The props of my youth are collapsing

Jean Stimmell CC, photograph taken 11/15/19

Sometimes I feel like an entry in the 2 volume, psychology tome, “Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience.”

I don’t usually feel that way, even after 1-1/2 years in the brown water navy in Vietnam, 9 years counseling veterans with PTSD in the VA and now an additional 20 years in private practice with a heavy share of trauma patients dealing with life-defying experiences.

But I felt that way yesterday, attending a free lunch celebrating Veterans Day at a banquet hall in a nearby city. The veterans, a smattering from each of our generous smorgasbord of recent wars, were humble and grateful, breaking bread together, enjoying this brief reunion of brotherhood and sisterhood.

However, at least to me, the scene was more than just sitting around the fire singing Kumbaya: I was racked  by the dissonance between enjoying the understated, modesty of my fellow veterans who knew war, while, at the same time, being assaulted by ultra-patriotic music, playing so loud conversation was difficult: songs so adoring and one-sided, as to border on being jingoistic.

These lyrics pulled me back in time, twisting my soul, making me feel ill. I grew up revering John Wayne and this type of – how can I nicely say it – patriotic excess. 

But those fantasies of the USA, who never did anything wrong, were trampled, after marching off to war in Vietnam to kill innocent third-world peasants, whose leader, Ho Chi Minh, declared his independence by reciting America’a 1776 Declaration of Independence.

How could I feel proud of my country for attacking Iraq because it allegedly had weapons of mass destruction, a propaganda ploy to sanction the attack that killed 100,000’s and upset the balance in the middle east? 

How could be proud of our country today for supporting Saudi Arabia’s massacre of Yemini citizens and the dismembering of Jamal Khashoggi, our Washington Post columnist?

If that wasn’t enough, the next day, I happened across an article in the NYT magazine written by an American soldier who was a medic in Afghanistan. He tells a story of survival guilt; a familiar one I have heard from 100s of patients over the years.

What was new – and viscerally unsettling – was that he struck a nerve in me, exposing feelings I am usually in deep denial about: 

"You feel the guilt but it doesn’t feel outsize; it doesn’t seem misplaced and unjustified. Your own innocence is precisely the thing you can’t see or feel." ^[1]

Though it’s not that simple: in truth, my guilt extends far beyond war: I feel the same way about a lot of things, recovering, as I am, from being a white, middle-class, American, man.  

It isn’t easy, it’s a heavy burden to carry, trying to ferret out and purge my 74-year old history as a man, steeped in patriarchy, classism, and the blinders of institutional racism. 

Don’t get me started on what we’ve done to blacks and Native Americans, or my own sad history of patriarchy.

I’m trying…I’m learning…I’m changing with the help of courageous mentors. However, there’s one thing I am proud of: 

I am still proud to be an American, just one who, having taking off his rose-colored glasses, no longer grants her blind obedience, parroting that everything she does is right and virtuous.

Consequently, while I love her just as much, it’s more in the manner of a parent loving his delinquent teenager. Because I love her, it is my duty to work to change her objectionable behavior – and right now, there’s a lot to change!

xxx

---

^[1] guilt.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/magazine/survivor-guilt-veteran.html