"Thank-you for your service", sorry you were trashed

I have been pulling back on posting these days for several reasons, one being, I have said most of what I need to say over the years, and another reason is, I was writing a memoir for my 7th decade and needed time and space to get my thoughts in order. However,

. . .something has come up that I can't ignore. A man has taken his life in our town (again). It's too raw to talk about in any detail, too close to home, but I will say he was serving in the military when he injured his body in a training mission and was in constant pain ever since.

The military failed to provide him with the support he needed to live his life which apparently became unbearable. Heard this story before? I'm sure you have.

My last post prior to this sharing was titled "War trashes the best in us: reflections on Odysseus". Odysseus, seen by many of us, is in the theaters, soon to be displaced by Spider Man. "Odysseus" is the age-old story of a man who leaves his (pregnant) wife to fight in a distant war. This man angers the gods of his time, who play chess with him so he takes 20 years to get back to his wife and son who are struggling to hold space for him.

Meanwhile he is having adventures on various islands, trying to get home. My point in my last post was, "He (Odysseus) might as well have been lying comatose on their bed having archetypal dreams". That's what happens to our traumatized soldiers when they return to their own Ithicas.

The unconscious hits them with big dreams, with storms and with nightmarish recurrent dreams, including replays of what broke when they were executing missions for the government.

Since dreams communicate in archetypal symbolism that constitutes a language, and very few in the field of psychology are trained to interpret them, they are dismissed by head-doctors as signs or symptoms of overwrought emotions, which they treat by prescribing psychotropic medications that sedate or compensate for the psyche's very human response to the trauma.

These medications are good at lifting depression, calming agitation, neutralizing anger which only buys time for the wounded warrior, when in fact, depression, agitation and anger are very human responses to the situations that many of our warriors find themselves in, that are par for the course. And it's not always just one or two exposures or accidents or missteps that break our warriors. ("Thank-you for your service.")

I just read in the BBC about how "thousands of sailors on the USS Abraham (aircraft carrier) (which has been at sea for 260 days) have reportedly faced food shortages and broken plumbing with some considering jumping overboard." (By the way, a full term pregnancy is 273 days.) Meanwhile, while these worthy young folks are dealing with this nightmare situation, everyone back home is watching "Odysseus", who (traumatized) can't get home from having fought in a meaningless foreign war.

Also, meanwhile (Vonnegut would have fun with this!), active-duty service members (age 30 and older) face mandatory annual testosterone deficiency screening during routine health assessments, while troops under 30 can test voluntarily.

My heart goes out to the families of our discharged warriors who ("Thank-you for your service") have been trashed by the military when what they really deserve is healing and TLC.