Martin Uhl

National Cemetery-Bushnell,Florida, a photo by jayfherron on Flickr.

This is Memorial Day Weekend. l still become emotional about the day and the reminder. lt is not a day of happiness and l cannot find a way to see fit to throw a bar-be-que,it just does not work!
ln the fore front of this photo taken at the Bushnell Florida National Cemetery is the grave of Martin Edward Uhl (my former father in law). He is one of thousands of reasons we should all want to reflect on the real meaning of this date!
To pay respects to those who lost their lives in service to our country!

Martin Uhl may not not have lost his life for our country-but he gave it none the less!
He served in World War Two. Bombed down over Germany somewhere and ended up a prisoner of war. But, that did not keep him from fighting in Korea, or in Viet Nam.
lt is not just him!
There are so many story’s of men in battle, and of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, the many who had suffered and the many that still do…this is what Memorial Day is supposed to be given to, to pay respect and give thanks to those who gave thier lives!

l dont know if these few words will show up on my blog. My accounts on-line have been altered by someone unknown-and l can no longer sign into my wordpress…only being able to write this via ‘flickr’, and…since l hav’nt paid the bill there (who knows)…but, each year when this date comes around l become more aware of my own service, and l had to say something about the service of others!

l hope to encourage you to go a cemetery and find the grave of a soldier or a sailor or a marine, and say a prayer of thanks.
peace

the real last day!

USS Vulcan AR-5 at James River, a photo by jayfherron on Flickr.

A few weeks ago some clever person found access to my on-line accounts and everything I kept on file was deleted, my passwords changed, and a lot of hassle.
I kind of feel an ease about this…seeing hawks,and finding dimes!
I can’t even sign in to view my own blog…but somehow this one spot, my photo box, has not been tricked.
I have no idea if this will publish.

In the morning tomorrow I board another freighter ship! This carries me for the next three months. Thankfully, again, there are only 21 others on ship. Now a few of those are my friends! This boarding and travel will certainly be the never more of this blog! I am saying good-bye!

I do hope this publishes as I hope the book about my life as a rape survivor (survivor?) will publish.
This is something people need to realize, truth, about who are the victims of sexual trauma. We only hear about some, but not all of the truth.

I hope also to re-new more of what I found out there at sea! I lost so much out there the first trip…and then I found so much more!
I have not lost the care and concern I have for the many veterans…those who know what MST means to them, many of you who I speak with personally, and those who I have emailed in the past-and kindly email me…I have no means to contact you, and the forum which I write to you know is only a hope that this comes through and you understand….I did not quit!
I am building up a new energy to find a way to help every MST vet!

The sunrises out at sea, they have meaning!
Peace, and thank you so much!

dimes

I try to see the message in things! Why did this happen? A violation, a violation, a violation! It echos in my head because the discovery of the personal loss of my email ability and contact lists was not as much that all of it is gone, it was more so that the many address files that I kept…thinking they were private and secure, they were those of trauma surviving veterans, and I have no way of contacting them to explain. I felt that blackening rage that PTSD creates when the mind can’t grip correctly what is happening! The of learning this had happened, the moment, I was sitting in a Waffle House. I fielded call after call after call, finally moving out to sit in my car and speak to one contact after! Some called me, I called some! It was late into the night when it all wound down! Reporting my ID had been compromised took hours to clear up…it is not free even when your life seems stolen! It cost me 130 bucks to lock all attempt to get credit in my name! Pay Pal wants a fee just to talk to them on the phone…a 900 number must be dialed, you have to go through some real gates to cancel that account!

I was excited from addrenilian and it still seems to have me on edge! Excited does not mean I was thrilled…it means I was and am still feeling scared! And worried about those who I cannot contact to say the spammers sent the emails…not me! I early that same morning returned reply to a young veteran who had written me that same morning talking about her issues with PTSD and MST and it is certain this young veteran received one of the emails…I am frightened by how that must have made her feel, to write someone in trust…and recieve the email like those described to me!

I have not seen the email…but know enough how deeply the violations go!

There is a message in this experience somewhere! Dang thing is…it has come at a very confusing spot in the road! I am trying to get ready to travel on the freighter, but then, guess who else got emails? The agent that makes the arrangements still has not returned my calls! And arrangements that I have made to keep my home safe are unchangeable! So it may be a long ride around the country is in store instead of a world sailing in the company of a freighter ship! If it is what God wants, then it will be!

It is yet to show itself as something bad! Maybe the thought could be this is a terrible thing! But in reality it may be a message about moving on and taking other highways! Some few years back an artist friend of mine gave me something! It was something very special, something that has kept on shining as a surprise each time I see it, and as ever I think about it I am in awe of the gift! The biggest part of the gift was learning about giving! Ah…but not allowing something material hinder you from going forward! The possession possessing you!

I have this great large room! Always in my mind I wanted to convert it into a wood working shop, and have! Another craftsman that I know has for many years said he wishes he had a dry space to build furniture and trick boxes and such…I offered the use of my space.

I am a collector! Trinkets of junk things that one buys at yard sales or thrift stores or gets given as some goofy gift. Just stuff that glitters in the eye, but otherwise…a possesion that possesses! My friend said the trinkets would have to go if it was true this was to be a workshop! The dust would clearly ruin much of it,others would fall and break, so it was a sign that the time had come to pack it away!

Freedom!

Some many years ago-42 to be exact…an old wood-carver gave me a walking stick! It turns out the old man is famous and some of his works have been displayed at the Cochran Galley of Art in Washington DC. It has been suggested my piece could have had a value up to 7,000 dollars.

If someone had come across this walking stick in my house, really, they would have thought its primitive chops and painted marks were a mere piece of an attempt without knowing the valid position in the art world this thing had! So I did some research and found the great-niece of this man…and read of the quest to locate a piece because of her own memories! I gifted the old piece to her….FREEDOM!

It was an amazing feeling!

I see dimes as messages! The dimes began as just finding a shining dime while out on a walk in my woods…finding the dime was a true moment of God giving me a sign all would be okay! Now, I am not always in tune about what the message might be! Especially now…except,this is not exactly an actual dime…but is a sign! And a message!

By this I mean the identity violation! My email accounts deleted! My contact information missing! My contacts receiving a frightening email !!

I did not trust this machine when the first of its kind entered my life. I could not see how something made by man could be trusted to securely keep everything I had in private and in safety…just mine! I began trusting it more and more and soon found the way to buy things, to meet people, to travel…and not even leave this chair!! But deep down inside there was something that kept warning me trust and security cannot be found with this tool.

I wanted to communicate openly when I began and want to communicate now…I am wanting to go back in that place of time where I was adamant there would never be a computer here (mainly speaking of Internet) because it scared me then, and scares me again! It has actually screwed me up!!

I remember coming to these woods with the mother of my two baby sons, one still in diapers! Somehow we managed to open a contract to buy this spot of land for $100 down $60 a month. No house, no water, no electric. Only a coleman stove and a car…a clunker! I thinking about it yesterday as I walked, I could hear the traffic out on 24-a miles walk North. I walked it so many times in the dark to get to 24 to hitch hike to a job that sucked as a sandblaster guy for a construction company. I came home every day clutching two or three boards salvaged from the company dump…try hitching a ride with lumber in hand! or, on shoulder!

I remember I promised I would never change the way it made me feel. I would never tear down the original building, the walked home home! It stands as a monument to every foot step made!

I think the message from the email scam poof theft zip was that I need to remember those footsteps and how powerful they are and why they had to be and WHO walked them with me!

Peace

IDENTITY STOLEN

Somewhere in this crazy cyber space place SOMEONE has stolen my identity…stolen my email contacts AND sent emails saying that I am stranded somewhere and need money!
WRONG!!
I am NOT the person who sent those emails!
The sad part is…many of the people who recieved these emails are hurt enough by the tragic events of trauma…I AM SO SORRY this happened!
One young veteran connected with me this morning seeking advice (a female from the conflict in Kosovo)…I am especially sorry, I did not mean for this to happen!
I NO LONGER have the jayfherron@yahoo.com email…ha, it will now have to remain a mystery because my passport, my personal info and the info of email contacts IS GONE!!
Those of you that have my telephone number…I AM STILL THERE!!
Peace

ship’s bridge, a photo by jayfherron on Flickr.

There is nothing but amazement as how all is orchestrated through out our life. I know now more clearly that it is not me that is in control.

I truly do need to move on towards another level of advocacy for the ‘silent wounded’ as I have mentioned at least a dozen times before. I also need to move on myself!

There is this peace that I found while out at sea! I was on a ship capable of carrying 6000 semi-containers across the oceans, with a crew of only 21 men. Most of the day you rarely saw a soul. It was possible to remain totally alone any where you went from one end of the ship to another. The world beyond our sight had no news for us, we were alone on the sea. It was like being on a world of your own.

The size of the house of the ship was 7 storeys high, sitting above another 14, or more. In its quiet state it looms out at you from the very size of it all. I felt at ease when walking the passages between starboard and port…forward and aft. The fear that over-comes me when in a large public building did not exist here! Hearing the voice of God out in the surf soothed me, this is true!

My friends have remarked that I seem distant in the sense that it appears that I am stuck out there…and I am! Many nights I sat in the high seat up on the bridge and imagined what it might have been like if I was able to finish a career in the Navy. I would sit there in silence for long hours as if I was assigned duty there. The ocean keeps one mesmerized!

I found a dime once during a walk deep in the woods behind my place. It was not just any dime, it was a shining clean new dime placed there by angels! I knew it the moment I saw it…I knew exactly where it came from even though this dime was in a place where it has to be impossible for a dime to be found, but in my heart I was trying to resolve a thought about an issue and somehow had thought about the dimes my grandmother would give us for ‘car fare’ to visit the city of Washington DC. The very moment I thought of her and those dimes I looked down and saw the dime!

I had a hawk fly in my house one day…it was the day of December 31…new year eve! The hawk was an angel to bring a message of my being on the right path, to be assured, to be given strength. The hawk had been stopped by the window opposite the open door it had flown in, somehow it had enough faith itself to allow me to close its wings and carry to freedom…any other bird would have flown nuts through-out the house, this hawk just waited for me to be fearless enough to save it to freedom.

The hawk was an angel. New year eve is the date I was raped!

I went to a home store yesterday evening to buy a few home repair items. It is not even yet Fall but the move of shelf space in order to get the lead on crixmix is upon us there! Seeing the evidence of the up coming holidays always brings a sore on me as reminding me in one solid lasting way of “remember barracks D?” …and I do!

I have avoided being a part of this.

My telephone rang last week and it was one of the Croatian officers from the ship I traveled on. The recent hurricane had forced the ship to stay at sea to avoid any conflict with the storm and delayed my friend from rejoining the crew. I drove up to where he was stranded to be company for him. I had made promises to almost all of the men aboard that if they found themselves in the USA and needing help to call me! He believed me, and we spent two great days together. His comments were had he never called me he would only see America from his hotel window, so we made his visit in Charleston SC as a first visit to see the USA!

He said to me some things that touched my heart! Things about friendship and things about the crew missing me when I departed. The ship is going around the world now! My friend convinced me to join them!

In faith I came up with the money to do this with a checking account with a 3 dollar balance. There is more needed yet, but I can see it working! I had thought the dream of going around the world one day a mute idea, but I never expected it would be this soon. And it has to happen! It is in the orchestration of things, those things I have no control over, those things that are the guide in our life. The kind who put the shiny dimes in the path!

I see what it is about!

No one ever cared to know about what happened to me in barracks D! My family was hurt because it was a detention barracks, my family was hurt because I only served 7 months,two in the detention, and was discharged early. No one asked my side of the story, all I knew was one officer told me to “get used to it”….it has all never been the same!

No one really knows it was a kid trying to go to his family for a Christmas! I knew my life had taken steps to be a man and to serve my country, but it was still family my boy heart was stuck with and the first time ever away from home for Christmas had been  not so easy to settle with. I was just trying to get home! My plan was flawed and created the rest, but I was not a bad guy running away from my duty. I enlisted to serve, I did not burn my draft card and flee to Canada…I enlisted to serve!

No one wanted to know the truth, and no one asked, and I grew more bitter. Especially about crixmix! It keeps an annual reminder going…this is the date,this is the date, this IS the date!!

I turned 60 years old a month back. I look in the mirror and I see a 60-year-old man. In my head I see the 18-year-old me! I still feel that kid…I am still a child. I still remember then! I have to try to revive other pieces!

A year ago…two years ago, I could not have told you the same thing I am telling you now! I would not have believed it on my own, if it was being told to me! I had no plan in any form to do what I am about to do, nothing…yes,a wish, and much talk, but reality…no.

I will spend the holiday season on the sea. There will be no avoiding the season. I have seen the photos of the ship’s crew, and been with them during Easter…watching grown men with Easter eggs, having true joy! Some of the photos showed the signs of a spirit aboard the ship, yes…Christmas, and new years eve…all at sea!

Something happened Friday that just sort sealed the deal…unfortunantly,I cannot express any kind of details because of privacy and all of that, but at an office somewhere I had something happen that connected me with my brother Frank. I was a good moment, a seed of some sort…perhaps, but it really made me praise the moment because of how distinct the connection was. Frank contributed to the way the pain began.

My whole intent is to try to battle this monster that haunts me! I never heard any words of interest in my life until I met a therapist at the VA five some odd years ago. Once the silence was opened to someone who cared and who told me to fight back, I refused to shut up or give up because it was hushed for so long that when it was revived by someone else I promised never to keep quiet about it!

I WILL NOT write any more here after this! I have become reptetative in my speaking about my life here to the point that everything is here! My words are always here, you can always read them, and as long as I am alive I am the young man that experienced them and wrote them. I AM NOT going to be quiet about this as it happens to so many others who are still afraid and are silent, so the voice that has been opened will continue…it just has to be in another venue, and more heard then now!

I will keep in touch with you through your comments, or emails…email me if you like and need to talk,

archerbeachrez@gmail.com

…but remember,in two months I will be out of touch for THREE MONTHS at SEA! There during that time I am going to finish the book I began on my first passage! Look for the finished project…it will be available!

God has given me this voice here, and I am blessed by how so many have heard it and have told me so! PEACE

…listen to these words from a guest writer!

looking into the face of God, a photo by jayfherron on Flickr.

I suggested to Jay a while back that he should consider having some “guest bloggers” share their stories. I think this was when Jay said he was finished, and had no more to say. That was not good news for those of us who follow his blog, and the chronicle of his struggles. Because I know, at least for my husband, it has been immeasurably helpful to know there is someone out there that gets it.

But now it is time to put my offer to the test. And I am realizing just how hard it is to put myself out there. And I am not the MST survivor. I am the wife of a man who was raped violently in the military.

I know the statistics that the divorce rate is astronomical for veterans. I honestly do not think I would still be in my marriage if it were not for my background in mental health counseling. At the very least , I have some tools available to me. Like how to handle it when my guy is disassociating, and does not know who I am, when he screams in the night. Or is hearing men’s voices, or believes someone is in the basement. Or when he attempted suicide. No one has written a manual on how to do this.

Not that I’m a saint , by any stretch of the imagination. I did not sign up for this. I met and married a lovely, kind, gentle man. He was prone to dark, dark moods. He had issues with men in authority. But the good qualities far outweighed the negative. I did not know that this monster issue lay buried within him. He had a cover story, that “something” awful happened in the military. I was not aware of the scope of the trauma, the despair. It took a suicide attempt, and a hospitalization, and lots of added trauma from the VA to even get to the point where he “blurted” out the truth to a psychologist. Then the real fun started. We are now four years into the battle to get this to a point where my husband is functional.

I sound cynical, as I hear the words in my head. I have watched the VA make my husband into a pharmaceutical zombie. I have fought the battles he has not been able to fight. I have been the keeper of information, the chauffeur, the counselor, the babysitter, not often wife. No one tells us wives how to deal with this, how to be in a marriage when the partner does not even feel like a man. I have even been told I now have “secondary PTSD” from living with him. I know there are days I drive him crazy, constantly checking on him. Ah, yes…being hyper vigilant, sleep disturbances, missed work, intrusive thoughts…

But, things are getting better. The symptoms are less disruptive, and I am getting more and more glimpses of the man I married. Or maybe a different version, now that I know the truth of his difficulties. He just got awarded 100% compensation for PTSD. It feels like a little justice, although the fight is not over. That is another story. But, at least some validation from the VA has made my husband feel like he was heard, and wasn’t crazy or making it up. Like anyone would make up what he has been through.

I hope I am not rambling, or not making sense. I do not feel like I can share my husband’s story. It is not mine to tell. I think he will tell his story on this blog someday, as long as I type it for him. For all those who read this wonderful, brave blog that Jay writes, I hope you find peace, justice and love. We are all connected.

Love to you all,

Mel, the wife of a MST survivor

“I am a drunk”

right turn, a photo by jayfherron on Flickr.

There is no special group for us! Bill W., founding the AA has no answer for a fellow like me…AA is for alcoholics,I am a drunk! Okay…this is bound to raise some eye-brows!!

I get asked the question almost every time I visit a doctor!… “Do you drink?” …I answer (honestly) “No,I am a drunk!”

“Oh,so you do drink!”

“No, I just told you I was a drunk!”

“Then…you drink!!”

“Well no…I do not drink,I am not a drinker!! Huh?  I AM A DRUNK!!”

 

I usually explain it this way…I do not like to drink alcohol, as a matter of fact-I don’t even like the way it tastes! It has to be confusing , I am sure! A drinker , in my opinion, is a person who steady has a (since I never drink booze…we are talking about beer here) beer in their hands…every day,day after day! Sure…this may also fall into the category of being an alcoholic, but the fact is by being a drinker the difference comes in that I am not a drinker because I do not feel like having my body feel the agony of being hung over day after day. My body is not requiring me to do that to it! I suffer it on my own inflicting the miserable feeling I have the day after my drunk!

It begins without premeditation! I have no agenda to go and get a six or twelve pack of beer. I might pick up beers at the grocery and they may sit on my kitchen floor collecting dust with no interest from me. I do not drink every day and sometimes go for weeks or longer,no thought of drinking. If I have a beer in my hand then it is sure getting in a drunken state is on my mind-wanting to get life off of my mind.

But something triggers it! My opening my first…

I guess you could say a drinker is also someone who can stop and take a break during the heat of the day and pop open a cold beer for refreshment. And that’s it! Or maybe go to a restaurant for a nice steak dinner and have a beer to wash it down…and that’s it! I do not fit that category either!

Most likely for certain if you see me with a beer you can bet there are ten or more to back that one up! I am in the mode of wanting escape…the beer is the legal drug and fastest concentration of ‘medicine’ that can push the shit out of life and bring out the hap-hazard,I could give a shit attitude…the power and the strength of escape! I know I have escaped when the day after comes and my morning begins but calculating what all is askew and locating the empties and learning how far I went.

I don’t want to do this! I hate it! I hate it all the following day…the greatest curse of it is the feeling so badly lasts longer then the feeling of escape. I just want to escape! To forget! To kill it! To get it away from me!

Why? That is what I try to answer every time, why? I know what it is that I want to get away from. I also know that it does not free me….no matter what kind of support or personal supervisor or meetings will ever fix this! Of course…I know what it is I want to be free from.

Talking about this has been on my mind for a few weeks. I have been seeing a therapist that treats sexual trauma injured folks like us who deals (so it seems so far) in helping us…helping me to determine the joy of love in separation from sexual contact,being that individuals profess ‘love’ to us but we can’t comprehend it because of the distorting way the other half of ‘love’ was presented to us. I have to say I am not sure of how much longer the relationship with the therapist is going to go…I went in the beginning to try to stop myself from being self abusive (self-abuse is not always from drugs or drinking) and the fact that I turn 60 years old in one more week and have been absolutely alone for the past 12 years scares me!

I want to find love. I want to believe in love. But fuck all if it comes to me. I am afraid of it. And yet, I want to feel it for sure for once.

No one is ever going to understand me. And if it is the same for the other many thousands of sexual trauma survivors that we have this same problem,what a state of confusion.

It has always been suggested that when a person dies their whole life replays in the last seconds of life. That is what getting drunk does to me!

I cry so much about what it all has been!….and the confusion it all has created!

I am just telling you the truth about me! I am not a tower of strength as many say I am. It is why I write this…the truth about me! To show the damage of post traumatic stress and from the view of sexual trauma causing it.

A few years ago I attended a conference (I wrote about it here) and heard a woman speak about her own rape. Her experience was something that was so horrid I think about it often! She too has a lifetime of memories, her attacks left her blind. I am not going into the worse of what she endured. I want to find the strength that woman has found to stand up. I am perplexed in how it is managed! How can one rise up and another keep falling?

I apologize…there is not much encouragement here.

Peace…and ending with a poem I wrote in 1981:

 

Quitting again,

open another farewell beer,

and tell this one goodbye

how many is this? this year?

another farewell lie!

you drunken waste!

give me one more drink and lots of time to think!

Think of what? you’ve thought it all, you are trying to forget!

You’ve drunk a bottle miles tall , and have’nt finished yet.

 

 

 

WHAT NEXT?

088, a photo by jayfherron on Flickr.

I am at a roadblock!

I have made promises to continue this blog in effort to continue to raise awareness of MILITARY SEXUAL TRAUMA and that MALES are victims too! Lately I have failed to keep my promise!

It is not that I am moving on…no,but that I am stuck! I have had acquaintances say to me that I have repeated myself…they not understanding that to keep the information current I need to repeat myself! However…I am no longer involved in the legal matters of my own claim/and case and have a total separation clause in my final paperwork from the VA…the VA no longer has jurisdiction over my life or mental health care! Therefore I am not connected in a way that I can be critical of the VA and VA hospitals.

I am still trying to survive myself!

Lasting living facts that will not go away is that there are issues in concern of those survivors of MST that have yet to have ANY justice in their lives as a civilian,a survivor…and a veteran! Pointing at this moment towards “what is being done to help the MST veteran?”

To repeat myself and my past and what had happened when I was told that I should file a disability claim…I went to my local VSO officer (veterans service officer) to describe the events in 1969-70 that changed my life forever. I explained to a male…a male unknown to me,but had all the suggestions of being an advocate…I explain how I was raped! To do this was not easy but was made even worse by the comments the VSO officer made regarding a rape between men as homosexual behavior (and therefore was sexual play) and equally were the comments of racial stereo typical ignorence….the man assumed that my attackers were black men,almost insisting such.

The later visits at the VSO office were not improved. So…how can justice be met in this scenario of ignorant bigotry?

It is no doubt that a change in how the VA meets the needs of an MST veteran must happen! Soon! Because we are negligent to the survivors…very negligent!

I am negligent too! Leading this voice along for several years and then seeming to drop the lead! I am stuck!!

I apologize. (although…apologies seem a dime a dozen anymore!)

There are many of us out there! There are so many who are still silent and the need to support and offer guidance is so important…but there is something else,the need to know the MST survivor veteran is not just ‘one’ alone…there are many!

Through this blog I have come in contact with many! I remain in telephone contact with about a dozen MST survivors! Some of these have decided to open a claim against the VA for post-traumatic injury due to MST incidents. Several have succeeded in seeing the claims to satisfaction where the VA admits the MST took place. That is a huge hurdle to leap for the survivor…the veteran,to at least have acknowledgment that this is a fact!

One of the veterans recently contacted me about wanting to post their own story and experience…and I encourage that idea very much!

It is not my story alone,although for a long time it seemed I was the only one this had ever happened to. I know now that there are many storys to be told.

My e-mail address is jayfherron@yahoo.com

Any survivor of sexual trauma is welcome to post! Any MILITARY SEXUAL TRAUMA survivor is encouraged to tell their story!

I PROMISE no one will ever have your email contact…as one may know,as one comments on this or any blog,the commentors email address is shown to the blog moderator in a personal part of the site…so,your email address would also be kept in privacy if one was to write me directly…I will copy and paste your words for encouragement to others!

We are clearly seeing more changes in the discussions of MST in the media…but not enough,and change may be happening in teaching that MST exists,but not enough change in how to see the survivor safely and swiftly find justice!

Please tell your story! You may help someone…one of the ‘silent wounded’ find a path worth following!

PEACE

veterans parade

veterans parade, a photo by jayfherron on Flickr.

I am inspired by a conversation I had this weekend with a fellow MST veteran. He said things to me that helped me tremendously,he told me things I had not considered fully. I did not realize how many I have reached,not for me,but to find a hope for a change in how Military Sexual Trauma (MST) veterans are received,and treated,when they are returned to civilian life!

I expressed to my friend that my blog had taken a dip from my own interest because I have no more connection with the Veterans Administration Hospital and therefore have no ground to raise issue . I’m not a real brite guy!

There are still issues! Serious issues!

I am very proud of this veteran,the man who inspired me. His conversation lifted me back on the track I was trying to leave!

Why I am proud for him is because independently this veteran appealed to the VA for disability due to ‘post traumatic stress disorder’ related to injury directly related to MST….and he was awarded 100% disability.

There is some justice,in fact!

But then in this case the VA holds re-evaluation rights every so many years. There are still issues!

This veteran and I both agreed that this was an insult. We both agreed the damages to our souls were too deep to ever heal, and PTSD is forever.

Of course the veteran can appeal and hopefully will. But why? Why should this ever be? We were the victims! This veteran was a victim to a crime where the only convictions were always on him, never was anyone convicted for the crime,never was the crime taken seriously, and as typical the blame was placed in the veterans direction…and it stands there! In the veterans possession is a paper saying “after some 40 years of your suffering steadily and full-time we finally agree you have been 100% injured,but might improve in a few years”!!

What an insult to think that could ever be so. While a criminal walked free the victim has to continue to defend themselves? It is hard to comprehend how we can say there is justice in these decisions as many of them have come years too late. And that perhaps all will change in a few years. I wish I could encourage somebody to hope for that, but I can’t.

I spoke to a lady from a non-profit group that is gearing up to expose more of the facts of MST. She gave me praise for my courage. I have no courage-it is more anger…but, I don’t believe it about the courage. You see, even if the VA approves a claim for disability in your favor it does not mean you are finally free of the past that disables you! I am in a life long battle to remain sober,and yet my knees still have scrape marks from the times I fall down. And,I fall down. And then reality glints a ray in my heart and I try to pick back up again. And I do…for a season,maybe two! But I fall. I have been determined 100% disabled due to PTSD related directly to MST. Still…everyday,even this days beginning I remember the events that led to my rapes as if they took place yesterday. Why the reel must play over and over and over is something I can not answer. I don’t want to be drunk. I don’t want to be drugged. But I do indulge in these manners of escape…thankfully now not as frequent as once was, but then there comes a trigger of some kind that causes me to seek escape.

It is an insult to any survivor to assume things have gotten better! On the last day of 1969 I was told by the officer who saw my injury from being beaten up while being raped to “get used to it”. He did not offer any help, he merely chuckled at the fact of my demise, and expected me to just live with it. I have never been able to live with it.

So much was taken from us. We intended to serve our country, to defend the Constitution of the United States and our Flag. It was a ‘boy-hood’ must in my era! We grew up playing Army games with great pretend wars. We were enlisting to share the freedom of democracy to lands that had none. Freedom! And rights! It add’s to the power of the damage to us because we were there to be defenders, instead we are sore with shame. It is nearly impossible to speak of my military time without feeling the shame. Many of my friends served in combat, real combat unlike anything we could imagine as kids at play. One of my friends disabled from stepping on a land mine.

It is hard explaining our military time with veterans like that.

No. It won’t go away, and it won’t get better.

But despite it all…here is an MST veteran who lost a career and went through the mishaps of life because of PTSD’s help, who after many years of suffering has taken on the VA on his own, and was successful in at least the recognition of MST being a valid connection to PTSD.

All MST veterans should applaud the courage that took! And…should take the same issue in their own lives, because this veterans achievement is powerful.

Peace