Tropical Zen

It’s Veteran’s Day.

Again.

In most times and places throughout history, disabled veterans were to be discarded immediately after use; this was how it was done until relatively recently, when governments were forced to set something up. The VA as we know it was largely a product of WWII; such an overwhelming majority of the population were involved with The War Effort that Congress could not ignore their disabilities and had to create a comprehensive infrastructure to support the broken ones and their dependants.

“World War II resulted in not only a vast increase in the veteran population, but also in large number of new benefits enacted by the Congress for veterans of the war. The World War II GI Bill, signed into law on June 22, 1944, is said to have had more impact on the American way of life than any law since the Homestead Act more than a century ago.”

From http://www.va.gov/facmgt/historic/Brief_VA_History.asp

War causes so many not-dead, not-whole casualties; “undead” is not an inaccurate word for some of us. Constantly fearing for your life, and having to kill another of your own species, does a lot of psychological damage. The results are often bewildering to the civilians around us; they don’t understand why we startle at loud noises, bolt awake in terror at night, or see the faces of our victims people we may have killed when we go out shopping. It can be easy, also, to write off the common forms of self-medication in which many veterans try to lose themselves–alcoholism and drug addiction; easy, but not correct. This is suffering that has taken over mind and body, and won’t let go. Choosing escape isn’t always a moral failing. How do you explain the grueling real-ness of a nightmare that you can never wake from?

For some of us, there *is* no way to ever really come home again.

For this, if we get an “unemployable” 100% disability rating we’re paid just $300/year more than the Federal Poverty Standards; just barely enough to *not* qualify for fedral housing, college grants, or assistance programs. That’s a big if; there are so many new disabled vets coming in from the “war on terror” that the backlog for processing new vets is in the multiple hundreds of thousands. Between leaving active duty and being integrated into the VA Healthcare system, there is nothing. No money, no health care, no answers.

Those military and ex-military people who are not disabled are quick to ascribe their good fortune to their own strength, or skill, or faith; they believe that they had something to do with whether or not they were injured and disabled. This is not usually true, but it’s a tidy fiction, important to assuage survivor’s guilt. (There are situational exceptions; and the difference between “disabled” and “dead” is sometimes because of skill or determination.)

It very easily could have been you instead of me, but if you hold on to the idea that your skill somehow saved you from injury, you don’t have to think about how close you came to barely surviving, living with chronic pain. You get to maintain a sense of control.

In reality, it has to do with where you happened to be when the bomb went off; which war you were sent to and when; or sometimes, how close the truck behind you happened to be when you got bumped out of the convoy and run over. It is mostly a random chance, an accident of probability; a certain percentage of service members are going to be wounded, damaged, and killed, and it’s a crap shoot as to which side of that line we end up on. Remember, I was a warrior too, once.

I made the same commitments as someone who ultimately retired, offered the same outstanding level of wartime service, worked as hard or harder to perform my duties after I was injured during my duty– why am I not a full veteran with all the recognition and (meager) privilege? Why am I second class? We all made the same promises, we all signed away our individuality and freedom so that we could have a chance to preserve that of our children. Some of us were wounded or broken, and some of us were not. Chance.

There is often talk about “the ultimate sacrifice” – as though death were the worst that could happen. It’s not. I was young, healthy, able; now for almost 14 years, every day I struggle to get out of bed, argue with chronic pain, fight to control my PTSD and depression with pills. I fight a different fight than the service members who stayed for the full retirement; when they retire, they get to stop fighting.

I don’t get to stop fighting until I die.