Post Traumatic Stress

In Purple Heart, Matt seemed to be the average combat fighter. He lived for the adrenaline of the job, breathing in every aspect of his GI Joe-esque lifestyle. He was able to separate himself from situations that became too touchy, primarily with the active children of the village in which his unit was stationed. He was also clung on to his ability to separate himself by at least one degree from his family and friends back home. While he was in Iraq, he viewed their simple lives as obsolete, yet he made sure not to tell them that. He asked about their daily routines, humored them with acting like life really was the cookie-cutter shape he had left behind. He let them complain about unimportant things, like biology tests and driving permits, while he stood face to face with death and won every time.

Well, I guess whether he 'won' or not is up for debate. The scars left on him were much deeper than any wound he inflicted on his enemies. I think he put up a very deep shield long before he was ever injured. As much as he lived and breathed the intesity of the battlefield, every little aspect must have gotten to him. If he was not impacted by any of it, why would he have made such great efforts to make sure that his loved ones had little knowledge of what was really going on? I am not convinced that he tried to hide the gritty details because he was ashamed of what he had done (or thought he had done) or the war efforts in general, but I think the nightmares were getting to him. Even before Ali's death and his injury, he must have been having nightmares, right? Or maybe not, maybe he was completely fine with everything. Maybe Ali's death and his TBI were just a little blip on his near-perfect mindset. Maybe Ali was the first person that really impacted him over there, and he was the only one who could really leave a lasting impression on Matt's life.

Or maybe Matt is just like everyone else who bottles up their feelings, hiding their fears from everyone else. Had he been struggling long before his injury and just never told anyone? And after he was hurt, after he watched Ali die, will he ever be the same? I would like to be optimistic and say that things would get better for Matt, that he would eventually be able to live peacefully and not think about the dreadful day in the alley, but I am not convinved life works that way. I think on some level we hold on to the painful memories so that we can remember what it is like to suffer and pick our selves back up in the end. In a way, I think we all suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in one way or another, we just choose to respond to it differently. Like Matt, my bad memories often present themselves in the form of nightmares, but in the end I crawl out of bed and make the most of the day. At some point you have to learn that you cannot change the past, no matter how hard you try. I think that as hardened as Matt may have seemed at the end, he was finally beginning to understand that. What happened to Ali was terrible, but all Matt could do at this point was prepare himself for the future as he builds a thicker wall around himself. Maybe things would be better if he talked about it with his family and friends from home, but I think that in his 25th hour he is clinging on to that last degree of separation, perhaps so that he can at least pretend things are normal and better, at least in a far and distant land.

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Reading is one form of escape. Running for your life is another. - Lemony Snicket