Well damn it all
Once again, Ms MA has struck a nerve, mentioning The Blogess, whose work I should have known before. Quite a while back on MA's site, I admitted my secret that shouldn't be a secret: that I spent much of my last two months in the Navy on a psychiatric ward. There: I said it. If you're the sort of sneaky shit who works in "human resources" and skulks around looking for dirt like this, you have it. Never mind: you weren't going to hire me anyway.
Everyone in shrinkdom likes labels. After a recent chat with my town veterans' officer, I dug around and found that I do indeed still have my medical review from those times. It's many pages of psychobabble that amounts to "crazee." Today, we'd call the chief diagnosis compassion fatigue, or something like it: anyway, the result of seeing too many burnt and broken bodies in too short a time and not understanding why you also weren't burnt and broken. In the broken logic of our world, reacting negatively to such experiences makes you mentally ill.
In theory, when the armed forces gave one a crazee label and a discharge to match, the VA was also supposed to give one a modest disability pension. As if somehow $130 a month (then) would compensate for sending people back into the world with a scarlet letter slyly inserted into their discharge papers. But most crazy Vietnam veterans didn't even get that. We got the curse, all right, but no benefits. Even so, we had to go through the procedure. A Corpsman on that psychiatric ward bluntly told us, "right now you'll get 30% (disability) if they cut off your head." That might be why a third of the country's homeless are veterans...but I digress.
In addition to the Navy's determination, I discovered I still had the VA's from 40 years ago. It made up in brevity for the prolix pomposity of the Navy, saying pretty much "no." And why? Because one's problem was "nerves."
It is interesting how that 19th century dismissal is still troubling. Today, the VA is trying to wipe out some of those primitive findings and do right by veterans of my time, who have joined the Korean war vets in the ranks of the forgotten. The veterans' officer brought this up as part of this effort. The question is whether I could go through all that again, so many years after. Yes, it might get me some degree of health care, but the first experience left me with a lasting humiliation and a suspicion that the emotional cost of that care might be too high. I don't think I'm enough of a hero for the cause of mental illness to do all that again.
I don't exactly bay at the moon, but I leave the skylight shade open when the moon brightens the night. She keeps depression and madness at bay. Perhaps it is for her that somebody chose silver as a ribbon for those who do what they can to keep mental illness at arm's length: otherwise those ribbons would be black.
Everyone in shrinkdom likes labels. After a recent chat with my town veterans' officer, I dug around and found that I do indeed still have my medical review from those times. It's many pages of psychobabble that amounts to "crazee." Today, we'd call the chief diagnosis compassion fatigue, or something like it: anyway, the result of seeing too many burnt and broken bodies in too short a time and not understanding why you also weren't burnt and broken. In the broken logic of our world, reacting negatively to such experiences makes you mentally ill.
In theory, when the armed forces gave one a crazee label and a discharge to match, the VA was also supposed to give one a modest disability pension. As if somehow $130 a month (then) would compensate for sending people back into the world with a scarlet letter slyly inserted into their discharge papers. But most crazy Vietnam veterans didn't even get that. We got the curse, all right, but no benefits. Even so, we had to go through the procedure. A Corpsman on that psychiatric ward bluntly told us, "right now you'll get 30% (disability) if they cut off your head." That might be why a third of the country's homeless are veterans...but I digress.
In addition to the Navy's determination, I discovered I still had the VA's from 40 years ago. It made up in brevity for the prolix pomposity of the Navy, saying pretty much "no." And why? Because one's problem was "nerves."
It is interesting how that 19th century dismissal is still troubling. Today, the VA is trying to wipe out some of those primitive findings and do right by veterans of my time, who have joined the Korean war vets in the ranks of the forgotten. The veterans' officer brought this up as part of this effort. The question is whether I could go through all that again, so many years after. Yes, it might get me some degree of health care, but the first experience left me with a lasting humiliation and a suspicion that the emotional cost of that care might be too high. I don't think I'm enough of a hero for the cause of mental illness to do all that again.
I don't exactly bay at the moon, but I leave the skylight shade open when the moon brightens the night. She keeps depression and madness at bay. Perhaps it is for her that somebody chose silver as a ribbon for those who do what they can to keep mental illness at arm's length: otherwise those ribbons would be black.
Labels: Blogess, mental illness, silver ribbons
posted by Uncle | 01:45
1 Comments:
Intriguing. This seems like a variation on turning various special forces into brutal killers, then being surprised when they act out when they're not in the jungle anymore. Expose you to non-stop agonized, maimed soldiers, then you are supposed to play the Seven Dwarfs, whistling at your work. Perhaps there's room for an eighth, Gloomy. Having been born into a military family, I know better to think for an instant that such illogic is unusual.
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