Invisible Wounds

“I was in charge of 250 Marines during my second deployment. We were assigned to a district called Sangin. Most of Afghanistan’s poppy was grown there, and the heroin it produced funded the Taliban’s war effort. We didn’t have a clear mission. Our job was to establish a ‘presence.’ We were supposed to make the Taliban as uncomfortable as possible. Our mission wasn’t to take any hills or to kill a certain number of enemy combatants. And that lack of clarity could be frustrating. Guys were getting killed but we had no concrete ways to measure our gains. The best I could do was tell them that our mission was to ‘make Sangin a better place.’ Every day I’d send them on patrols. I’d sit in a small mud room, square like this, with maps on the walls and a radio on the table. And the patrols would call back if they needed support. Some days it was chaos in that room. Multiple patrols would come under fire at the same time and they’d all be calling at once. We lost nine guys over those six months. Dozens more lost arms or legs. Others had serious gunshot wounds. I remember sitting on an ammo canister the day before we left, with my head between my knees, wondering if we’d done anything at all. And a village elder came up to the gates of our base. He wanted to thank us for making the area safe enough so that his village could finally return to their homes. That was the only tangible difference that I’d seen in six months. It was the ray of light I needed.”

“‘If you don’t do your job, people will die.’ That message was hammered into our heads during officer training. Even if you tied your boots incorrectly, an officer might get in your face and scream: ‘You don’t care about details! Details get people killed in combat! You’re going to get people killed!’ Over and over, it was drilled into me that people would die if I messed up. And nine of my guys died. So it’s been extremely hard to forgive myself. Maybe I didn’t work hard enough. Maybe I didn’t set high enough standards. Maybe I didn’t put enough stress on the importance of details. The first guy in my company who died stepped on a bomb that was hidden under a footbridge. That was a rule. That was a detail. We were never supposed to walk over footbridges. He knew that. Maybe I didn’t tell him enough times. I can see his face right now. If he was sitting here, I’d say: ‘Mike. You weren’t supposed to do that. You know you weren’t supposed to do that!’"

“Sometimes my anxiety would get so bad that I’d turn completely white. I’d shoot out of bed some nights, and my heart would be racing, and I’d start running around the room trying to find stuff. My wife would have to physically put me back to bed. Then one day I was taking a train out of Hoboken, and we were passing through these wetlands, and there were all these reeds, and it reminded me of Afghanistan. And I looked down at my phone and there was a Facebook post commemorating the anniversary of the death of a guy in my company. And I got dizzy and couldn’t talk. I thought I was having a heart attack. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get help. I went to the emergency room at the VA and was diagnosed with PTSD. Eventually I found my way to Headstrong Project . At first I dreaded going to therapy. I went through a treatment called EMDR. My therapist would take me back to every point of trauma and have me describe it in detail. It was like literally going back in time. I could touch the faces of all the guys I’d lost. I could talk to them. We could talk about what happened. And how we all knew the risks. And how sometimes people died. And it was nobody’s fault. And I could apologize to them. And when it was over I’d be completely exhausted. And I’d feel like a bitch because I’d just cried for an hour. But it worked. The symptoms started to go away. After a few sessions, I remember walking into my therapist’s office and saying: ‘This stuff actually works!’ And he said: ‘Yeah. It does.’”

 “He didn’t even tell me he was enlisting. He called his dad one day and said: ‘Don’t tell Mom.’ I remember it was Halloween. We were trick-or-treating with our grandson, and I noticed that my husband was walking ahead of me, whispering with my son-in-law. When he finally told me, I supported his decision 100%. I think it was a defense mechanism. I focused on supporting him so I wouldn't feel afraid. I just didn’t want the military to change him. I raised four children. I knew how each of them was different. Chris was the one who felt things the deepest. He wanted to help people. And I didn’t want him to see something that changed him forever. That was my prayer every night. Other moms in our town had sons who went to war. I’d heard stories. They told me that their sons had seen too much. They just weren’t the same when they came home. When Chris first got back from Afghanistan, I didn’t notice much difference. He seemed to be spending less time with us, but he was recently married, so that seemed natural to me. But one night he came over and asked us all to sit down at the kitchen table. He said: ‘Mom and Dad, I want to tell you something.’ I thought he had cancer. But he said: ‘I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD.’ When I heard those words, my heart sank. I thought it meant forever. I thought it meant a lifetime. But he explained to us that he was getting treatment. And that it was going away. My husband is a retired police officer. After Chris left, he said to me: ‘I’m so proud of him for talking about this stuff. Because I never did.’”

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