The Past Becomes Today

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Current Events Mixed with the Past: Caution

Is it National PTSD Day? Nope. Is anybody else feeling like I do today? Maybe. Is this a good time to reach out to others? Probably.

Even just falling asleep is tough. The minute I started to doze off I would get a surge of adrenaline and anxiety and would wake up. And even when I did fall asleep, I would wake up with night terrors and covered in sweat.

Last night I was watching the news and watched a very graphic tour/demonstration of the damage a single mortar can do. This was time in the now, it looked exactly the same as 2003 in the bowels of Baghdad. The show of force and damage is identical. I know how to stop thinking about events, people and the destruction of a nation. I couldn’t look away then and I can’t forget now.

My active imagination could smell the stench that had been embedded forever in my nostrils and the micro-powder lining the insides of every orifice and crease of my exposed skin. My ears began to hurt from the insanity of the ringing. The uneasiness of my beating heart had an elevated rate and became extremely focused to control the breathes in patterns of calmness. This was last night.

The finite decision to stop watching or continue with the punishing familiarity. To view the shredded landscape littered with shattered shards of wood structures and the crumbles from concrete having been displaced by explosions and the displacement of entire buildings is shocking and challenging to understand the atrocities that people are experiencing. It’s hard to not look. Impossible to turn away. One last glimpse over my shoulder.

I want peace at this very moment. The inner fear I feel for the children, the future orphans, those who will forever be shaped by the absolute unhinged sights and sounds of destruction.

The shock and awe of the initial strikes of violence will soon become a tolerable part of their days. Rubble and devastation will eventually be viewed with normality. We are human and there is a protective element that may make these sights and sounds tolerable. Ultimately, the sounds of falling rockets will become a sound that does not freeze you in your spot. The whistles of incoming will be identified as close enough to take cover or far enough away to acknowledge the danger but not warrant an immediate reaction of fear.

Some of us will revisit the pictures of how destruction becomes normal. For survival. For the challenges of moral injuries at those moments. We cope with the reality of the unimaginable surroundings we have happening all around us by creating a safe space during those moments of fear. We continue to protect those loved ones around us.

The siege of the innocence of life is cruel. Forever memories will linger during a life that continuously is a participant in the harshness of the surrounding realities of cruel hostilities.

For short moments I experienced the inability to regulate the basic in and out of the necessity of breathing. Holding my breath goes unnoticed until a tiny gasp restarts the rhythmic beating of the heart burdened with being a witness to the atrocities of massive destruction.

No Child asks to be orphaned.

No Family stops imagining.

No Veteran ever forgets.

Take a breath - be kind to yourself and practice healthy habits of self-care. Check on your buddy, your family members, your neighbors and mostly… check on yourself.

Breathe.

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