PTSD

Tap, tap, tap, on the back of my hands. I’m jumpy as a box of frogs as the images start. This is my third session but I don’t know if it’s helping yet. Get’s worse before it gets better, get’s worse before it gets better, my mind is repeating, trying to cut out the bad stuff – the flood of it. But I start to think of my father – an image of him comes – he’s standing in the spare room wardrobe, on the alert, a coat hanger aimed at the window, shaking, sweating, until we, Mum and I, wake him and lead him back to bed.

When the tapping stops I open my eyes, they’re blurred with tears and I feel an idiot but maybe she won’t notice. Two weeks – I am here for two weeks. It doesn’t seem long enough – two weeks to get all that I saw and did out of my head. But that isn’t the point, they say, it is more along the lines of learning to live with and accept it.
We sit in a nice room – the psychologist and me – for these sessions. She’s attractive, natural blonde, older than me, from Wales as I am, which is sort of comforting. She wears jewellery, interesting stuff – which is a kind of distraction, I wonder if she wears it for that - a bit of light relief for poor suckers like me and my mate Mike (and others) who have to go through this.

In the first session she explained a little about the treatment, how it works and I liked the way she treated me as an individual with a brain, not a nut case who has crumbled under pressure. She could, she said, move her hands in front of my open eyes if I wasn’t happy with the tapping but I was OK with it. It’s something to do with the left and right brain split. But noone really knows how or why it works – I wonder if it will for me?

Tap, tap, tap, getting more rapid, sounding like the pitter-patter of rain but now it’s beginning to sound like gunfire again. The first time that happened I ended up under the window behind a curtain, God, I felt a right fool. But it’s why I’m here, for that sort of thing, the blurring of reality – more scary than actually being there. I have this watchfulness, like I always have to be on the alert. And a fear of loud noises and people getting too close. Then there’s the insomnia and night sweats and the dreams, which in some ways are worse than the other stuff. Fuck, it’s all bad. Life is bad, yet I know it isn’t or hasn’t always been; the good stuff seems like a dream of before and I’m stuck in this hell of ‘after’. Lots of us are, some of us admit it and ask for help, some drown it in drink and drugs but all of us are having trouble on a daily basis.

I went on the happy pills for a while (they increase your serotonin levels) but they made it worse – I felt like I was in a dream inside another dream – true, the flashbacks weren’t so bad, more blurry round the edges, but it was frightening to feel I wasn’t on full alert, I felt more vulnerable. And the actual dreams, when I had them were worse although I had them less often - worse because when I woke up I couldn’t tell what was real and what was a dream – that did it, I stopped taking them.

Tap, tap, tap, like a sort of code on the backs of my hands, hands that have done bad things but only in self-defence. At least, I’m not missing the tops of two fingers like my dad, though. I don’t know if Dad would have wanted me to follow in his footsteps. He died when I was fifteen, of a heart attack, but he was nearly always angry and about to self destruct, it was only a question of time. He was in the Forgotten War, Burma, wet heat, jungle, Japs. Decorated for bravery, he was, and quite right too but it never sat well with him. He never got his medal out or wore it on his clothes or sat me on his knee and told me stories of bravery or talked about it at all. Just had nightmares and sleep walked and re-enacted battle scenes in the wardrobe.

Tap, tap, tap – but I’m not letting any more images in today. I’ll think of other things, can’t take it today even though I know I’m lucky to be getting this sort of treatment, they don’t have enough money to help everyone. Now I can hear the distant drone of a light aeroplane like something from another world where normality exists, where people just get up in the morning, eat breakfast and do what they have to do with no fear and no hesitation.

When I went home to South Wales after my tour of duty, my mother tried to look after me. But I was too old for that and it hurts her when I snap at her and say she’s suffocating me. Actually, I think it hurts me more because she puts it down to my ‘experiences’ and I can’t excuse myself like that. There are loads of soldiers, why am I damaged and them not? It’s only about five percent who have PTSD, why not all of us, why any of us at all?

For a while I wished I’d had a wound, a physical wound, I thought maybe it would be easier to live with that, though I know a couple of guys who have both, the full package, mental and physical, so I guess I’m better off than them – be grateful for small mercies as Dad used to say.

Tap, tap, tap –I don’t want to talk about Dad in the wardrobe for some reason. But she’ll ask what the tears are for. And how can I put words to this memory of the ‘before time’? I don’t think my dad would want these tears shed for him or me to talk about him. But I don’t know, I never knew him very well. He kept himself hidden. He had to carry on as if nothing had touched him, I understand that but it meant he was closed to me. I don’t want too be like that with my son. He’s not born yet, he’s not even a twinkle in anyone’s eye because I haven’t been with a girl since I came back and that’s another thing, before, I played the field with loads of girls but now I can’t do it any more, not enough confidence, so maybe I’ll never meet anyone again.

It’s over for today and she doesn’t question me – I think she knows I’ve had enough, she’s no fool.
It’s a bright summer day, the sun’s shining, there’s loads of roses out, grass as green as England, beautiful. I tell myself it’s beautiful. I sit on a bench and turn my face up to the sun – it was a bloody long winter. But I feel exposed now in this sun like an insect that’s had it’s rock turned over being poked by a child - see me squirm - skinless and exposed.
I came back last August. Christ, it was so bloody hot and dusty out there, yellow dust and hot rocky ground, those looming mountains – punishing - so I liked the darkness, the grey, the damp of winter, I could stay in and hide.

I’m out of it now, been sent back as not fit for duty. I don’t know what I’ll do instead. Haven’t got any qualifications – maybe I should advertise myself – ‘first class twat for hire, war-damaged goods, no wife, no life, living in small-town Wales, aimless as a hoody’. Yeah, that should do it – ha ha. Unfortunately this is how I’ve been thinking of myself ever since I came back, I’m without that army security blanket, which was suffocating but secure – knew who I was in there, felt useful, maybe even made a difference but I don’t think that now; now I think it’s a mugs game and does more harm than good. If my dad was here maybe I could talk to him about it but maybe we’d have argued, maybe he thought the army was great, maybe he thought it was noble to be in it and to fight for your country, maybe it was then but not now, it isn’t now.

This garden is a sort of maze of paths with little grassy hills and dips where you can sit if you want a bit of peace and quiet. I’ve found an out of the way spot I use alot and I walk over to it but Mike’s there. I turn away quickly to give him space, we give each other space here and respect but he looks a bit weird – he’s crouching down, frozen to the spot with his eyes closed, sweat pouring down his face, muttering to himself. I don’t think about it too much just go over and touch his shoulder and he flinches and says, “no, please, no”

I look up at the sky for a minute, to gather my wits and it’s so unreal I think, Christ, there are even fluffy picture book clouds scattered here and there, any minute now, fucking Beatrix Potter animals will appear and start telling us a story.
“Mike, it’s OK, it’s me Gary, you’re safe mate, safe.” I say He just stares at me a if I’m a complete stranger, his eyes full of fear.
The sun’s hot on my head and there’s the smell of roses…reminds me the ambassador’s garden where my best mate Gareth went down and didn’t get up again, ever.

“Mike, look at me.” I say. He looks at me through his fingers – at least I think he does - I can just see the gleam of an eye.
“I don’t think this is ever going to end,” he says, “ I’ll never stop seeing that….that open…his head falling back.”
It’s kind of infectious because now I see two men, Taliban, ready to slit the ambassador’s throat. I drop down, dizzy, to my knees but there’s Mike having the dry heaves, worse off than me, so I have to get a grip.
“Mike, it’s me Gary, you’re OK, there’s no danger now.” I say slowly, clearly.
He curls up in a ball on the ground, he’s very still. For a minute I think he’s stopped breathing and won’t ever get up again but I see his back moving so I know he’s OK, well he’s not OK, he’s just alive.

I sit by him for a long time and think about football, the best walk back home with shadows of clouds move over the Beacons and how I used to help my nan plant strawberries in the garden.
I won’t try and talk him out of it, he’s seen so much, Mike has. Where would I start? With the close-up and personal stuff (throat slitting and the like) or maybe the whole village strafed to oblivion, kids and women killed? Or his whole platoon being blown up by one of those missiles made from an improvised bomb they call ‘The Fist of God’ and him being the only survivor? You choose.

And in the end you have to wonder what it’s all for – you go out there all pumped up and full of your own ideas of being a hero but end up wondering if it was all worth it.
Will there ever be any peace for us? I mean me and Mike and all those like us not world peace and that.
I can’t think ahead. It’s a void out there.