For the next couple weeks I’ll be partnering with Headstrong Project to tell the stories of American veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As with any group, there will be a wide range of viewpoints and experiences. There are often conflicting feelings: patriotism, disillusionment, pride, regret, gratitude, and grief. There is a common love for America, yet differing ideas about what exactly that means. Many of these stories will include PTSD, but the hardships ...of returning veterans are far too nuanced for a single diagnosis. And it can be inappropriate to use PTSD as a catch-all for those hardships. So we’ve chosen to title the series ‘Invisible Wounds.’ I know that many people have strong opinions about America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as we meet the individuals behind the uniforms, and seek to understand their stories, I’m hoping we can momentarily put those politics aside. This is a great group of people who served and sacrificed at the request of their country. And I’m very thankful that they’ve volunteered to share their stories.

(2/2) “In Afghanistan I spent so much time imagining what it would be like when I came home. I built up this perfect world. I imagined eating a big cheeseburger. And taking the longest shower. And meeting up with all my friends. Maybe we’d even take a trip to the beach just to catch up. And everything would be just like when I left. And people would be so happy to see me. Because they’d be thankful for the sacrifices that I made. But when my plane landed, nobody was there to ...meet me. My mom couldn’t afford to take off work. My father had died while I was gone. The rest of my family couldn’t afford to travel. One of the first things I did was visit the two friends who had written me letters. The whole time I was in Afghanistan, I only got four letters from two friends. So I had to visit them right away to tell them that those letters meant the world to me. But after those visits, I was pretty much by myself. So I sat in my room and I started thinking. I’d been so busy in Afghanistan. There was always a job to do. But now it was quiet. So I thought about all the things that I’d kept at bay. I thought about the little girl that I saved. And what her life is like now. And I wondered if she’s still alive. And if she is still alive, does she even want to be?”

(1/2) “ I don’t think it’s possible to be a medic in a conflict zone and not have something stay with you. Something that you didn’t have before you went. I have the hardest time forgetting this little girl. She was brought to our post one day. Two men ran toward us carrying a bundle of blankets. And they’re yelling in Pashto. And at first all I can see are these bloody blankets, but then I peel them back, and there’s this little girl inside. She stepped on a landmine... while playing soccer and she’s gone below the knee, gone below the elbow, gone below the hand. And everything is seething. And I can smell the flesh. And she’s screaming. But I’m trained to drown it out. I’m trained so well that I almost don’t hear the screaming. I focus on our interventions. Stop the bleeding. Apply tourniquets. Administer the IV. I overdosed her on morphine. I’ll never forget that. I just kept pushing until the screaming stopped. And then a helicopter came and got her. And she lived. And I was fine throughout the whole thing. I was just like a robot. I’d been trained for chaotic situations. But they don’t train you for the aftermath. They don’t train you for when the helicopter has lifted off, and suddenly everything is quiet.”

(3/3) “After I had the flashback that night, two of the guys on my team came up to me and said: ‘You’re getting help.’ I said: ‘No I’m not.’ And they said: ‘Yes you are. Most of us do.’ And that finally convinced me. I’d never gotten help because I never wanted to appear weak. I’m the son of a man who lost his entire team in Vietnam. I’ve been through some of the toughest training on earth. I never quit anything in my life. So it took me the longest time to admit t...hat I had a problem. Whenever I saw a homeless vet, or an alcoholic vet, I’d say: ‘That’s not me. I’ve got a good job. I’ve got a family.’ I did my best to cope with my issues through physical exertion. I threw myself into work. I’d go for long swims in the morning and long runs at night. I thought if I never stopped moving, I could hold down my stress. But it finally caught up with me. And I broke down. And those two guys convinced me to go to therapy. And it was the best decision I’ve ever made. I used to think that I was weak for needing help. I realize now that my weakness was never getting it.”

(2/3) “I kept having these nightmares of being trapped in a burning vehicle. They were non-stop. I’d wake up screaming and I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t sleeping at all. I was overworked and going through a horrible divorce. At the time I was working as a medic on a SWAT team, and one night at work I had a really bad flashback. We were about to serve a warrant. All of us were in the back of a truck and it was completely dark because we were preserving our night visi...on. And somebody turned on a red flashlight to adjust their equipment. And I'm seeing our shadows on the wall, and suddenly I think we're in a helicopter. And I’m trying to fight it but it seems so real. I’m telling myself, ‘Keep it together. Keep it together.’ I know it’s not real but I'm actually smelling the fuel and hearing the sounds of the turbine. And then the back door opened. And the next thing I know, I'm standing on the third floor of this building with no idea how I got there. And that was the last raid I ever did. We had a training session later that week. Afterwards I closed myself in a van, put down my rifle, and started to cry. I was stressed to the hilt. The next day I started looking for help.”

(1/3) “I was inside an armored carrier with my platoon commander. He tried to open a pressurized fuel container and it sprayed across the vehicle and hit a camping stove that he was using to make hot chocolate. It burst into flames. He dropped the fuel canister and fire covered the floor. Then he caught on fire. He grabbed onto the exit hatch and wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t pull him away. And he wouldn’t let go. And the vehicle is filling up with flames. It was so ...fucking hot. It’s like when your hand is on a stove except you can’t pull it away because it’s your whole body. And it’s so bright and I can hear him screaming. And the hood around my neck is shrinking and tightening. And my Gore-Tex uniform is melting and spreading and falling off my body. And I could feel myself burning and I couldn’t take it anymore. I gave up. I didn’t want to burn to death. I decided to take a deep breath to singe my lungs and close my throat. Then the hatch opened. Someone heard us screaming and opened the hatch.”

(2/2) “We celebrated my Dad’s 50th birthday two weeks before. It was a surprise party. I wanted to borrow Stephen’s truck to help pick people up from the airport, but he wouldn’t let me. He tried to stop me in the driveway. But I took it anyway because I’m the older sister. He was livid. That truck was his baby. He ignored me for the entire party and we never spoke again. My last conversation with my brother was a fight. I can’t change that. My mom said that Stephe...n called her during those last two weeks and forgave me for taking his truck. But I think she’s just telling me that so I won’t feel so responsible. I’m not saying that the fight caused his suicide. But we could have talked it through. We were eighteen months apart. We used to drive to school together every single day. If I hadn’t fought with him, he would have felt comfortable calling me. And we could have talked it through."

(1/2) “Everyone who comes back from deployment fills out a form. It’s a standard psychological evaluation. It asks about drug use, sleeping habits, things like that. We filed a Freedom of Information Act to see Stephen’s. He checked a box that said he thought about suicide. And they sent him home. The counselor just scheduled a sleep study and sent him home. And he hung himself with an electrical cord. Stephen should have never been a soldier. He was a happy, go-luc...ky guy. We used to go camping all the time when we were little. He disappeared from the campsite once and we found him in the woods with chipmunks in his hand. He never wanted to hurt anything. If there were ever ants in the house, he would take them outside. He never told me about the war. I don’t know how it affected him. And I can’t say what caused his death. Personally I think it was PTSD. But his wife had recently left him. He’d gotten demoted. But it doesn’t matter. He told them he thought about suicide. He checked that box. And they still sent him home. So whether it’s right or wrong—I do blame them. If someone says they are thinking of suicide, you need to listen.”

(4/4) “He didn’t even tell me he was enlisting. He called his dad one day and said: ‘Don’t tell Mom.’ I remember it was Halloween. We were trick-or-treating with our grandson, and I noticed that my husband was walking ahead of me, whispering with my son-in-law. When he finally told me, I supported his decision 100%. I think it was a defense mechanism. I focused on supporting him so I wouldn't feel afraid. I just didn’t want the military to change him. I raised four c...hildren. I knew how each of them was different. Chris was the one who felt things the deepest. He wanted to help people. And I didn’t want him to see something that changed him forever. That was my prayer every night. Other moms in our town had sons who went to war. I’d heard stories. They told me that their sons had seen too much. They just weren’t the same when they came home. When Chris first got back from Afghanistan, I didn’t notice much difference. He seemed to be spending less time with us, but he was recently married, so that seemed natural to me. But one night he came over and asked us all to sit down at the kitchen table. He said: ‘Mom and Dad, I want to tell you something.’ I thought he had cancer. But he said: ‘I’ve been diagnosed with PTSD.’ When I heard those words, my heart sank. I thought it meant forever. I thought it meant a lifetime. But he explained to us that he was getting treatment. And that it was going away. My husband is a retired police officer. After Chris left, he said to me: ‘I’m so proud of him for talking about this stuff. Because I never did.’”

(3/4) “Sometimes my anxiety would get so bad that I’d turn completely white. I’d shoot out of bed some nights, and my heart would be racing, and I’d start running around the room trying to find stuff. My wife would have to physically put me back to bed. Then one day I was taking a train out of Hoboken, and we were passing through these wetlands, and there were all these reeds, and it reminded me of Afghanistan. And I looked down at my phone and there was a Facebook post ...commemorating the anniversary of the death of a guy in my company. And I got dizzy and couldn’t talk. I thought I was having a heart attack. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get help. I went to the emergency room at the VA and was diagnosed with PTSD. Eventually I found my way to Headstrong Project. At first I dreaded going to therapy. I went through a treatment called EMDR. My therapist would take me back to every point of trauma and have me describe it in detail. It was like literally going back in time. I could touch the faces of all the guys I’d lost. I could talk to them. We could talk about what happened. And how we all knew the risks. And how sometimes people died. And it was nobody’s fault. And I could apologize to them. And when it was over I’d be completely exhausted. And I’d feel like a bitch because I’d just cried for an hour. But it worked. The symptoms started to go away. After a few sessions, I remember walking into my therapist’s office and saying: ‘This stuff actually works!’ And he said: ‘Yeah. It does.’”

(2/4) ‘If you don’t do your job, people will die.’ That message was hammered into our heads during officer training. Even if you tied your boots incorrectly, an officer might get in your face and scream: ‘You don’t care about details! Details get people killed in combat! You’re going to get people killed!’ Over and over, it was drilled into me that people would die if I messed up. And nine of my guys died. So it’s been extremely hard to forgive myself. Maybe I didn’...t work hard enough. Maybe I didn’t set high enough standards. Maybe I didn’t put enough stress on the importance of details. The first guy in my company who died stepped on a bomb that was hidden under a footbridge. That was a rule. That was a detail. We were never supposed to walk over footbridges. He knew that. Maybe I didn’t tell him enough times. I can see his face right now. If he was sitting here, I’d say: ‘Mike. You weren’t supposed to do that. You know you weren’t supposed to do that!’"

(1/4) “I was in charge of 250 Marines during my second deployment. We were assigned to a district called Sangin. Most of Afghanistan’s poppy was grown there, and the heroin it produced funded the Taliban’s war effort. We didn’t have a clear mission. Our job was to establish a ‘presence.’ We were supposed to make the Taliban as uncomfortable as possible. Our mission wasn’t to take any hills or to kill a certain number of enemy combatants. And that lack of clarity could... be frustrating. Guys were getting killed but we had no concrete ways to measure our gains. The best I could do was tell them that our mission was to ‘make Sangin a better place.’ Every day I’d send them on patrols. I’d sit in a small mud room, square like this, with maps on the walls and a radio on the table. And the patrols would call back if they needed support. Some days it was chaos in that room. Multiple patrols would come under fire at the same time and they’d all be calling at once. We lost nine guys over those six months. Dozens more lost arms or legs. Others had serious gunshot wounds. I remember sitting on an ammo canister the day before we left, with my head between my knees, wondering if we’d done anything at all. And a village elder came up to the gates of our base. He wanted to thank us for making the area safe enough so that his village could finally return to their homes. That was the only tangible difference that I’d seen in six months. It was the ray of light I needed.”

Many of you remember Sara from the Pediatric Cancer series last month. I’m very sorry to report that shortly after her story was published, Sara’s cancer returned very aggressively. Yesterday morning she passed away. I’d like to honor her by reposting her story, and allowing Sara to be remembered by her own words:

“My biggest worry is that I’m going to die and not do all the things I wanted to do. The funny thing is—I didn’t even realize how many things I wanted to do unti...l I got diagnosed. Simple things like meeting a guy, getting married, getting a job, having my own apartment, and even picking out my own furniture. Those never seemed too interesting to me. They just seemed like adult things that were guaranteed to happen. Now I want to do them so bad. Because I want to know what they feel like.”

(3/3) “It wasn’t every second of every day. But sometimes I’d get this boiling feeling like there was mercury in my blood. And it would rise up into my head and I’d get so angry it was like I was going to explode. And all I could think of was worst-case scenarios. And it felt like there was no way out. I’d work myself into such a frenzy that I thought there was only one way to eliminate that feeling. And I’ve already lost seven veterans that I know to suicide. Two of th...em were very close to me. These were educated guys. And they seemed happy. You’d meet them, and think: ‘These guys are so great.’ And I knew if it could happen to them it could happen to me. So I came here and I started unpacking this shit. It was a lot of work. The therapist just guides the conversation. You have to dig up stuff you thought you’d packed away forever. And you have to answer questions that you never answered. It’s exhausting to go that deep. But it works. I feel like I’m in control again. I know my triggers. I don’t flip out. I don’t send inappropriate emails at work when I feel slighted. I still have bad days but I’m in control again. I was afraid therapy would cause me to lose my edge. That didn’t happen. It made me stronger. It’s like gym for the mind. And I don’t want to lose one more veteran. That's why I'm telling my story right now. I don’t want anyone to be afraid to look under the hood. Therapy is like Men’s Wearhouse: ‘Give it a try. You’ll like the way you look. I guarantee it.’”

(2/3) “All we wanted to know was who the bad guys were. But nobody knew. We were getting picked off one by one and we couldn’t find the bad guys. Some guy who was helping you during the day might kill you at night. The enemy didn’t wear uniforms. Far more innocent people got hurt than anyone else. It wasn’t malicious. It was just legitimately confusing situations. When you’re driving to a meeting and a car bomb explodes, suddenly every car looks like a bomb. And yo...u’re surrounded by cars. And anybody could have a suicide vest. And you’re surrounded by people. It was threat overload. And it was mentally exhausting. One day we were driving to a small village to pick up a young Iraqi boy. We were going to fly him to the US for a rare heart surgery. And I’m in the back of the convoy doing rear security. And this woman in a burqa starts walking toward me. And I’m shouting in Arabic for her to stop, but she keeps coming. And I can see she’s carrying something. She’s clutching something inside her burqa. And she won’t stop. And I keep trying to wave her away. I’m screaming at her and pointing my gun but she keeps coming closer. And I’m thinking that I have to kill her because she has a bomb. I have to do it. And I switch off my safety, and I’m just about to pull the trigger, and suddenly she opens up her burqa. And there’s a baby inside.”

(1/3) “We got called out one day to assist a fuel convoy that was being pinned down by gunfire. They had stopped along an open field, and were taking fire from a tree line about 200 meters away. When we arrived, I noticed a small truck about 50 meters out. It had stopped on a farm road running along the field. There were legs hanging out of it. I was acting medic for the platoon so I went to investigate. And they’re obviously not combatants. It’s this family of six. ...I guess they’d been driving toward the convoy and somebody got scared and shot them up. It’s just a mom and a dad and four kids. And there’s this unique, awful smell when your guts open up. And everyone’s dead except the father and this eight-year-old girl who’d been shot twice in the chest. And she’s crying. And this wasn’t what I came for. I thought we were here to kill bad guys.”

(3/4) “You see this really fucking horrible stuff. You see guys blown to bits. You see dogs eating people. And the whole time there’s this little voice in your head that says: ‘That’s not normal, that’s not normal.’ And the longer you stay in that place, the quieter the voice gets. That voice is like your anchor. If it gets too quiet, it’s hard to come back. If I’d stayed in Fallujah for two years, maybe I’d be fucked up. But I left after a month. The experience pr...ofoundly affected me. But it doesn’t haunt me. I don’t think I’m sick. I’ve had complete strangers tell me that I’m in denial. There’s this tendency to pathologize the entire war experience. And recently ‘PTSD’ has become a catch-all to describe every veteran with a mental illness. I’m just not comfortable with that trend. A lot of good Marines have PTSD. But a lot of us don’t.”