“You guys are different.” she said with a smile, “You do the things nobody else wants to do.”
“OK?” So far I’m with you. None of the “civilians” I know want to do my job. They can’t even conceive of doing my job. They would turn to mush like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz the first time someone threw up on them or squirted blood into their mouth from an arterial wound. Yeah, sometimes my job isn’t fun.
“You guys are heroes,” she continued.
Alright you lost me there. I am definitely not a hero. None of my coworkers are heroes. No one I have ever met is a hero. Joe is absolutely not a hero. Zero… yeah. Hero… no.
As the “Warning Signs and Symptoms of PTSD” class went on I learned why it was that I get angry at the slightest provocation, why I’m so judgemental of others, why tears come to my eyes when I remember that Old Yeller died or Bambi’s dad was killed by a terrible, mean, evil hunter. She had all the answers. Finally I know why I’m the way I am. I have PTSD. I wasn’t diagnosed with PTSD but she sure made it sound like she was talking about me when she explained the difference between me and “everyone else,” between me and “normal people.”
“Wait… “normal people?” The implication that I wasn’t “normal” apparently “triggered” my “woke” side. The anger began to rise in me again. “Here we go,” I said to myself, “just relax.” But it wasn’t in the cards that day. I managed to keep from dressing her down in front of my colleagues but it became quite obvious to those in the room that I was the poster child for the day. I was in accusation mode.
“Who says I’m not normal? What makes you the judge of who’s normal and who isn’t Miss Smarty Pants? I’ll show you normal. Follow me into hell and we’ll see how normal you are after we’re back in the real world. Spend just one hour with the scent of death clinging to your clothes and let’s have dinner while I clean the brains off of my pant leg. You want to see normal? You can’t handle my normal, honey!”
In my world, our world, the world of the warriors, law enforcement, EMS, and firefighters, death is normal. He walks with us, talks with us, we are on a first name basis with old Mr. Grim the reaper. He’s a coworker we put up with. Nobody likes him but he’s always hangin’ around the station because once you’ve met him he clings to you and won’t shut up! He reminds you constantly that no matter how hard you train, no matter how hard you study, no matter how good you are, no matter how fast you are, no matter how much you pray, plead, cry, scream, or threaten him; he’s gonna win.
He always wins. He is Death. And this, believe it or not Miss Smarty Pants, is reality.
As I struggled to allow my neurons to cool, after the full-auto assault at the “know it all,” I became a little more philosophical. “Why do other people think we are different? Why do they have to put a label on us? Why do they think we are somehow damaged goods, needing repair so that we can fit into their neat little ideas of how the world should be? Does being labeled make it easier for us to cope or harder?”
As my mind wandered into the “Plato zone” my anger subsided and I realized that I’m not different from “normal” people. I’m a normal person who has seen a lot of bad stuff and I’m coping with it the only way I know how. In fact, I’m coping with it the way a “normal” person who sees bad stuff copes with bad stuff. Maybe the problem here is that most Americans don’t ever see bad stuff in real life and they believe that “normal” is carefree and happy all the time. They can’t understand why anyone would be so angry at life, filled with regret or guilt, or saddened by memories that virtually paralyze our “happy sensors”. After all, most Americans’ horrific memories consist of remembering the time they dropped their Starbucks coffee on the way to work.
So…we are different. We are different because we chose to guard the freedoms and feelings of the sheep that constitute most of our society. We have chosen to be there when the crap strikes the rotating device. We have trained our inner beast to move toward the gunfire, blood, screams, and terror. We voluntarily experience and have experienced life with the requisite balancing opposite: death. We can’t delude ourselves into believing that the world is all happy and fuzzy niceness because we’ve seen the truth, and trying to be happy just makes it worse. You can’t try to be happy. You are happy or you are something else.
The “something else” emotions are part of us for a reason. Why should we pretend that we are happy when our ice cream falls off the cone onto the sidewalk. That doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe it makes sense to someone with fifty years of collegiate training. The general public seems to think that “normal” means happy. “Normal” means feeling the appropriate emotion for the experience that you are having or remembering. Don’t suppress it. You have to feel those emotions or they will grow out of proportion to their relevance. That is part of the grieving, coping process. Let the emotions run their course but control them so that they don’t overwhelm you or others.
Easier said than done, I know, because we also know the truth about ourselves. We know we can be evil. We know we have dragons inside of ourselves; dragons that we let out to do horrible things to other humans. We have done the worst to our fellow men, seen the most pain that can be seen, felt the bones grinding beneath our fingers, tasted the mist of blood in the air, watched and listened and smelled and heard and tasted Death. We live the video games. We know reality, not just simulations. We’ve used all of our senses to experience the horrors of the real world and it has changed us. We know our shadows intimately because they are useful.
Our shadows protect us from our enemies, overcome the deer in the headlight reaction that makes you a victim in an emergency or a casualty in a firefight. Our shadows enjoy inflicting pain on enemies. He likes to kill, maim, injure, and torture, not just bad people but all people and that is what is really scary. It is so scary that those of us with the shadow barely hidden beneath the surface of our skin have a real fight on our hands… the biggest fight we’ve ever been in. We are fighting to keep our dragons inside. But the power of the dragon is intoxicating and we don’t want to give it up.
“Normal” people don’t like dragons and we are aware that they don’t like dragons and we know we shouldn’t be dragons. But…damn…the dragon can handle anything, overcome anything, control anything. He gets us up the hills with a full ruck, pushes us out of the C-130 when we jump, and makes us stand in front of Death and taunt him without fear. He lets us embrace the suck!
The trouble is that the dragon is inflexible. He doesn’t like free will. He doesn’t want anything but what he wants at the moment. He is selfish and overbearing. He is laser focused on a single goal and nothing will stand in his way and he doesn’t really concern himself with what is right or wrong. After all… what is worse than taking a life simply because it stands on the other side of a line drawn in the sand? The dragon does the dirty work.
Unfortunately the only future for a dragon is to be vanquished because the “normal” people are afraid of us. They are afraid of us and they should be. We are afraid of ourselves and we should be. If our dragons take control there is no limit to the violence and havoc they can create. We know. We’ve seen it, and the “normal people” see it in us. They need to be sure that we contain those dragons, put them in cages and don’t let them out. Eventually the sheep hire sheepdogs; dragons with discipline, to kill the dragons that get out of hand.
Once upon a time,when we were completely vulnerable and helpless in the world as newborn babies, we were sheep. We were called to become sheepdogs because we had more of the dragon in us than most, and with every taste of blood we moved a little closer to being the dragon we were sent to kill. Our inner dragons became less and less disciplined. We were fed too much raw meat. Now… we’re tigers walking around loose in society trying to fit in with a group that we view as “dinner.” How absurd is that? It’s no wonder we’re conflicted and confused about what to do.
The word abnormal implies an unnatural reaction or unreasonable method of coping with a stressor. We are not abnormal. There is nothing abnormal about being pissed off that your buddy was killed in combat or that a child died in a swimming pool or that you were helpless to change any of it. That is normal. I am normal. You are normal. We are normal but unbalanced.
The abnormal ones are the experts who haven’t walked among the dead and dying and yet claim to know us. They can’t help because they haven’t been to hell with us. They’ve made the mistake of thinking that the simulation is reality, they think they know, but they don’t. They have lots of big words and fancy theories but that’s it. Healing can only come from someone who has healed themself and who knows the path to wholeness. We need experienced guides. We need the Master Chiefs, the Gunnys, the First Sergeants, our brothers-in-arms who have been there.
The only ones who can help are the ones who’ve been to hell and back. Your community of brothers, and sisters, to be politically correct. Many of them know how to untrain the dragon and train the sheep in themselves, in us. Many of them have titles and fancy theories too. Former dragons are useful. They are the true experts and they are out there. They forged a trail before you were even born. They’re your brothers-in-arms, the “old guys” who are always telling you what you’re doing wrong. They are still hurting because even healed scars are painful but they know what soothes the ache. They have learned to deal with the dragon and even more importantly they think you are “normal.”
Through war and suffering we’ve strengthened our inner dragons too much, like a bodybuilder who only trains arms and not legs, we are unbalanced and awkward. It has become necessary to train our inner sheep, the way we trained our dragons, with self-discipline and persistence. It is necessary for us to realize that everything in life is not a threat. There are people in our lives that truly love us. There are people in the world who are good, innocent, caring, and sensitive and we need to refrain from ripping their heads off when they try to help, even if they are not helping. Maintain your situational awareness. Don’t talk about the brains that you had on your pant leg while standing in line ordering your happy meal. If you want to talk about those things then find an appropriate audience; your brothers-in-arms.
I know it’s repulsive to a warrior to witness weakness, but we need to actually see the innocence in our children’s hearts and realize that it is really strength.. We need to remember when we were as helpless and trusting as they are. We need to feed a hungry puppy. We need to turn our faces to the sun and remember when we were sheep, experience and appreciate the things sheep care about; warm sunlight, lush green grass, cool refreshing water, a soft southern breeze in spring, the little things in life. We need to relax a little bit. It’s really difficult for us but when did something difficult stop us? Think of it as training not weakening. Shift your focus. Accept the world as is and think differently than a dragon.
Good will triumph without us, the sheepdogs. Good will triumph because that is what it does. Good nurtures, supports, grows, trusts, hopes, and loves. The nature of good is to grow. The sheep are the caretakers of good and innocence. Their job is to be weak, helpless, trusting, and innocent…all the things that wolves despise and sheepdogs tolerate. But the sheep will be the ones who overcome and thrive in the end because they care about the flock more than themselves. They subconsciously know their role is to be food for the wolves and that some of them must be sacrificed for the flock, the old and the weak. This is what “normal” is in the world. We can’t change it. We must accept the fact that Death always wins the battle of the corporeal dimension. If we can’t accept reality we will never heal.
Sheepdogs are proactive. They hate to feel vulnerable, or useless. But, as sheepdogs we don’t need to defeat evil, that isn’t our job, our job is to slow the attrition rate, preserve a pasture that is safer for them, and allow the sheep to be innocent. We’ll never save them all, and we have to let some go. Evil will defeat itself, because the nature of evil is to diminish. Evil loses in the end because it defeats itself by limiting, killing, destroying, poisoning, crushing, and hating. It lessens everything. The sheepdogs won’t win the battle. I know this goes against everything you, as a sheepdog, believe but it is the truth. The battle will be won by the sheep.The sheep are the reason for the sheepdogs. Sheepdogs have no purpose without the sheep to protect. In the grand scheme of time physical things do not matter. Matter doesn’t matter. What matters is that good will triumph because it grows.
I was angry at the sheep giving the lecture because she didn’t understand what I had seen. She couldn’t understand, she is a sheep. I was angry at the sheep because they didn’t appreciate the sacrifices I was making to protect them. They knew I was more of a wolf than a sheepdog and they were right to be afraid of me. I was becoming a wolf. I was becoming a dragon and dragons hate weakness. They despise any sign of helplessness. They loathe being near whining and bleating. They wish all the sheep would just die. The sheep are right to be scared, but they still trust with the innocence of children. That is what they do…and without those things…what’s the point of life?
The hardest part of training our inner dragons is realizing that we have to give up some of the power of the dragon. We have to become the thing we despise… weakness, not completely, but a little bit. It sucks. We don’t have to be victims. We don’t have to be defenseless but we can’t stay sheepdogs forever. Sheepdogs get old eventually. Then what? Then you will be forced back to where you began. You will be a sheep again…helpless, vulnerable, and weak.
Death may look like he wins every time but the truth is that he can only take the atoms that make us up and rearrange them. He’s the ultimate recycler. Scientifically speaking; energy is neither created nor destroyed. He can never kill the part of us that isn’t physical. That part goes on forever. True power is in knowing that good wins with or without us. True power is perceiving more than atoms.
PTSD is an acronym. You are more than an acronym.
But what do I know. I’m just a dumigod.