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As I mentioned earlier I was fortunate to be a member of the first VA Outreach Program in the Southern Tier of New York State. I had been in therapy at Walter Reed Army Hospital while I was recovering from neurosurgery on my spinal cord from residuals of traumatic injuries in Vietnam. I believe the group an individual therapy in the hospital gave me an advantage to vets who came home straight from the Nam.
I was still self-medicating myself every night, by drinking myself silly so I could get some sleep. I still drank for the first few years of therapy, but I was becoming a babbling idiot. My wife was about to leave. I had to make a decision the booze or my family. It's been 14 years since I have taken a drink.
That was the turning point to the healing process. The years of covered up and deeply hidden emotions and horrors began to low like a river. I won't elaborate on any of the topics we covered in those years, the stories of the men that experienced the journey with me will be held in the strictest confidence until the day I die.I can tell you that everyone's own Vietnam was very different, but we all went on a painful journey of our souls together and now we all have our own separate lives. I will tell you this, PTSD is a real and valid condition that affects each individual in a different way, but the bottom line; it is a condition that never goes away and each individual has to learn to live with their ghosts because the ghosts never go away.
When we, returned to Washington D.C. for the dedication of the Three Man Monument. That was after two years of intense therapy. OVV was still a strong importance in my life, and sharing these feelings with men that had been in similar situations helped to deal with the intense emotions that The Wall unleashes. It is really hard to tell another person how to deal with so much emotion. That's why I believe in the group approach along with individual therapy sessions. I count myself lucky again, that was the early 80's and psycho therapy was accepted by the masses. Hell it's the 90's now, and it's even cooler. What I am trying to say here, if you have PTSD deal with it. The longer you wait, the longer it is going to take to learn to live with the condition
On my next visit The WALL was the most popular place to visit in Washington DC. A few years have passed, it's been cleaned, paved, and now has 2 flagpoles. At the memorial site there are large books located in several places to look up what panel #'s the names of your fallen comrades are etched on. I started at the top by the Lincoln Memorial side and proceeded down to the center. The beauty of this visit were all the messages and articles people left to the fallen hero's photo 1 , photo 2 , photo 3. The beautiful flower arrangement's, photo1, photo 2 , my service organization, and finally to one of my buddies I grew up with. The emotions The Wall opens up are painful and sometimes too powerful to deal with. You should really go with your family or a group, on this visit I teamed up with Jim and Steve, fellow OVV members.
As you emerge from the canyon of fallen hero's, you follow the path to the Vietnam Monument, a beautiful, but powerful representation of 3 combat veterans. photo 1 , photo 2 , photo 3 , and photo 4 . The work of art is spectacular, you can tell by the look in their eyes, the scars war leaves on the human psyche where they are imprinted forever.
At the end of that day I looked up saw beauty, I knew from that moment on, there was a reason I survived. I had no idea at the time what the reason was. As I look back upon the day now, it was another turning point in my quest to live in coexistence with the memories that would never go away.
