Iraq Vet Ginmar Posts On Her Experiences: "The Startle Reflex"

[Hissyspit]

http://ginmar.livejournal.com/1205153.html

The startle reflex

Liss from Shakespeare's Sister has asked me to write something for her about the war. Here's a preview. This is the only thing I've written in what?---four days?

I got back from Iraq in February of 05. I'd been in combat, gotten used to sleeping through the sound of small arms fire and mortars, and had done so many convoys that the thought never crossed my brain that just driving those highways---sometimes in canvas-sided humvees----was one of the most dangerous things you could do. I marveled at a gunfire- and mortar-free future. I was amazed at the notion of roads that were free of IEDs. I had all sorts of electric outlets at my disposal! Instead of sharing a hangar with hundreds of other women and men, I had my own room! Hell, I had a house! I was Paris Hilton, for pete's sake. It was too much to take in. The profound startle reflex I'd had since our cool-off period in Kuwait was just something that would fade, I thought. After all, I'd had an easy time of it. One battle, a whole lot of convoys, getting bombed every day, getting injured in one humvee incident, hearing lots of gunfire, seeing a couple up close explosions, that time those Poles died practically in front of us because they were on time leaving and we weren't, the Iraqi friends who'd died, the slow and accumulating knowledge that our presence in Iraq was getting Iraqis killed---this was nothing. It wasn't WWII, after all. I had nothing to worry about. I was sure of it. In Iraq, after all, you could be faced on one day with the photos of people Muqtada al-Sadr had tortured to death while hearing that a mass grave had been found near where you were stationed. And then the US media would inflate the size of the mass grave, leaving you to wonder...."How come four thousand dead Iraqis aren't enough?" Wasn't that who we were fighting for? How come they weren't real enough back home? In Iraq, they were what made the job do-able. If you didn't speak Arabic, you could at least speak Wave like a moron. I remember, to this day, every one of those faces. I wondered how many of them were now dead. I wondered if my blind acceptance of the war had anything to do with that. But I compared myself to veterans of previous wars, found my experience negible compared to theirs, and decided that because I'd had such an easy time of it, I myself would be fine in comparison. I was certain of it.

- snip -

I got a job working in a bank and found a newfound ability to go toe-to-toe with obnoxious customers (usually male) while shutting them down verbally. The manager liked me so much she wanted me to work seven days a week, but I needed time off. She granted me unheard-of privileges, such as the option of sitting at her desk and reading when things got slow. While doing this one day, a walking advertisement for Nonwhite-Supremacy came in. He was over six feet tall (I'm five three), wearing a Harley Davidson tee shirt, and didn't appear to have washed in the recent past. He observed me reading and said loudly, "Lookit that there security guard reading. That's disgusting!"

It was so passive aggressive I was amused. Of course, I'd gotten aggressive. I stepped up to him, put the toe of my jump boot (left over from my time at Ft. Bragg) and looked up into his eyes. "Do I know you, sir?"

"No, I just don't think you should be readin'. You might miss somethin'."

"Sir, I just spent thirteen months in Iraq. I've been in combat. I guarantee you there is nothing I will ever miss ever again."

"Well, I'm entitled to my opinion."

"You certainly are, sir. But if you do not have all the available facts when you form that opinion it's worth about as much as you are."

- snip -

I was the only woman in the program. They didn't take me off the Prozac, just added Ziprasadone after a week or so to help me sleep and even my moods out. I slept in a building on the VA campus at night, and during the day I received 'therapy' that was taken from books like "Better Self Esteem in Ten Days." The sole attention my panic attacks got one day was when they informed me I had to go do some community service. I had a panic attack in the vehicle on the way there. They never tried it again.

We had art therapy, crafts therapy, and group therapy. In group therapy, with the exception of a couple of Korean and Viet Nam vets, I was the sole woman---and none of them knew I'd fought off a sexual assault in Iraq. The guys my own age were a mix of shoplifters and wife-beaters, the latter including one cop. ONe guy, a colonel, whined that he didn't see anything wrong with admiring 'a nice tushy walking down the hallway.' The Therapist---a guy this time----didn't say anything. It fell to me to call them on their sexism, and for my pains I got called a man hater, in a group where I was outnumbered. It was interesting, though---all the older combat vets sided with me and eggged me on. "Go get 'em, gin, get 'em!" They told me, before and after therapy. One shoplifter stole stuff because he wanted new and better toys than anyone had, and he was even then designing his ideal, 5000-square foot house. When we got another female in the group, she turned out to be a male appeaser and joined them in calling me a man hater. I had been reccomended to the program through the VA's womans' center. Evidently it never occurred to anyone that putting a woman amongst a group of sexists was not the best way to mental health.

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