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Lost Luster
"I can tell you that things have drastically changed on how I see the world, and how I see America as a whole."
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By Abby Pickett
When Army Specialist Abby Pickett was discharged from military service, she returned home knowing something was wrong. She was depressed, suicidal and on medication. During her youth, Abby had a very light and naive sensibility of the world. But now, she shares a different perspective because her experience with the war has changed her outlook on life, school and America.
I came back and I knew something was very wrong. When I was going through my demobilization they gave me an anti-depressant and a sleeping pill. When I got to the VA they set me up an appointment with psychiatry, I went for a couple months. Then in December or January, I missed an appointment. I kept on calling and saying, "I need to get back in. I missed this appointment my medication’s running out." And they said, "We’ll send you a letter." It took them about eight months to get me back into the VA.
Meanwhile, I’m on medication that wasn’t being regulated. It was what I started off with, and it wasn’t right for me. So I was very depressed, suicidal. You know, it’s one thing to die in combat and to die with some sense of honor and in a blaze of glory. But it’s another thing to come home and be alone with your thoughts; and just think about wanting to die and wishing every night that I would have died in that motor attack, instead of surviving. Or what if my convoy would have been five minutes early and we would have hit that I.D. ...
I would go to the supermarket, and I’d be driving down the road, and all I could think about was steering my car off it and going into the bridge. And that made it really hard for me to come back and be the student I know I could be I guess. When I was called up my class-load was about eighteen credits and I had a GPA of about 3.6. This past spring I finished out with only four credits and my grade point average had fallen down to a 3.2. It was at that point, I guess, that it became clear in my mind that I was no longer capable of retaining the information I needed to be a physician’s assistant – which was what I was hoping to be before I left, before my deployment.
At 17, I was very naive as to how the world worked. And I can tell you that things have drastically changed on how I see the world, and how I see America as a whole. And the greenness and kind of luster that surrounds my youth is diminished and gone.
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