I have debated on writing on this topic for some time, but haven’t wanted to touch the subject. Recently though, I ran across a page that where fellow female veteran posted about feeling alone in her battle. So I decided it was time to face my own battle and share a little bit more openly.

So here is goes…

I have PTSD. 

Yes, I know I’m a spouse, but I’m also a veteran. I deployed twice before being medically retired.

No, I am aware I was not in a combat MOS, but that didn’t keep me from being shot at or holding wounded soldiers together as we evacuated them to higher medical care.

Yes, I’m aware that I am a female, and I know that the stereotype is that female soldiers only serve in offices downrange. My first deployment, I did spend some of my time in an office, but I also spent part of my time manning a machine gun in the back of a Blackhawk helicopter. My second deployment I was a MEDEVAC crew chief. I may not have been out on convoys, and my MOS may not start with an 11, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t carry things with me that are hard to deal with.

My PTSD diagnosis came a few weeks after my retirement from the VA. 

When I walked out of that office, I was angry.
How dare he put that title on me? Who was he to tell me what was going on?  For a while, I didn’t say much about it. I just let it be a few letters in my file and went on with my life.

A couple months later, I received a letter from the VA stating that they had made me another mental evaluation appointment at a different VA. I wasn’t sure the reasoning behind it until I arrived at my appointment. The doctor I saw normally didn’t handle initial evaluations, so he was skimming through my paperwork while I was sitting there trying to figure out the reason for the additional appointment. When he found it, I don’t think he intended for me to hear what he was saying, but I did.

The bottom line was they didn’t think the initial diagnosis was correct, after all, how could it be—I was a female soldier, and I wasn’t in a combat MOS, so how could I have PTSD?

He continued on with the appointment and at the end, after answering what seemed like a thousand questions, he told me he thought they had wasted both of our times because he agreed with the initial diagnosis.

So once again, I found myself walking out of an office angry, although I’m not really sure who I was angry at this time.

Was it the VA for making me go through this again?

Was it the initial doctor who put me in this web?

Was it the general population for making this such a negative stigma?

Or was it simply anger at myself for not being able to control what was going on inside my head?

Over time, I have come to terms with this diagnosis. It’s like a dirty four-letter word though.

It’s something you don’t talk about, and you surely don’t talk about why you have it. For many like me, female veterans who have found themselves outside the general public’s perception of female soldiers, they battle with the lack of acceptance. They don’t feel accepted for the same reason the general population doesn’t accept anyone with PTSD as whole. They don’t feel accepted by fellow service members because there is the assumption that an office was our only “battlefield.”

Often times, they don’t feel accepted by those they left behind because they are a different person than they were before.

So, please, please, take a moment—reach out to that soldier, offer them an ear, even if they aren’t ready to talk. Simply let them know you are there. I truly hope that, one day, we can get past this being such a bad set of letters.

Until then, I will take it one day at a time, one challenge at a time.