Quote:
Originally Posted by Hawk66
I also do not agree on statements like 'you were never in the military, you cannot judge how it is' and that stuff. Sure you do not get the whole picture...but btw...do you really get it when you were there...have you really seen all?
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You can disagree all you want. Yet your own argument proves the point - you DON'T get the whole picture. What is more, you have only an outside view of what the impact on a person is. You don't have the personal experience.
Its like if you know a person who goes through a contentious divorce and you never have. Sure you can sympathize, but you have no personal experience. Then later you go through one - and have a totally different understanding of the situation.
Divorce is not the best example - the closest I could estimate it to be would be the loss of a child. Thankfully I have not gone through THAT - yet like the memories of combat - its just something that never, ever leaves you. You can have a few moments where your mind focuses and can think it knows what PTSD is like. But in 5 minutes - that thought is gone, you move on to the next thought - your not haunted by the sounds of gunfire, the cries of your comrades, or the slick stickyness of the blood that comes from your best friend who breathes his last in your arms. Even after you "win" an engagement, your struggling to save the lives of those who are hurt, recover those who are lost, and asking yourself what you did wrong to see so many of your friends hurt or killed, all while trying to sort out the whole mess.
Its not just the losses and combat that stays with you. The trips to the homes of families - seeing a mother, a wife or a child break down all over again. They knew their husband or father or son was gone - but you owed it to them to come and tell them how much he cared, how much he loved them, how he died fighting for them. Yes - how he didn't suffer - whether true or not. You have to give him that through his family - even though often times you wonder if you could have done "more" to save him.
Stand in front of a father who looks at you with a tears in his eyes as he asks you "Why did my son die?" - and you struggle to answer because your really wondering if its not your fault that he did. Its called Survivor's guilt. You look into the faces of people who loved those soldiers. It was your job to lead them - and somehow - things didn't go like expected - and their dead. Your responsibility. Their deaths are on your head.
Those memories never leave you. Those ghosts are by your side every minute of the day, every day of the year. They whisper in your dreams, you never escape them.
No Hawk, you nor anyone else who has never seen combat cannot have a hope of truly understanding PTSD - in all its many forms. You can sympathize, you can offer support - but if you ever feel you "understand" it - your simply deluding yourself.