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I'm Eddie.
I was in the United States Marine Corps
from 2001 to 2010.
My second deployment where I had three Marines in my squad
pretty much killed in one ID attack.
It was an improvised rocket launcher.
And that was something that was pretty hard to take at
first, and I still deal with it a little bit now.
I used to be real outgoing.
I used to love to fish, a lot of other things.
I just didn't have any pleasure
in doing them anymore.
And I just would sit in my room and
do absolutely nothing.
And then I was forgetting things.
I had a different sense of what was important.
Somebody would tell me, hey, we need this
done whatever time.
And I'd just totally forget about it, because in my mind
it wasn't important.
So it was things like that that was really affecting my
job, affects my relationships with other people.
I actually was forced to talk to somebody.
Whenever I was at Weapons and Field Training Battalion, one
of my jobs was to do the rappel tower for recruits
going through boot camp there.
And I had a Staff NCO who was in charge at the time.
And he said something to me that I didn't agree with, and
I basically went off on him right in front of everybody.
They pulled me off the tower, took me in the office, and my
platoon commander pretty much told me that he can see things
aren't right with me.
I need to go see somebody.
And at that time, Parris Island was starting up a new
mental health unit or whatever at the hospital there.
So I went in there and talked to them, and it actually was
probably one of the better things that happened to me.
I actually started out talking to a psychologist one-on-one
for a little bit to get a better feel for what I needed
or what was going on with me.
So they recommended I go to group therapy and also once a
week for one-on-one therapy.
I didn't have to do any kind of medication, anything like
that, if I didn't want to.
It was just they told me what they could do for me.
So group therapy was actually pretty good.
Because then I was just in a room with a bunch of guys that
had been through the same thing I'd been through.
I didn't realize there were other people on base that had
gone through a lot of that, so it was good for me to meet
other people and talk about things.
I was medically retired.
So I had to keep going to my therapy and all
that on the way out.
But once I got out, I didn't have anybody there to tell me
I had to keep going to therapy.
I quit going for a little while, and that was like the
worst thing I could have done.
Because for that probably first six months after I got
out, I wasn't talking to somebody on a regular basis.
My wife and I were fighting, and it was already stressful
as it is, because, like I said, I don't have that
structure anymore.
I don't have somebody telling me, hey, you've got to
do this every day.
So now I'm left to my own devices, and I really started
to slip back into the problems I was having with the anger
and everything.
And then finally my wife pretty much told me I needed
to go see somebody.
Get with the VA, get signed up.
And the VA already had things set up for me to
go right into it.
I just didn't take the time to do it.
They gave me an appointment with mental health due to my
medical records and things like that.
I went and talked to them, and at that point, the transition
was pretty easy.
I go every couple weeks now.
It's down from once a week, but it's one-on-one.
There's a marked improvement in me and my wife's
relationship, for instance.
I'm not as jumpy as I once was when I hear loud noises or
things like that.
For the most part, with treatment, it's easier to deal
with those things on a daily basis.
I get more joy out of going to my parents' house, hanging out
with my family.
Making new friends wasn't really something that I cared
about, but then I realized that it makes
life a little easier.
I'm definitely changed since starting therapy and
everything.
I enjoy more things now, and I'm probably about as close as
I will be to being back to normal.
But I just had to realize that my normal is a
new normal for me.