Arts & Culture
Does Your Husband Have PTSD?
By Melissa Seligman / February 17, 2009
Question: "Does your husband have PTSD?"
He is next to me, breathing calmly, quietly. Soft lullaby music escapes beneath my kids’ doors and follows a wispy path to my ears. He has been home for weeks. I still wake at night, scared and shocked to find a body next to me. I stare in the dark, black night, trying to remember. It takes several minutes before his breathing sounds familiar to me. I stretch my leg, tentatively, until I find his leg beneath the covers. He did come home to me. It wasn’t a dream.
I ease closer to him, trying to coerce my body to remember his silhouette, his scent. Sleep finally wins.
I snap awake to the sound of him screaming. He sits up in the bed, arguing beneath his eyelids. He flails, turns to me, screams, breathes, cries, and falls back to his pillow.
I edge closer to him and peer over his shoulder. He is sweaty, and he grunts and grimaces. He continues over an hour before he falls back into a deep sleep. Then, he rolls over and throws his arm over my hip. I stare at the wall, awake and terrified, until the sun pours through the window. Another day has come.
Weeks later, we drive through town, listening to children’s music, chatting back and forth, and trying to soak up the joy of being together again. A car backfires. He pushes my head down into my knees. "Hold on!" he yells, screeching out of the mall parking lot. When we are finally "safe" he looks into my terrified face. "It’s okay," he says. "Don’t worry. It was just a car backfiring." I am worried.
Months later, we wander through a crowd at a carnival on base. Music blares through the speakers, bright neon lights reflect off the grass, and our kids, riding on our shoulders, laugh and point at the balloons and exploding fireworks. We are finally a family again.
Then, he begins to unravel. He jerks his hand from mine, his face goes white, and he begins to dodge people as they approach him. "This doesn’t feel safe," he says. "There are way too many people here." He looks behind him, nervous and agitated. "Can we just leave?" he asks. We do. We bargain with our screaming kids as we leave the carnival, promising them a wonderful tomorrow of ice cream and swimming.
Even two years after his return, he is edgy. He doesn’t wake up as often. Doesn’t avoid every crowd. But he is always vigilant. Always watchful and easily agitated. How could he not be? Suicide rates are rising. Deployments are continuing. Wars are still raging. At what point can he drop his guard and leave it all behind?
Answer: He wouldn’t be human if he didn’t.
Melissa Seligman, author of The Day After He Left for Iraq, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she’ll be here all week. Stay tuned.
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Re: mike–I have no doubt you sympathize with us. Please, no worries.
I am sorry to hear of your brother. All of it is hard and impossible not to garner some form of PTSD. My thoughts are with you and him as you continue battling.
My father and my two uncles were in Vietnam. My other uncle was in Desert Storm. Each war, deployment, branch of service brings hardships and constant struggle. It is impossible to say that one isn’t as harsh as the other. They all hurt in some form. Death, bombs, overworked bodies–it all builds and potentially destroys.
I certainly hope your brother continues to heal, and that you continue to be a source of support for him.
I’m sorry: I neglected to say above that I’m sorry about your husband, and I wish him, and you, and your whole family, all the best. The improvement that he’s shown so far, may it only continue, progress, and increase.
It’s not the same thing, and hardly anywhere near as severe, but I’m reminded of my brother:
He went into the US Army, stationed as a car mechanic on a US base in Germany. Unfortunately, for several months, he was the ONLY mechanic on base. Vehicles would pile up in need of repair, and being the only mechanic, he had to work non-stop continuous days, from morning until bedtime, just to stay barely on top of things. He said he literally had to eat while repairing vehicles (I shudder to wonder whether he had time to even clean his hands of automotive grease), and he didn’t even have time to get the food himself from the mess hall; someone else had to bring him the food for him.Â
His coworkers all got to spend their nights playing Playstation and pool, while he was working literally non-stop, except when sleeping.
Meanwhile, his superior would constantly berate him for not repairing the vehicles in a timely manner, and he would incure such creative punishments as having to shovel snow, alone, while it was snowing; by the time he finished the end, the beginning of the path would be snowed in again. And of course, while he was being punished, more vehicles piled up in need of repair.
Of course, he became an alcoholic while there. And then, don’t you know, his superiors punished him for this as well. And while they recommended psychiatric attention, they gave him no actual assistance in this area. They punished him punitively for his infraction of alcoholism, which of course only made matters worse, while simultaneously expecting him to continue repairing vehicles. He didn’t have time to seek psychiatric assistance even if it had been offered, which of course, it was not. The army punished him for psychiatric illness while expecting him to cure himself.
Suffice it to say, when he finally came home to America, he was hardly in good mental health. Thank G-d, he wasn’t a total wreck; he could still function in day-to-day society, but his overall mood was a very negative and depressed one, and while his alcohol consumption was not anything necessarily dangerous in a medical sense, it was definitely not healthy in a social sense.
It’s also interesting to note that his approach to Judaism was decidedly more negative when he returned from the Army. He hasn’t mentioned any anti-semitism there, but I can only wonder. He has recently begun making stray references to shul and havdalah (I am several thousand miles away from him, so I cannot see firsthand what he is up to), so perhaps his attitude his improving, but I haven’t discussed it with him, since I don’t want to be confrontational.
He is now enrolled in community college, and hopefully matters will improve for him. But I say: damn the US Army for what happened to him. (I don’t damn the soldiers who fight in the army, G-d forbid, but rather, I damn the Army per se, or at least those specific authority figures responsible for his mistreatment.)
I have seen special reports about US soldiers and their families who are being given holiday homes to rest in for a couple of weeks between tours of duty. That’s wonderful. I sadly have seen reports of the US wounded who are sometimes returned to society without proper government aid and who need the help of independent voluntary organisations.Â
None of us are truely prepared for the effects of war.  I hope we soon are given the opportunity to prepare for peace instead.Â
Prayers for you too.  Â
Bide within the Law you must, in perfect Love and perfect Trust. Live you must and let to live. Fairly take and fairly give.
I am so sorry to hear of you son’s PTSD. I can’t imagine how hard he is having it. And, yes we are in a volunteer army, so I agree that being called up is so much more stressful.
My heart goes out to you. Sadly, here, men are actually being called up again after previously serving. They can be recalled for several years after they served. I can’t imagine how they feel, thinking it is over, then being ripped from their lives again. And so many can’t find jobs after service, so they return when they perhaps shouldn’t.
It is all hellish. And my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family.
My daughter’s husband suffered PTSD after the latest conflict here in Israel. She is so young and didn’t understand what was wrong and why her husband couldn’t just re-enter their usual everyday life. And yes, that is just what he was expected to do, enter usual life immediately.
I’m not saying you and your husband suffer less or more than the Israeli soldiers but the differences are quite vast.  Your soldiers sign up for a tour of duty; in Israel men are called up for tours whenever it is necessary and at least once a year until the age of 40 years. The US offers counselling, perhaps not as much as necessary.  In Israel there is little money for counselling and no time is wasted in forcing soldiers to get on with life.  There is little money for extra tuituion in universities to help young soldiers make up the time lost from studies, and the expense of extra terms will be borne by the student if exta terms are necessary.  The US does not call soldiers up once they are either exempt for studies or finished with service. There is not enough pay to compensate for the loss of time in regular employment in most cases.
Yes, war, as they say, is hell. But here in Israel it seems to also be hellish to return to normal life after an action. May we all know peace soon, Melissa.Â
Amen, amen, amen as they say in Israel.Â
Bide within the Law you must, in perfect Love and perfect Trust. Live you must and let to live. Fairly take and fairly give.
The rest of the story is that he still has horrible chest pains when he gets stressed, which is less and less the more time he gets to be with his family. He has been to counseling, but honestly, he is near the bottom of the PTSD chain. So, there isn’t too much they can do for him. He is willing to talk about it, so we are over that hurdle. But, I would say what he witnessed in Iraq will haunt him forever. I don’t know how it couldn’t. And, he has to go back there, so what would become of him if he opened that floodgate, then walked back into hell? Who knows at this point where we are headed with it. The only thing I know for sure is that we are on the journey together.
This is heartbreaking. Â I hope there is more to this story. Â Is he receiving any help for his PTSD? Â
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