I think many people are still affected by the war. Its the one thing that is now pushed aside, more so now with the Swine Flu, which I will get to later in another blog post at a later date. I have friends that were affected deeply, some of which actually served over seas. One in particular, whom we shall call Mr. Awesome (cause he uses that word too often so it works). Awesome served for a total of 8 1/2 months, not long but still it was long enough period back in 2006. He suffered trauma more then I believe most people should and still am surprised that he lived through it.
(Location: Zormat, Afghanistan which is right on the Pakistan boarder where he was stationed)
I bet your wondering what the hell he lived through that makes him so worthy of being mentioned? Well for starters he was a Senior Line Medic to an entire company, which usually holds 40+ men that he has to keep alive ever second of everyday he served over seas.
(Helping send off a patient into a medic chopper, he is wearing a grey army short-sleeve shirt)
He ended up seeing the unimaginable and told me quit a lot and some that in due time will be spoken about to me. I was told one of event where he was on his medic truck with a few of his brothers when it was blow up and the ones that were inside, were thrown from it, which he was one of the thrown individuals. Now see it was so strong the blast that when eh hit the ground, not only did he break a lot of his bones in his body, but his entire brain turned into a liquefied while he was unconscious. His brain then turned back into solid form, but leaving him unable to walk a straight line and the part of the brain the retains the short term memory only works about 68-72% of the time the doctors told him. The blast also caused him to be partially deaf in his right ear.
He was also shot at multiple times. There were two different events that he was actually hit. One in particular almost killed him. He was shot by a high powered rifle from a building across the street that was higher up from the roof he was on. The bullet wound was about less then 5-6 inches from his main artery on the neck, if hit he would have bleed to death and the irony is that he is the medic.
But then he saw unthinkable cruelty happen to women and children in two different villages. One where he helped a little girl and got her a pair of shoes and some clean clothes. She was only 7 years old. The men in her village that were working against he U.S. military saw what he did. So that night they took her, raped her, then murdered her by hacking her entire body up into huge chunks and then placing 'em close enough to found by one of the bases out in the area. Him and a few of his brothers went out to do their job and found the girl. All he did was be nice to her and help her out and she gets murdered. Then there was another time where he ended up seeing a baby almost burned alive and still breathing that he had to treat and take care of. He witness coming across bodies covered with black tarp, all women and children mutilated in ways that would make freddy krueger look like an amature.
There was more, but I'm going to stop there before I run amuck and cause some bad images in your heads. Anyway, it got to him asap and cause him to snap and loose it. He tired to take his life and was caught by one of his brothers and sent to his commanding officer, who then ordered him to go home asap. He ended up staying for 2 weeks during July. Then got shipped back over seas. He was able to atleast be home about two weeks before xmas, but had to go down to base in North Carolina to tie up loose ends.
Okay so flash forward to around December 2008. He ends up getting diagnosed with PTSD and they told him if he doesn't get help in the next 30 days he would be sent down state to a VA hospital where he would be locked up and kept on watch for 24/7 for three months of his life. After that had happened he was given meds to take, which resulted in me finding out the night of us hanging out. He went through a huge emotional and mental break down where I found out about all the situations he went through that is written above.
Ever since then he has been working on fighting the demons that haunt him and more. He goes to school on 16 credits, works full time for his father, and then still finds time to do projects which result in schools from UNC and Cornell coming in to see about Habits and what not. He is majoring in Biology and if all things prevail, with the government paying for his education and having him get a foot in the door for school, he can actually get into medical school. He is also on the Dean's List, so he is doing pretty damn well, where as in highschool you couldn't get Awesome to even care about class. I mean one time, a teacher who is cool, we shall call Mr. Sarcastic, saw Awesome walking down the hall during class time and he was suppose to be in the teachers class. They had a conversation:
Sarcastic : "Awesome what are you doing?",
Awesome: "Walking..."
Sarcastic: "Your suppose to be in class."
Awesome: "I know."
Sarcastic: "Your suppose to be in my class."
Awesome: "I know Sarcastic."
Sarcastic: "Where are you even going!?"
Awesome: "To my car."
Sarcastic: "Now!?!? . . . Oh alright, but if anyone asks, I didn't see you..."
Awesome: "See what?"
Sarcastic: "Exactly...."
But now its a complete 180 of him and he enjoys class, especially psych, which has taught him to not only analyze someone more, but to the 10th degree of annoyance sometimes! I mean he will now call you out and say "Stop lying... I know what's wrong by the way you cross your arms and stare down...", its things like that which drive me and my friend, whom we shall name Nova, are usually not okay with it on certain days.
Anyway, all in all he is pretty stable so that makes me happy. He has been touch and go as of recently. Which brings me to this: friends and enemies.
He doesn't know who to trust because half of his friends he thought he could trust are all not only talking about him behind his back, but trying to mess with his head. I got roped into this crazy thing by the enemy team. He thought I was against him, he forgets that I'd take a bullet for him, but he was so confused and I don't blame him. See the moment the evil team wanted to mess with him, I had to take a double agent cover and jump into the lion's den and protect him. I had to gather information and make these evil team people hear what they wanted to. I manipulated so much and they don't realize that I know Awesome like the back of my hand. See the thing is that he thought I was after him and I wasn't. The thing was I was looking out for him and told him everything that was going down that I could, cause I need to print out evidence so he knows. Anyway, the thing is he just recently about 4 weeks ago ended up getting a new girlfriend, which a lot of people are not happy about and a few girls are jealous. Anyway, I use to be friends with this girl even graduated with her too. The thing is she betrayed me when we were younger, like elementary young. And then over the years she gave attitude left and right to people I knew and the list just goes on about why I don't like her at all. So yeah long story short, I told him that I knew her from back in the day and told him about the giant and vermont were not telling the truth and that he isn't a player. Giant hated Awesome saying that he was analyzing him and that Vermont was jealous, well cause she dated him back in freshman year of highschool, they stayed friends, but it was too intense on her part and he broke it off. Anyway she has never been okay with this and well now they are not talking as much.
Anyway, he is going to summer school full time this summer and funny thing is me and Nova are going there as well. This should be interesting, cause we all haven't gone to the same school at once since me and Nova were juniors in high school and Awesome was a senior. So I'm looking forward to it...
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