Page 839 - Total War on PTSD

Sergeant to get back in his station, and the whole time he was doing that he had a tub of water in front of him and he was taking a whore’s bath, paying absolutely no heed to the incoming rounds.
We did eventually fire back and, after that, we took no additional incoming fire. That was the closest I think I got to actually being hit by any enemy fire. Of course, they were getting nowhere close to us. That's how terrible their firing was in that situation. I still see myself standing out there watching those incoming rounds. A few years ago I was standing outside in my gravel driveway and the wind just happened to swirl some of the dirt and dust up from the driveway and instantly my mind was back to that moment in Iraq when I saw the rounds kicking up sand. The first year or two after I got back I had pretty frequent nightmares...I would wake up screaming...hyperventilating...or would wake up swinging and hit the wall next to me in bed. In that case I didn't realize I did it until the pain woke me up. I would yell out and scare my wife half to death. That doesn't happen as much anymore. Now I just have weird dreams from the Ambien.
I am kind of cyclical. I tend to have a harder time in May and November every year. I don't really know why that is. Sometimes it's only a week and sometimes it lasts three weeks. I am not normally an angry person but during these times I will sometimes become angry...snapping at everyone about everything...and feeling like I want to explode all of the time. It's all just a haze anymore. I can't seem to connect it to anything deployment wise.
The only thing that I've ever known for sure is that happened to me that was any type of head injury was when I was still Active Duty (but off-duty at the time). It was my 21st birthday and I was with a bunch of friends and we went to a club in Nashville, and I got pretty wasted pretty quick. One of my buddies took me out to lay down for a while in the back of his pickup truck.
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