That is what love does

That is what love does
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 23, 2013

PTSD was destroying my life to the point where I was in the hospital praying I would just die there. The doctor wasn't sure how I had lived so long with a massive infection spreading thru my veins. I had it for 8 months following the birth of our daughter. I was suffering that much but I wasn't the one with PTSD. My husband is still dealing with it and healing.

That dark day in my life was 25 years ago. Thinking about it now makes me sad because I think of all the years people have been working on healing PTSD but we arrived at a point where there are now more suicides than ever.

I wanted to die because no day was better than the previous one. There was no hope of any of the ones to come being better because I had given up on everyone including myself. It was not until my fever broke after three days that I found the will to live because I was thinking about our baby daughter and she was my reason to hope. Then I thought of how my husband was the reason I was still alive because he insisted on getting me to the doctor's office. By the time I arrived in the exam room, my fever was 104. It was 105 by the time I got to the hospital. Had he not cared about me, he would have just left me alone and I would have died. He still loved me beneath all the pain in his soul. There had to be something in me that he saw no matter how I felt about myself. I felt the same way about him. There was something in him he was no longer able to see either.

That is what love does.

Why am I sharing this? Because too much has gone on and there has been too much talk about a lot of nonsense. Right now while Vietnam veterans are the majority of the veterans trying to kill themselves, and far too often succeeding at it, they have not been reminded of how much they have given to all veterans and their families. They have not been reminded of the fact that had it not been for them, there would be no psychologists, mental health techs, crisis intervention teams, trauma units and a long list of other things all citizens have help with. They have not been reminded of the fact that when they came home there was little available for them. As imperfect as it is, everything available today for all veterans is because of them.

The very fact I do what I do, the lives I've saved, the families I've helped over the last 30 years has been because of my husband and what he taught me about what love really is. That is one lesson every veteran needs to learn.

The Huffington Post has been doing an incredible job on military suicides this month. You've read most of them linked on Wounded Times. There is one that started this post because it is about Clay Hunt.

Think Service, Not Suicide
Huffington Post
Kaj Larsen and William McNulty
Posted: 09/23/2013

"There is nothing new about combat stress. I suspect that if one had gone around the stoa in Athens in 485 B.C., there would have been people who were homeless and in distress who were veterans of the Battle of Marathon." - The Earl of Onslow

From Herotodus to Hemingway, soldiers real and fictional have suffered the horrors of war. The tools of war may have changed since the Peloponnese, but the effect of war on the warrior has not changed since its ancient incarnation. As the sun sets on the longest wars in American history, it is shocking -- but not surprising -- that veteran suicides persist.

In 2011 we, a former Navy SEAL and Marine, mobilized to Pakistan with the disaster response organization Team Rubicon to provide aid after floods submerged one-fifth of the country. Our team of 8 veterans and medical personnel traveled through ungoverned areas of central Pakistan where the local Taliban targeted Western relief workers, and where few relief organizations were willing to go.

A Trusted Friend

Our lifeline was a satellite phone connected to our makeshift U.S. command center. No matter when we called, the same calm voice answered, asking: "What do you need?" Clay Hunt, a former Marine Scout Sniper, was on duty for us 24/7.

Clay's position "in the rear with the gear" wasn't glamorous. Nor was it easy supporting a group of former soldiers traveling around Pakistan without weapons. For Clay, this assignment wasn't that different from serving in Iraq or Afghanistan: Troops in the field depended on him. He rolled up his sleeves, slept little, and made sure we weren't alone as we spent long days treating children suffering from cholera and waterborne diseases. During our successful two-week mission to Southern Punjab, the team provided life-saving aid to thousands of Pakistanis. We were proud of our work. Six months later, Clay was dead by his own hand.

Clay's suicide was a turning point for Team Rubicon. As his family and Team Rubicon reeled from Clay's loss, we questioned our mission. If our work was important, why did Clay kill himself? How did we not recognize one of our own in despair? Does our work matter if we lose a team member to suicide?
read more here

When Clay's story came out, I balled my eyes out when I read the word suicide. There is no way he should have felt that hopeless that he couldn't spend one more day here. He did everything experts tell veterans to do and everything on the to do list I give out except one thing. Clay didn't heal enough spiritually and that is the part that is missing most of the time.

I am not talking about "religious" healing, but healing the soul no matter what faith base or no base you may have. If you cannot forgive, including forgive yourself, then you are not healing as much as you could so whatever you do, you are not filled by your good deeds. Your emotions are fighting a battle with the rest of your head and PTSD ends up winning.

Over the years I talked to some people Clay had in his life and they all said he was the first one to think about others. He just couldn't see how much others cared about him. The pain inside of Clay was just too strong to allow the good feelings to defeat it. Neil Landsberg another member of Team Rubicon ended his pain in May of this year.

It isn't about doing good for others that is the ultimate healer or we'd be seeing less suicides considering how much veterans have done for everyone. It is about seeing the good that is still within them feeding the desire to help others that will heal their souls.

Being able to rediscover my own "worthiness" allowed me to stop feeling as if it was all over for me. Being able to forgive what had been done to me did not mean as much as forgiving myself for what I did to myself.

Right now I am trying to figure out how to forgive the people in charge for all of this suffering going on this long when these men and women should have survived being survivors of the wars they were sent to fight for each other. Isn't that what they really were focused on? Saving the lives of the men and women they were with? Isn't that why they were willing to die? So how about we give them a chance to live to fight for others tomorrow?