HEALING
have kids of my own, and I can’t
even think of anyone hurting
them like I did with those kids.”
In therapy, she said, “I explained how peer pressure kind of
gets to you and you do things you
shouldn’t have done and you try to
forgive yourself for it. People gave
me hugs, a lot of crying and discussion. But I still feel guilty and I
haven’t forgiven myself for a lot of
the things I did over there.”
Now she is back home at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, awaiting
her discharge from the Army after 13 years. She’s been diagnosed
with PTSD and physical ailments,
but it’s the moral injuries that are
truly disabling.
“I have all this guilt inside
me and I want to let it out but I
can’t,” she said. “I want to tell my
husband and family what’s going on, but I don’t. I just put on a
happy face until I’m alone.”
She’s been seeing a therapist
since she returned from San Diego
last spring, but she has not been
able to even hint at her deeper injuries. Instead, she said, “I’ve started going backwards again. All the
emotions and nightmares are coming back. I had stopped drinking
and now I’m drinking again, trying
to hide it. I can’t sleep at night.”
HUFFINGTON
03.16-23.14
Her PTSD makes her agitated
around crowds; it makes her depressed and often angry. “But
moral injury is the one that really gets you,” she said. “It’s hard
to find yourself again, because
you’re never going to be the same
person. I am trying to figure out
how to forgive myself for everything I did over there, and it’s
hard to figure out.
“I’m messed up. I’m tired of just
taking the pills.”
What is needed, she said, is
many more programs like San
Diego — and longer therapies
that might enable her eventually
to acknowledge what she called
“the bad moral injuries that are
really affecting me.”
“We are still having suicides by
people who don’t tell anyone why
they are hurting inside,” she said.
“We are still at war.”
Stephen
Canty joins
HuffPost Live
to discuss
some of the
more difficult
situations he
found himself
in while
serving in
the military.
Tap here to
watch the
full segment.