Combat PTSD

by Cristin Kraus
(Wisconsin)

I’ve always wanted to help mend the lives of broken women. Little did I know that my life would have to become broken first. Two years ago, I married the love of my life, a six year Army Infantry Sergeant with 27 months of combat experience in Iraq. We dreamed of having it all together, the house, the kids, the 60th wedding anniversary and still holding hands- and we could have until this disease, this parasitic prison called P.T.S.D. crept in us. In hindsight, there were red flags, a dark foreshadowing of destruction, but nothing we weren’t willing to face and overcome as a couple.

Slowly, however, uncontrollable symptoms surfaced and the man I knew and loved faded with each passing day until not even he recognized himself. In 2010, my husband was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and combat related Major Depression and was eventually medically retired from the Army as a result. Our life, our sanity, spiraled out of control and disputes, meltdowns, and P.T.S.D. eruptions escalated.

For anyone who is not familiar with the symptoms of Combat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and how it affects both the Veteran and his family, please research this for yourself. Knowing his control over these symptoms was quickly dissipating, he pled with me, begged me to leave. For about a year, I refused to leave his side until this past May when I finally recognized how detrimental his disease was to my own health and safety. I see now that he loved me enough to let me go.

When my husband and I separated and moved from our apartment, the last time he entered he said the place made him sick to his stomach; he couldn't stand being in it even for a moment. Every corner, every room reeked of a dark moment, an excruciating anamnesis of P.T.S.D. lived out. Now, I realize that I am my husband’s dark room, his harrowing memory of a lifetime lost to the wounds of war.