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Living with PTSD
"It’s like you’re watching a black and white TV; you’re just not there."
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By Jesus Bocanegra
23-year-old Jesus Bocanegra spent four and a half years in the military, including a year as a cavalry scout in Iraq. He’s now out of the military and living with his family in the town of Elsep in South Texas. But the war is still with him, so much so that he’s been treated for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He shares this story. (November 23 on NPR's All Things Considered)
In a combat zone, you’re going 100 miles an hour, you’re like a little radar turning everywhere. That’s really hard coming out of a combat environment to a civilized environment. To me, when I was coming out of the military, we actually sat down in a plane and they were like fill out this sheet. And on that little paper sheet, I circled the little thing that said if you want to talk to someone else about your mental health. I thought you know what maybe this was my cry for help. Two weeks later nothing happened and now I’m out of the military, somebody else’s problem.
And back home was, you have all the BBQ, it’s you’re sort of just numbed out. You don’t have no fear and your feelings are numb. It’s like you’re watching a black and white TV; you’re just not there. My mom noticed I was all nervous and stuff. I was sweating and I couldn’t sleep I was like you know mom I need help, I need a see a counselor or something. That night it was so bad I had to go to the ER and to explain it to a doctor, like “what are you going through? [in “doctor” voice] I can’t explain it and the guy was like, here take this medicine anti-anxiety and go see the VA tomorrow.
The thing there is the majority of the groups are Vietnam vet groups barely getting help. Talking in that environment, I held back because it’s just not the same to sit and talk to a twenty year old than to talk to talk to a sixty, seventy year old. That’s not to say that I don’t have respect for what they did in their Vietnam War, but it’s just not the same.
I withdrew from the PTSD program after I sat down with the counselor and said look, the program is not helping me at all. It’s making me think if for me as a 20 year old to look at a 70 year old and he says he’s had PTSD for 50 years so my PTSD is not going to go away.
I wish I would have stayed in the military because when I was with my unit it was sort of a bubble. The outside world does not even get in. The hard part is when you go home and there’s not 10 or 20 guys to talk to in the morning. That’s the difficult part, when you wake up in your own bed and you don’t have that guy and all those people you talk to everyday. Now that I do have a flashback, I sit and think and I analyze myself and think, these things are gonna be with you the rest of my life. I’ve been able to control my PTSD to the point of it’s not overtaking my life and I have it in control.
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