Losing a Way of Life

Returning from war should be a happy homecoming, not one haunted by the memories of what was seen and done in the time away. As just after a storm there should be peace, after war there should be comfort. That the world isn’t as it should be is something that humans have bemoaned from earliest experience of unfairness. Ever more cruelly, in this situation, this torture is not just felt by the person who has PTSD, but also by those close to them. It had always seemed, that after a war is passed, things should go back to the way they were; the home front should be returned to a civilian metropolis, the soldiers happily with their families and friends, life going on in a series of busy nothings. I know now though, that the ramifications of war never stop being felt. The outcome will continue to affect later generations, people and politics alike.
Domestic violence is often connected to a case of PTSD, something that resounded with me more deeply than the idea of war itself did. I do not intend to go into war, never did, never (I do not think) will. That war can come to a person rather than a person going to war never occurred to me. Yet, many spouses and children to marines have died or been severely injured because of their family member’s traumatic experiences. They are hurt without ever having come close to war, because violence seen on the front inspires a reflective irrationality and anger in those who have PTSD. From this violence at home, we can see that for some there is no going back to before.
The experiences that these soldiers go through put me in mind of a quote from Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Frodo, at one point, reflects upon his place at the end of the journey, so full of terror and breathless flight: “‘But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam…. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them,’” (Tolkein 338). This is the experience of many soldiers who have PTSD. They left for various reasons (to do a job, to earn money, to get an education, to defend their nation, to save their family), but in doing so, ruined their chance of ever again being able to be happy in what they saved for another. So even if this sacrifice is not without reservations or hurt done to another, it is important to acknowledge the helplessness in the case of those who have PTSD.