The PTSD's

I've never liked being told who I am or what I can accomplish. Call it rebellious, stubborn, or contrarian, I see a limit and just have to muscle my way over it. This tendency emerges in strange ways sometimes.

Insistently parking in "no parking" zones.

Snatching up those little plastic table signs from restaurants.

The impulse was stronger the more drunk and less filtered I became.

Which brings me to another aspect of it: don't tell me how I can (or can't) get sober. In the area of alcohol and substance addiction, this stubborn streak actually worked in my favor. Everybody told me, "You'll never stay sober without AA." Ten years later, I still haven't touched alcohol, despite never having stepped foot into a meeting.

Where this aspect of my personality gets tricky is in the area of mental health. Returning from combat with all the tell-tale signs of post-traumatic stress, I was quickly labeled by a bevy of therapists and told how the diagnosis would play out:

You'll be easily agitated in crowds, anxious when seated at restaurants with your back exposed to the door, short-tempered, triggered by loud and sudden sounds, plagued by traumatic flashbacks, have trouble with authority figures. The list goes on...

And they weren't wrong. My first few months back stateside, I spent my days inebriated and my nights on a camping cot in my dad's kitchen. For him, it was like having a newborn again -- one that's armed and wakes throughout the night to patrol the yard.

I'm forever grateful to my family for what they endured during that time (and over the next decade, let's be honest). My dad patiently indulged my night terrors. My mom bribed me into regular counseling with an offer to pay my car insurance. Many vets don't have that kind of support.

Time helped. I wouldn't call it healing, exactly. I still have unbelievably dark thoughts circulating in my head now and again. And all of those "symptoms" of PTSD still lurk beneath the surface of a more palatable demeanor that is held together by sheer power of will.

I may not like to admit I have PTS (or "the PTSD's," as I like to call it). I may not like to accept it. Most days, I may play a convincing role of regular ol' dad and yoga teacher. But it's still there, a permanent part of my subconscious.

Which is why I feel the need to issue a gentle reminder. In today's culture, PTS is everywhere in various forms. It's a diagnosis carried not only by those who fought in war. I don't argue the validity of that. I can't fully grasp or limit anyone else's lived experience.

But I do feel the need to acknowledge, particularly this close to Memorial Day, the courageous men and women who battled "shell shock" and "combat fatigue" in isolation and silence long before the American Psychiatric Association officially catalogued the condition in 1980. Returning soldiers from the world wars and Vietnam faced immense barriers to finding help, and it's because of their persistent struggle that any of us can openly seek a variety of treatments today.

So this season, let's memorialize the companions and loved ones who never made it back. But let's also strive to remember the veterans and service members right here in our community who still silently fight their own internal battle every day.