A Soldier With PTSD: “We Don’t Have To Feel Like Monsters…”

MilBlogger CJ Grisham is one of the bravest soldiers I have ever known, and I have met a few. We’ve never met face-to-face, but we do exchange the occasional email and I’ve twice appeared on his radio show. (Click here to listen to my last appearance.)

In July, CJ wrote an incredibly moving essay about his struggle with PTSD and trying to come to terms with the demons that followed him home from the battlefields of Iraq. He displayed great courage by standing up before his men, going public, and admitting that he needed help.

Yesterday at his blog, A Soldier’s Perspective, CJ went into greater detail about the disturbing memories that he’s been facing and how through therapy, he’s managed to regain his emotional balance.

As I wrote in an earlier post about CJ, his open and honest discussion of the crippling effects of PTSD show a rare kind of leadership. I don’t mean to sound hyperbolic or over-the-top in my praise for this man. But anyone with even a passing familiarity of military culture knows that what CJ has done is an exceptional act.

After the jump, I’ve posted some of the more moving ‘graphs from CJ’s post. He talks about searching corpses for identification, his job in Iraq. You should also head over to Soldier’s Perspective and read every word.

…fortunately, I couldn’t get to some of these bodies until days after they were killed due to the ongoing combat. I witnessed virtually every level of human decay possible. I searched guys killed by everything from a simple bullet to shrapnel to direct hits by a 25mm Bradley round. Some were missing arms, legs, heads or even torsos. Some had only parts of those areas left. Some were fresh kills. The gases within some of them were expanding the bodies into human balloons. And some literally had skin falling off portions of their bodies.

…The man had numerous bullet holes in his chest and one in the left side of his neck. The sawing action of cutting away his pocket forced his body to move in unison, a result of rigor mortis. Just as I was about to free the wallet (my fifth attempt), the man’s ear literally fell off and landed on his shoulder, right in front of my face.

That is when I noticed his neck was moving. At first I thought it was a pulse, but upon realizing that maggots were eating this man from the inside out, my stomach had had enough. The shock forced me to take a breath, which just added to the nausea. The maggots began falling out of his ear.

As I type this, I can literally smell the corpse of this rotting man. I actually had to turn around and make sure I didn’t leave anything in the garbage can. It is that vivid to me. I will never forget the smell of rotting flesh at various stages of death…

I tell these stories for a few reasons,…I think you understand what our troops have had to go through and I think I’ve met my purpose in sharing some of them. I hope that talking about these experiences – just some of many – encourages other troops to talk about their experiences. I honestly feel a lot better getting them off my chest. I encourage those of you that may be trying to figure out how to move forward to write these experiences down in as much detail as possible.

This experience has been extremely cathartic. I’m feeling better than I have in a long time as far as these issues are concerned. It won’t make them go away by any means, but it offers me a better way of getting past them to the point that they don’t affect me in such an extreme manner any longer. They are quickly becoming just unpleasant thoughts and experiences. I’ve learned not to beat myself up over something I couldn’t help. No amount of therapy will help us forget those unpleasant things that we witnessed and, frankly, nothing should. They are experiences that can provide us with much needed levity in challenging circumstances. They keep us grounded on what is really important in life – unlike the dude yelling at a Subway worker for not cutting his sandwich perfectly.

We have a choice to let us control PTSD or force PTSD to be controlled by us. We don’t have to feel like monsters…