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My son, who’s 7, has recently been having problems at school, fighting mostly.  However, Thursday I got a disturbing phone call from my wife.  Apparently, he told a classmate he was going to “kill himself”.  The other boy was scared, and of course told his parents who, in turn, called the school.  The social worker at the school called my wife and informed her of the situation. The first thing I thought was, “god, what is this?”. I was scared, of course -I don’t know how to handle this. I called a doctor friend who is a child psychologist and...

To this day, if someone in my family dies from natural causes, I think they’re lucky. I’m definitely the wrong guy to come to for sympathy when it comes to that.  Why is it sad that someone older who lived a full life passed away peacefully in their bed? What’s truly sad is when a young person is killed violently before they had a chance to live. I am never going to shed a tear for a celebrity or someone like that, and if it’s an older family member I’m going to say that at least they lived a full...

Before things clicked for me, back when I first tried the training at Vets Prevail, I was thinking “Ok, what the hell is this?” But even though I didn’t want to admit it, I could relate to most of the things they were saying. Like, ‘Oh, yeah, I do space out.’‘I do flip through the TV without stopping to watch anything.’‘I don’t do anything with my family.’‘I don’t like to interact with anybody.’I just wanted to have noise around me all the time so I didn’t have to think. I was here, but I wasn’t. I think that what was...

I couldn’t find a job for a long time.  I tried doing security for a while, but I hated it.  Civilians have a different work ethic than military personnel.  I hadn’t been around civilians for a long time, so I had forgotten, I guess.  Not one of them was living up to my standards. After six months at the security gig, I quit. Of course, this naturally brought up more arguments with my wife. We were broke, and I had no desire to get up and look for work.  I had no desire to sign up for school, or do...

  About one year after I’m back the phone rings at 2 am.  The voice at the other end is a friend I served with.  He tells me “Manuel is dead.”  I was drunk already that night so I just kept drinking more.  I didn’t cry.  I just started looking for someone to blame.  My friend went on to tell me, that it was an accident- so, of course, I blame the chain of command for allowing it to happen.  Same scenario happens again three months later.  Another phone call.  This time my friend at the other end tells me...

Back from Iraq for 6 months, when some things were starting to feel more normal again, I had to drive my wife into the city for something she needed.  Now, the whole time, all the freaking cars around seemed like they were trying to hit me.  Then, all of a sudden, I notice that there are way too many people walking.  There were too many cars, and I notice far too much noise.  It reminded me of Iraq as I drove.  Back then, though, I had a gunner.  This guy would shoot pyro at whatever got closer than 50 feet to me,...

My wife and I weren’t prepared for the level of anger that I experienced after I came home. She and my son never moved fast enough for me. They never listened.  She had taken care of him for four years while I was in the Corps, and one day, there I was, full-time now, this stranger, trying to fit in.  My son would look at me and and tell me, “you’re going back to Iraq daddy.”  He was only four then, and although I just wanted to cry when he said that, I would instead cope by yelling at him more. ...

So- if you’ve read my other post, then you know about one of my more significant experiences in Iraq….  I did everything to put that incident out of my mind right away.   As soon as we stopped moving  they opened up on us.  Time stood still, and I could see the tracers going right over our heads.  I turned around and I could see my buddy crouching down.  His weapon had jammed.  I fired, and my weapon jammed only a few rounds later.  I looked down and I could see two rounds stuck in the ejection port.  I tried to...

I was deployed twice to Iraq, where I experienced one of the worst things to ever happen to me.  For years it impaired my ability to live my life, but I didn’t really know it.  Even as I write about it now, words bring back a lot of feelings I don’t want.  I got through the worst of it with help from the VA, Vets Prevail- anywhere I could get it. However, what helped me most was admitting- to myself- that I had a problem and realizing I had to find a way to live with it.  Let me share...