Inside the Mind With Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
A knocking at the door is, for a brief moment, not that at all. Its the concussion sound of a .50 caliber weapon. The silent spaces between the isles of a department store become the blind alley where a fellow soldier died years ago. Every car that passes by is a reminder that nothing can ever be taken for granted again.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a type of anxiety disorder. It can occur after you have gone through an extreme emotional trauma that involved the threat of injury or death. The clinical discussion of post traumatic stress disorder has been well covered. This is a view from the inside of the mind of a man suffering with PTSD.
I first met Vincent when I was in my early teens. He lives in a fenced enclosed house on my country road. As a kid, I remember his five bull mastiffs staring at us intently as we passed quickly by. His windows were always darkened and the drapes always pulled. He rarely came outside unless it was to get the paper or check his mail. And his lawn was never kept. On occasion, parents in the neighborhood would have altercations with Vincent and more than a few times the police were called. Vincent was the stereotypical neighborhood recluse and no one wanted to cross his path. For the most part, he was quiet as long as he remained undisturbed. A few years ago, I had the misfortune of disturbing Mr. Vincent.
It was late in the afternoon and not yet dark as I was returning home from work. I had only taken my eyes off the road for a moment when a young deer darted out in front of me. I had no time to stop and was upon it in an instant. I heard the loud thud and saw the animal twisting to a stop ahead of my car. I pulled to the shoulder of the road and inspected the damage. I live only a mile outside our city limits but our road cuts into the thick pines that define our region of Mississippi. Deer are common here and you are more likely than not to encounter them during the early morning or late afternoon as they forage for food.
Like many in the south, I am licensed to carry a firearm. Retrieving my weapon from my glove box, I dragged the injured animal from the road. As I chambered my weapon and was about to put it out of its suffering, a gray Suburban SUV approached over the hill. I put my weapon behind me under my shirt. The Suburban slowed to a stop and the passenger window rolled down, I could see it was Mr. Vincent.
I had only recently moved back to the neighborhood where I grew up. I had been away for some number of years. Looking back, I guess I was probably regarded as a stranger to most that lived on my road. I can only explain what occurred next as simply an unfortunate series of events that combined to a near tragic end. Mr. Vincent called to me from inside his truck inquiring what I was doing standing near his house.
In fact, his house was atop the hill approximately 200 yards away, I was standing over the dying body of a deer with a cracked and bloodied head lamp. I didn't consider his question to be rhetorical. Again, looking back, it probably wasn't a good idea that I called him by name when I told him I had hit a deer. He seemed agitated that I knew his name. He did not know me. He exited the Suburban and slammed the door. Rounding the front of his truck he was upon me with a small handgun leveled at my face. I had not even remembered ever reaching but we were now pointing our weapons at each other's heads.
It was surreal. His eyes were transfixed and intent. I could tell he was not frightened of me. I was terrified. He asked me again very calmly who I was and what my business was here. I raised my hand and lowered my weapon and pointed toward the deer and then to the broken head lamp. For a moment, I could not speak. Vincent's eyes narrowed and he seemed to recognize me. He lowered his handgun and said, "You're Ms. Judy's boy aren't you?"
I helped Mr. Vincent put the deer into the back of his SUV and we talked for a while about the changes in the neighborhood over the years. I told him of my years away and that I rented a house near my mom's as she was getting older in years. I didn't realize it at the moment but Vincent was letting me calm down from the experience. He explained that he had been robbed months earlier and the criminals were never found. They had killed his dogs to gain entry into the house. He admitted to me that he wasn't worried so much about the property they had stolen as what would have happened had they known he was in the house while they browsed through his rooms. The thought chilled me.
Mr. Vincent explained that he kept his house predominantly dark as the medication he was on for his PTSD made his eyes light sensitive. The light causes headaches and the medicine only work to keep him in a perpetual state of dulled consciousness. You see, Mr. Vincent never left Vietnam. To him, every day is no different than a day in that war. Even many years after returning home his memories are still very vivid and clear. "If they dropped you, untrained as you are, into a war zone you'd likely get killed. Even though you can relate to the reality of your situation, your mind would still question why are they trying to kill me?"
I had studied health science in college and I was aware of the clinical psychology of his disorder but one can never really know it from a text book. Mr. Vincent explained that he was standing in his closet with a knife as the teens looted his home. He pulled it from the sheath on his belt. It was a long razor sharp curved blade. Most likely this weapon was very illegal to have. "I feel like I am trained for war and I've been dropped into a lie. I can relate to the reality of my situation as a veteran that has come home. But I can never accept any of this as real."
After my experience with Mr. Vincent on the road, I couldn't help but think of how horridly the situation could have ended if the teens had discovered him. I would have not feared for Mr. Vincent. I felt confident he was quite capable of handling four teens should it have come to that. In a similar situation, anyone backed into a corner could be frightened enough to pull a trigger. Mr. Vincent stood there in the dark with his blade drawn and was not frightened. Had one of them opened the closet door, Mr. Vincent would have slaughtered them all without any remorse. It is doubtful the teens realized just how close they had come to a brutal and savage end.
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