers Don't Get It

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The way our society handles soldiers is ... complicated. We revere them for their service, but sometimes we take it to the point where we barely view them as regular human beings. After all, movie action heroes can suffer literally hundreds of near-death experiences and still make glib one-liners about it hours, days, or years later. Even that movie in which Tom Cruise actually dies 300 times still ends with him giggling at the camera. If they're ever shown as vulnerable, it's always in a way that makes them even more dashing and heroic.

So it's no surprise that mental illness is stigmatized within the military. It makes you look weak, and the lack of guaranteed confidentially with military therapists makes soldiers terrified that something they say will get them in trouble. Would you talk to a therapist if you knew there was a chance your boss would learn all the details?

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As we've noted before, the military isn't always great at dealing with sensitive personnel matters.

Older veterans aren't much help, either. Far from being sympathetic to their struggles, some older vets view today's soldiers as having it way easier than they did when they were slogging through the jungles of Vietnam. Of course, Vietnam vets were looked down on by some WWII and Korea vets, the WWI vets thought fighting fascism sounded like a vacation, and so on down the line to some caveman telling a young caveman that back in his day, bashing in the skulls of rival tribesmen was a real struggle because they didn't get hunks of wood to attach their sharp rocks to.

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"Rocks!? That must have been nice." -- Early Neanderthal

2

Dealing With The VA Can Be A Nightmare

US Dept. of Veteran Affairs

As I've mentioned, we've lived in several different states. That's because we're searching for a Veterans Administration hospital that can give Warren proper treatment instead of shrugging and saying "Maybe try this? Okay, see ya!" Warren has been on more drugs than everyone at Burning Man combined: morphine, oxycodone, methadone, suboxone, fentanyl, Xanax ... Every hospital has their own theory on how to treat him, which has put him on a drug-fueled roller coaster of emotional and physical reactions. Methadone made him brutally sick, and fentanyl didn't treat him well either. Suboxone was working, but when we moved to Maine, they took him off of it, despite assurances from the previous hospital that the state could keep him hooked up.

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But hey, it's not like you can experience life-threatening side effects by mixing pills like prescription trail mix, right?

Why the mix-up? Well, each of the many hospitals we've visited started from scratch. We were constantly told that Warren's records would be transferred, but that appears to be nothing but a hilarious prank they pull on people like us. And because hospitals can't take "Please gimme some suboxone, I swear it's good for me" at face value, we went through long periods in which Warren had no medication. That was terrifying, because a lack of medication tended to cause seizures.

1

Family And Friends Are Supportive, But It Doesn't Always Help

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Most of our friends and family don't assume that Warren is a wife-beating rage monster. But with so much misinformation about PTSD floating around, their help often resembles the messy but well-meaning assistance a little kid gives their parents in the kitchen. For example, while Warren's parents love him dearly, they don't believe in mental illness. (Yes, PTSD deniers are totally a thing.)

When you've been told your whole life that PTSD is a figment of your imagination that you need to overcome through sheer force of will, and then you painfully and abruptly discover reality, you don't reconcile those viewpoints overnight. He's afraid to talk about it with his family for fear of how they'd react ("Son, we love you, but have you ever considered that you're a huge pussy?"), and he thinks that there's something fundamentally wrong with him for having an illness his family doesn't think exists.

The people around us also believe what many civilians do, which is that Warren gets amazing free healthcare and is therefore in no position to complain. While it's true that Uncle Sam foots Warren's treatment and disability payments, that's no replacement for steady work (we get by, but we're not living in the lap of luxury so much as we're in luxury's ass crack). Occasionally, this attitude gets ugly. One of Warren's old friends half-jokingly, half-seriously suggested that because his taxes went toward Warren's healthcare, Warren owed him money and could settle the debt with a bottle of vodka. Let's just say that night didn't end well.

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"Sure, I'll buy. Then you head off to war for a few years too, and we'll be totally square."

I'm happy to report that my own family doesn't believe in either the "get your shit together" approach to mental health or the "buy us stuff" method of fair taxation, but their presence around Warren can still be difficult. Not because my dad is really into yodeling or anything; it's just that being around other people makes Warren anxious and upset. And therein lies the dick-punching contradiction that is PTSD: Spending time with friends and family is one of the best ways to treat it, but when you're buying into the stereotype that you could go crazy at any minute, you feel the need to avoid loved ones out of concern that you could hurt them. The scary part is that fear isn't entirely without merit -- trauma is contagious, in the sense that it negatively affects people who have close contact with someone experiencing it.

I would know that as well as anyone. My husband's sure as hell worth the risk, though.

You can read more from Mark at his website.

For more insider perspectives, check out 5 Shockingly Outdated Problems Women In The Military Face and 6 Things You Learn Detonating Roadside Bombs For A Living.

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