My friend with the shoelaces is still in treatment. He’s entered a three-month residential program to treat PTSD and addiction at a VA near us.
Maybe because he’s had a lot on his mind, or maybe because he’s bored he’s been texting me pretty regularly.
I have really tried to put a cap on my “take it one day at a time” and “just follow your breath” crap because he’s heard it all before and is fairly certain the Buddha isn’t going to save him and he certainly doesn’t need a soft-handed suburban mom to espouse healing techniques for the PTSD he acquired while exchanging gunfire with Taliban and Taliban adjacent type people half a world away.
Why don’t I just go ahead and teach fish how to swim and birds how to fly while I’m at it?
So when Shoelaces texts- I have really tried to just listen. Listen and empathize. And OK, because I am a journalist at heart I also ask a lot of questions.
A lot of, “how is the program?” And, “how are you feeling?”
But also meatier stuff. Hoping to maybe understand where he’s coming from a little better.
I asked Shoelaces if he’d mind if I wrote about him and what he’s dealing with, thinking there might be other people out there who could relate. He said it was OK. Actually, he writes so clearly about it himself, I’m just going to share bits of our conversation, with his blessing.
Shoelaces can be really candid about his experiences in treatment. His assessment can at times be scathing and darkly funny and horrible all at once. The absurdity of trying to get well with other people who are equally, if not more unstable, then you are. I asked him about his living situation and he said his roommate was widely known for his lack of hygiene and “highly irregular sleep patterns.”
“I wish I could just be fucking normal and deal with normal issues and not be crazy and have to deal with living with a bunch of other psychopaths who you have to walk on eggshells around out of fear that you might trigger them to hang themself in their closet or tell on you for not being in bed by 11 or plot on you in some other god damn way…”
Because I know Shoelaces well, I know he uses the word psychopath in the most loving way possible. He doesn’t exclude his own brand of mental illness from the conversation. They’re all in treatment for the same reason after all.
I told him he could write a book about his experiences in treatment one day. And his response caught my by surprise. Or maybe not surprise, because he’s not exactly the most optimistic person at the moment. But it at least gave me pause.
“People want uplifting miracle stories, not depressing stories about endless failure,” Shoelaces wrote back.
Because it’s true, right? We expect so much from our heroes.
We expect stoicism and resilience. We expect they will face hardship. That they will witness terrible things. That they will subject their bodies to unimaginable pain and relentless risks. We expect that we can glue their bodies and brains back together into the person they were before. Or at least a semblance of the person they were before. We expect them to return home and assimilate. We expect them to accept the trifling thanks we give them on the appropriate designated holidays. We expect to use their sacrifices, their likenesses, and our assumptions about their motivations as political fodder.
We only want to read the stories that end in triumph. That confirms their heroism. Whether in battle or at home. Whether it was overcoming the enemy or overcoming the challenges of being an amputee or overcoming the mental scourge of PTSD.
Shoelaces is very aware that nobody is going to want to read about how he came home from war and how his first marriage failed and how he’d drink and drink and drink to run away from all the awfulness. Nobody wants to read about how he went into rehab and came out rehab and eventually returned to drinking. And how went to treatment for PTSD and returned from treatment and still struggled with PTSD. And how when life piles up with all its stresses, his anxiety is triggered and he’ll fall down the rabbit hole again.
For people like Shoelaces, we want the story where he goes to war, comes home with the battle scars, gets the help he needs and re-enters into life successfully. The past behind him. The future bright.
It’s much less complicated for the rest of us. When we can watch wars from the safety of our living rooms and all the pain is temporary. And anyway our heroes can handle the pain. They’re stronger than us. More capable.
I asked him about this idea of being a hero:
Me: Do you feel like you’re expected to always be a hero? Like every time you have a setback mentally it’s weakness … not heroic?
S: It is weakness. That’s the way I see it. I see it as failure, like I should be better than that, like things shouldn’t affect me the way that they do, that I am powerless against … whatever is happening in my brain. And I hate myself for it. Every episode makes me hate myself more, makes me more embarrassed.
Me: Did you feel that sense of weakness when you had mental struggles before you went to Afghanistan or only after you got back? Do you see it as weakness in other guys you served with?
S: Only after I got back, and it’s a sentiment shared by most everyone I know who’ve been down similar roads.
This part is really difficult to hear. That Shoelaces sees himself as weak. That the words he associates with each setback he experiences are failure and embarrassment.
He wrote about what it feels like when he starts spiraling. Walking down “the dark path” as he calls it. He said he feels as if he’s an entirely different person. A monster.
Though I’ve never been to war, I am familiar with “the dark path.” For years when I was in my late teens and early 20s I would cut myself in moments of deep depression and anxiety. And I’m familiar with the shame and embarrassment and the vulnerability that comes with seeking help.
“I had to go to the ER and get stitches after cutting myself once,” I wrote him. “Having to explain to everyone that it was self inflicted was mortifying. But in that moment when I did it, it was like being possessed. I wasn’t quite myself. It was like my pain over road my whole system.”
Just as I wish Shoelaces could exorcise the monster that overtakes him at his lowest moments, I wish we could cast out words like “shame,” “embarrassment,” “failure” and “weak” from the language of mental illness. They don’t serve the individuals who are struggling and they’re inaccurate. We would never use the same words to describe cancer patients (though they too are saddled with the language of war- “battling cancer” or “giving up the fight.”)
Our bodies are not killing fields.
Shoelaces and I talked a little about those miraculous endings he felt was expected of him.
Me: I was thinking about what you wrote the other day about people wanting uplifting stories with miraculous endings- were you talking about that in reference to your treatment program? … I feel like that idea- which I think is prevalent- that service people go through treatment programs and are magically fixed- is unfair and puts unrealistic pressure on you to feel like all the struggle has to go away. Do you feel as if it is something that will never completely go away? That you’ll carry the pain for the rest of your life and that maybe you’ll have days when it’s a little better, but often you’ll have days when it’s awful?
S: The miraculous stories are unfair, and it puts expectations in your head about what you’re going to get out of a certain program, and there is definitely pressure to succeed and that weight gets heavier and heavier with every setback you face while trying to recover, then it gets engrained in your head that maybe you’re just gonna fail and if you fail your life will be absolute shit and that … sucks and it’s hard and I hate it… because in reality, there is a chance that this won’t work, and if it doesn’t then what? What’s the next step? What will happen to me and how soon will the next disaster strike?
Me: I feel like on a certain level, they want to try to be optimistic about the promise of your program, otherwise how do they get buy-in. On the other hand to have you go through it with the idea that you are “cured” in the end seems unrealistic. Even cancer patients aren’t cured. Only in remission. What do you think the goal should be for people in your shoes? What are you hoping for?
S: Well yes, they want to remain as positive as possible. I get that, but yeah. Sometimes they paint an unrealistic picture, and you start measuring yourself against that picture and comparing your progress and when the two don’t match then you start feeling like you are failing or falling behind and when it comes to shit like what I’m dealing with, which is really life or death, that weight starts crushing you and you feel that pressure and you get fucking straight up defeated. It’s hard dude.
We chatted, too, about how difficult it is for Shoelaces to talk about what happened to him in Afghanistan. What he saw and did. How my expectations about what he should talk about have evolved the longer he’s struggled. His own thoughts about sharing his story. Like the total dork I am, I made a “Lord of the Rings” reference. Because relevance.
Me: As for your experiences … when you first came back I had this thought that you should just share everything to get it all out there and we could all handle it. I think now I understand that maybe for you, all the stuff that happened was so immense. How do you even begin to explain it to someone who hasn’t experienced anything close? You can’t. …I get why you stay quiet. I would never want you to feel as if you had to explain yourself or share your story or anything with me- though I’m always willing to listen.
S: Yeah, plus, I don’t want to put that burden on anyone else, I feel like it’s my stone to carry up and down life’s many hills. So I do, and sometimes I can manage it and other times it has its way with me and sends me spiraling in to the top floors of hospitals in locked units where I’m left sorting through the wreckage of my entire life. Why would I want to put that on anyone else? I know what you mean, and you’re not the only one who has said that to me post-Afghanistan
Me: Nobody would see it as a burden. I get wanting to keep the ugliness from people. I imagine it was part of training right? You volunteered? It was your duty to serve and protect our country, and you did it willingly. And just as you bore the burden of the battle, you also bear the burden of the aftermath. You want to protect people from that as much as you protected your buddies and protected your country.
But if it helped at all to share your stories we would all rather we heard them than thought of you carrying them alone for the rest of your life. This is cheesy but I think about Samwise in Lord of the Rings. He knew he couldn’t carry the ring for Frodo. He knew that burden was Frodo’s alone. But he could carry Frodo. And he could never, ever understand the depth of Frodo’s pain, but he could witness it. I guess I just wish you had that person. I know the LOTR is kinda lame
S: No, that reference is actually extremely relevant. And yes, it is a burden, and one that I carry all alone.
Shoelaces is still in treatment and will be for a bit more time. While he knows he needs help, the prospect of group therapy and ongoing medication isn’t so appealing. It’s difficult trusting a room of strangers with some of your darkest thoughts and memories. He misses being at home with his family- seeing his sweet 1-year-old daughter more than a couple times a week. But he’s sticking with the program, because the stakes are too high. He knows that.
As he already noted, he doesn’t have the expectation that he’ll ever be cured of his PTSD. Not by a long shot. But he’d like to see longer stretches of stability. Less devastating falls. Feelings of peace in his head.
I asked about what a good day feels like- he mentioned stopping by my house at Easter with his daughter. The chance to laugh while our babies stole plastic Easter eggs from each other. He also mentioned the time he spent working on a farm. He’d love to get a service dog that can help him manage his anxiety.
“I remember it was good for me because there were all these creatures that relied on me and it was something ‘bigger than myself.’ I loved the horses especially. They were good for me.”
It seems simple enough, right? To return home to your family. Cuddle your little girl. To put in a good day’s working laboring outside, in a quiet place with creatures who rely on you.
Shoelaces dreams aren’t unreasonable. They’re not unachievable. And while I know he wouldn’t call it a storybook ending, the stuff of miracles- I think learning to live beside your demons, figuring out how to walk beside the monsters you’ll never be rid of. That’s heroic in it’s own way.
Not that Shoelaces needs to keep being our hero. He’s done enough.
I sent a draft of this post to Shoelaces to make sure he was OK with what I was sharing. He told me to post it.
Anything I should add? I asked.
“Add the number to the Veteran Crisis Line,” he told me.
Ten-four.
The number for the Veterans Crisis Line is 1-800-273-8255 and then press 1 or text 838255.