To all the Veterans and those who love them,
My cousin’s war was Vietnam. I don’t know what happened to him, but from things I heard he came back earlier than expected. I don’t truly know why, just bits of my uncles talking when they didn’t think I was old enough to remember or understand. He seemed sad, that I remember. Whatever happened while he was gone it changed him, but like my uncles before him about their own wars no one talked about it at least not with little girls or women in general. It would take me years and dating men who had served to realize that men don’t talk to anyone about it, not even each other. Oh, they’ll tell stories especially if they can spin it for humor, or bragging rights, but they don’t talk about it in the way that I had assumed they did. Maybe after a few drinks, or a lot of drinks. Sometimes you drink to remember, and then you drink some more to forget. That would change over the years, but back then men were men and that meant you didn’t talk about it. My cousin lived a long life after he came home from Vietnam. He got married, had a son, and would finally die suddenly during the covid lockdown. None of us talked about his paranoid delusions or that when he was at his worst my grandmother and I were afraid of him. It didn’t happen often, but it also didn’t happen until after he went away to war. To my knowledge he never went to the VA or tried to get help from them. No veteran I knew growing up ever went there for help.
I dated a man who served in Iraq. I’m a light sleeper, so I’d wake when he started to struggle in his nightmares. I’d pet him back to sleep before it got too bad and woke him. He said he slept better with me than anyone else, but there were nights when I missed my cue, slept more soundly and woke to find his side of the bed empty. I’d get up and walk through the dark until I found him in the living room on the couch not planning to sleep, but to maybe turn on the TV and lay there, or maybe just sit in the dark until dawn. I’d coax him back to bed, and we’d try again. I lay awake until his snoring let me know he was deeply asleep, and only then would I relax and sleep myself, but I tried to keep a hand on him, so I’d feel the first hint of the nightmares coming for him.
My boyfriend went to Afghanistan before we met. There were anger issues, but I had my own that I’d spent decades in therapy learning to control, so I said, work your issues and we’ll be okay. He went to therapy, he worked his issues, it got better. I am not a veteran, my anger had nothing to do with war foreign or domestic, but rage recognizes rage. There’s a kinship to having that much destruction inside you whether you aim it outward or inward, or a little bit of both. There was one infamous Thanksgiving that he put his fist through a wall. I waited until the next day when he was all smiles, and you’d think that the tempest had never happened except for the hole in the plaster board. I told him that if anything like that ever happened again, we were done, and he was moving out. He seemed shocked, but he believed me when I said it was a hard limit and nothing like that ever happened again. He did go to the VA for help and there were questions about sleep disturbances which he knew he had, but he didn’t know all of it, because he slept through it. Only those of us that had shared a bed with him could tell him that he cried out in his sleep, but never in English, usually in Arabic. Dream or memory, it never woke him. He’d stop yelling, and grow quiet, his breathing deep and even until the next time.
I knew my best friend before he joined the military. He thought he’d be going somewhere hot and sandy but ended up in a very different part of the world. He came back and like many military men do eventually became a police officer. I’ve been his phone call when the demons come, and the nightmares don’t wait for sleep. I’ve talked him down when I could hear his pistol on the other end being racked back, knowing there was one in the chamber. I knew what the sound was the very first time, it’s a singular sound nothing else quite like it. There’s also nothing quite like the fear that rushes through your body on the other end of the phone until your fingertips and toes tingle with the adrenaline as you realize that your voice is it, all that stands between the friend you’ve known since he was seventeen pulling the trigger. Words are what I do for a living, but I’ve never scrambled so hard to find something to say or prayed so hard for the right words in my life than I did those phone calls. The relief when we were finally able to get off the phone and he unloaded his gun and gave me his word he’d put it away for that night. I’m not sure I have the words to describe that kind of relief, the weakness that comes you’re your body as your own adrenaline seeps away. The grateful tears that your friend is still with you, and sometimes the hysterical tears, because I’m not trained to do this, I’m out a therapist. What if the next time I get it wrong and he pulls the slide back, puts that live one in the chamber and hangs up on me? What if he pulls the trigger while I’m listening and the sound of that shot, the sound I’ve been dreading lets me know I’ve failed, the final failure and lost my best friend? What if, what if, what if … but it didn’t happen, we’re safe. He’s remarried to a wonderful woman. He’s happier and calmer than I’ve ever known him to be. They have a little girl. Life is good. There haven’t been any nighttime phone calls in a very long time.
Times have changed since my cousin went to Vietnam. Men are talking about their pain and their experiences in the military and out of it. The VA is slowly becoming more responsive to the damage done to our men and women when they serve. It’s not perfect and it varies greatly depending on which part of the country your VA is in, but it is getting better. If you need help, please go get it. I know it sucks that getting help from the VA can be a fresh battle which is exhausting all on its own. Hang in there and remember you are worth it, you deserve it, the government sent you to war, they’re supposed to help you afterwards, damn it. For all those who aren’t veterans or related to anyone in the military, remember the soldier is not the war, or the government. Don’t yell at veterans when you want to yell at politicians, because usually the veterans would like to yell at the politicians right along with you. Be kind to each other out there, because you never know what nightmares the other person is carrying around with them, or how hard they are fighting just to keep going. You don’t have to have been in a real war to be struggling, but think about how hard the last few years have been on all of us, then add the memories and damage of having gone to war. That’s why we thank veterans for their service. It’s acknowledgment that the government has screwed them over even more than the rest of us.