Reflections of a Past Life

There is so much I want to write. Yet, some I can share, some I can't share and some, well, I am just not ready to open it up for a public debate. Where to start? Which direction? Sniper? Deployment? Home? Studying? Kids? Oh hell, I will just dive in and see where this takes me..... Sniper and his shoulder. It's still healing and nothing has been decided as to where he is headed. He has been avoiding medical like the plague. It might have something to do with the fact that it is still giving him hell, and probably needs more attention then he is willing to give it. I know, it can wait until he comes home. He can function and that's all that counts. Whom am I to judge? If he doesn't come home with the shoulder injury, he has a good chance he will be home with his unit sometime in the next 3 or 4 months. My heart is trying not to become too excited. I have been planning on March of next year and anything before that is a bonus. I know things will change, so I am just going with the flow. But DAMN if it wouldn't be wonderful to see and hold Sniper again in the next few months....yah, I will keep dreaming. Something else that is on my mind, is PTSD. I think about it all the time. I wish I could elaborate, but for now, let's just say I am paying close attention. I am not the only one who is thinking about it as well. The closer time comes, the more I worry about it. Most War Veterans never talk about it. I know neither of my father's talk about the demons they harbor. They don't have to, you can see it in there eyes. Some goes deeper than they let on. When I think of PTSD with War Vets, I think about both my father's ( I have been blessed to have two, one by marriage and one by blood). My dad (the one who had surgery recently) has been sober for 2 weeks. I don't ever remember a time in my life when I have seen him sober and I don't think he has been sober in most of his life. I am very proud of him. My feeling is it started out when he was young and he went away to a war most people try to forget about. He tried everything he could to drown out what he saw and did. The nightmares he had to endure and still does to this day. Somethings will never go away for him. I never understood his fears, apprehensions, anxieties or anything he has seen or gone through, until these last few years. I have never been through what he has been through, but I have a small sense of understanding. One of his fears/memories he brought back with him so many years ago is of snakes. I am not taking a wussy bullshit fear, but a true, gut wrenching terror when it comes to snakes. He flashes back to a time when he was in Vietnam, lying face down in a swamp with these slithering snakes crawling all over him and not being able to do a damn thing about it. All of us, kids included, know not to have any type of toy snake around Papa. It's just the way it is. I have lived with the unspoken haunting and demons for so many years, watching him hide himself in a bottle. He never looked back and all of us have had to live with that, until now. I am so proud of him for taking this first step in coming home. A fear turning into reality I have, is of one losing themself in a bottle just to numb everything. To make the pain go away. To try and ease what they have seen and done with there own eyes and hands. To drown, blackout the memories, hauntings and pain. To feel nothing at all. To drink into total oblivion. This is something that scares me to the very core of my existence. There is so much more I wish I could talk about, but I can't. dyzgoneby 8 days smoke-free and still going strong