A friend & cousin of mine & I were talking the other night. He’s about to graduate and I was being a annoying dult at him: “what will you do after graduation?” “will you go into the kinds of industries your major implies?” and the like. I told him he could be a marine! jokingly, since his twin joined the marines a few years ago. That got us into talking about what drives people to do things like that. His younger brother just joined up. I can’t imagine what his mom is going through. Freaking out most likely, like she did the first time around.

I started this post a few months ago & managed to lose all but that first paragraph. The next few times I tried to finish it, I ended up deleting everything because I came across (even to myself) as much more inflammatory and, you know, “anti-American” than I intended/am. But today, I heard an NPR story about post-traumatic stress in recent vets. This is one of my biggest concerns about the war in Iraq: the injurious fallout.

I am not against war or violence. I actually find a lot of comfort in the archetype of Warrior. I like the Klingon motto “today is a good day to die”; I like showing off my judo bruises when I have them (except this week, they were not honorably obtained, so they embarrass me); I tend toward aggression when I experience just about any strong emotion (judo is my cure for broken glasses); I think a combination of Israel’s & Germany’s military service requirements is a very good idea; I think women should be drafted. And, I Support The Troops^TM. Which is to say, I’m against this war; I think buying a Hummer is treason; and I believe that, when you ride alone, you ride with bin Laden (although, I ride alone often, so I’m as much a hypocrite as the SUV next to me with a yellow ribbon).

I hang out with a lot of people who are either in the military or used to be. My path never took me that direction for a variety of reasons, but I respect the people whose paths do go in that direction. That said, the people who actually get deployed and who come back, always come back different.

War injuries are not limited to the deployed parties; post-traumatic stress can inflict the families of those who come back or who don’t. And it’s one of the most insidious injuries. A vet who has lost a leg is obviously injured, but one who “only” has PTSD sometimes is not even aware of it. And what that person does because of the PTSD has effects on their friends & family.

Every time I hear about PTSD, I think of my judo-brother, who returned from Afghanistan a few months ago. He took over instruction for the day & I had many honorable bruises after the longest hour-and-a-half of my life… Then, he gave out gifts he brought back, including hippos for my sister (who collects them, but how do you find hippos in Afghanistan ‽). And then…he disappeared. I had more fear of him being dead in the two months that we heard nothing from him than in the whole time he was deployed. Something he said to us as he was talking about his experiences (in a very superficial way) has stuck with me. He was discussing a debriefing about PTSD. He was told that it affects everyone and in ways that are unpredictable. Then he explained how he experienced it: seeing someone with a turban or in a veil, and wanting to kill them. My fear is not that he will act on that urge, although it’s possible that he may. My fear is simply that he has it at all. As much as I admire the Warrior, archetypal or embodied, war fucks people up.