During the Civil War, it was called soldier's heart. WWI introduced the term shell shock which was carried through about two years into WWII. After General Patton's infamous slapping incident, the term exhaustion started being used by the US Army. (If you will recall, he slapped a private hoping to "shock" him out of his shell shock. Oops.) That wording got changed again during Vietnam when it was renamed battle fatigue and traumatic war neurosis. PTSD is just the latest in a long line of words and phrases that all describe the same psychological problem.
I've been ranting and raving (the entire fucking point of this blog--hello!!) about PTSD and the Army scaring wives, and I suppose some of you think that I think that PTSD isn't real, isn't a problem, or is just plain old bullshit. In other words, I opened my mouth, jammed in my foot and kept right on shoving until I'm chewing on my own ass. Me thinking PTSD isn't real is not the case and I hope that no one takes my opinion about a briefing and what I feel is overstating and exaggeration of the problem as that I just don't give a flying fuck about the boys who do come home with issues. Because I do. I really do. And probably a little too much because those boys flat out break my heart.
Those men over there are all heroes and anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves. I've seen guys that have PTSD and are on meds out the ass, guys who pretend to have it (fuckers), but mostly men who are fine with some new quirks in their behaviour. All I'm trying to say is that there is no need to panic or freak the fuck out over something that probably isn't even going to be an issue. Just enjoy the honeymoon period (I know I'm going to) and then get ready to really start getting things back to normal.
2 comments:
To answer your poll. . .first deployment for me, however I'm not really freaking out for some reason. I guess when every financial, housing, pay, etc problems that could ever go wrong in a person's life go wrong in the first week after they left and just continue until now, you learn there is no point to freak the fuck out over a stressful situation. Maybe I'm just naive, but I figure for the most part I'll be to busy fucking my hubs brains out for him to have a moment to stop and think if he's stressed. If he needs therapy when he gets back because the stress of war is to much then he needs therapy. If he needs meds, he needs meds. Whatever the problem there will be a solution. . . .So whats the point of freaking out?
I love you ladies! All of you are absolute rocks.
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