Liberty University student talks about experience in Iraq at PTSD awareness event

Student talks about experience in Iraq at PTSD awareness event
Liberty News - Lynchburg,VA,USA

Thursday, November 13, 2008 by Teresa Dunham in General News

"How was Iraq? Did you like it over there?"

Liberty University student Jesse Hogan can’t count the number of times someone has asked him those generalized questions.

“I didn’t mind answering questions for people that were specific things. The thing that made me mad and got me really frustrated was when people were asking me because they thought they needed to ask me. They really didn’t want to know anything,” said Spc. Hogan, 22, who served with the Army National Guard in Iraq.

Speaking candidly to students at a Tuesday evening Post Traumatic Stress Disorder awareness event as part of LU’s Military Appreciation Week, Hogan tried to bridge the gap of understanding between civilians and returning veterans

He told the group gathered in the Arthur S. DeMoss Learning Center that vague questions made him feel like no one really understood what he was going through when he first came home, and often the questions made him want to be alone.

Nowadays he’s enjoying everyday life, but he admitted that it wasn’t easy when he first came home. While he was in Iraq, he longed to see his friends and family again — but the excitement quickly wore off when he returned to the U.S.

“I felt like I was losing control over here, and things were slipping out of my hands. I was disappointing people. I wasn’t meeting people’s expectations,” he said, explaining that his life in Iraq involved highly structured missions that he could succeed at by following a checklist of motions.

Human relationships weren’t so easy to navigate, he said, and he was having trouble flipping the switch from soldier to ordinary life. People wanted him to be OK right away, as though they could “fix him” or explain to him what was wrong, but Hogan said what he really needed was space.
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