Fight for Recovery Continues

Recently, she has found it difficult to concentrate again. But her work to beat PTSD will continue. “You learn to live with it. The way to look at treatment of PTSD is to make you more functional. I don’t know if PTSD is ever curable. Everything I read says it is not. I think everybody has some degree of PTSD. I can’t imagine anyone having a non-traumatic life. In my case there were repetitive issues. I had cumulative effect of rockets and exposure,” she says.

Sue fights to be “part of life” again. Too often she experiences everyday life as going through motions, still feeling lonely regardless of the loved ones around her. “Empathy used to be my strong suit. Now I struggle with it. I think it is better now, but I still feel coldness and disconnection. I try really hard in a situation where I am supposed to have a great time, but I have to fake it.”

She also misses the adventure of the deployment, despite the trauma and loneliness on the ground. The military discipline and routine stays imprinted in the soldier's mind and wipes away civilian routines. It is the change that affects many veterans’ minds.

Sue feels strongly about the disconnect between veterans and the rest of society. Only soldiers and their families experience the war and its consequences in the United States. “Both my husband’s and my parents served in World War II. Everybody gave in that war. In this war nobody is giving. Taxes got reduced, figure that one out. When the Iraq war started, there was a big sense of nationalism. Beyond that it didn’t last long. I realize we are in tough climate right now. Everybody is out trying to take care about themselves, but the sacrifice of soldiers is the real thing.” 

Female veterans lack sufficient recognition. Sue wants society to understand that women who serve are in harm’s way as well. When she goes with her husband out to veterans’ occasions wearing the veteran’s cap, people come to thank her husband for serving, although she is the one who served in the war. 

In the Vet Center, a VA-organized but confidential center helping veterans to readjust, she felt that services were oriented to men. She felt ignored and needing to explain the misjudgments about her role in Iraq. The staff kept assuming that she had not been exposed to attacks.

Sue believes her PTSD will lose its grip one day. The memory of war will hopefully not stay alive forever. But it has left its mark, a curious mix of trauma and addiction to the routine of war. “I want to get to the point, where I look at it as a really positive experience. That is what I really want,” Sue says.