PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

[LadyBlue]

PTSD - Defined by the Mayo Clinc is - a mental health condition that's triggered by a terrifying event. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event.

If we are the sum of our parts, both past and present then we all have PTSD in one form or another. In my lifetime, from a very young age, I had many stressors. I had an abusive mother at home, and when I went to elementary school I was taught to duck and cover. For those of you who don't know what that means, we had drills, at least once a week, where the bells would go off at school, and when that happened, we were to duck under our desks and cover our heads with our hands.

In the late fifties, we still had threats of possible bombings from other countries. As a child I knew what bombs were, but I didn't know why anyone would drop a bomb at my school, or in my small town. I would look at the sky and each time I heard a plane I would wonder if I would hear a bomb being dropped somewhere. Sometimes we were taken out of our classroom and lined up against the walls and told to get down to ground level and to put our head between our knees and cover our heads with our hands. We were also shown at which end of the school we were to go to get to our bomb shelters. That was a major stressor for me.

I also had a father who was a Navy man, he was in the Coral Sea Battle, and the Pearl Harbor Battle. He was a bombadeer and was aboard the USS Hornet. As a small child and throughout my formative years, I would wake up to him screaming, "Baker, Baker, we are taking on water, we are going down, Abort, Abort." At that time I wasn't fully aware of what was going on, but I knew that it had something to do with the need for us kids to duck and cover and learn where those bomb shelters were. His nightmares were waking nightmares for me until the age of 18 when I finally was able to leave my home, get married and make a home for myself.

At nine years old on November 22, 1963, Dallas, Texas, President John F Kennedy was assassinated and I was in school at the time. I can remember all learning ceased that day, and we all turned to the overhead TV's in our classrooms and watched the coverage live. We were let out of school early, and I came home to my parents crying and wringing their hands. I watched the entire thing played out in front of me, and John JR saluting his fathers casket, and I was very sad, and had a lump in the pit of my stomach knowing that he would never see his father alive again.

At 14 years old on April 4, 1968, Once again another assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, JR. This time I was at home when the news crossed the TV wires, and once again, the entire thing was televised and I watched it until I was finally sent to bed, to try to sleep and not think about the tragedy that I had just been witness to. And, once again the lump was in the pit of my stomach knowing that he also had family who would be mourning his loss.

Of course while these tragic events were happening, there was also the Vietnam War, 1959 -- April 30, 1975, and it wasn't until I got a tad older did I begin to understand, or attempt to understand why boys were being drafted to go over and fight. So, the good part of my teenage years I spent glued to the TV and wanting to do something to help stop a war that should never have been. I watched fighting and shooting and boys falling and bloodshed like I've never seen before. You talk about stressors. This was personal for me, I was 16 at the time, and 17, and then 18, and the war was still raging.

Then as if it all wasn't bad enough on May 4, 1970, when I was 16, the Kent State Shootings took place, the Ohio National Guard had fired upon the unarmed students of Kent State. What I saw were students laying on the ground with blood streaming from the wounds and other students bending over them in tears. All over a war that should never have been. Now, I was in total turmoil, my head and heart were spinning and it felt as if I was out of control. The weight of the world had just fallen on top of me, and I didn't know whether to attempt to crawl out of it, or just lay down my life and die.

If I am the sum of my parts, then by all definitions of PTSD, not only me, but many of those who grew up back then, have got it. I don't even need to use society's word, PTSD, I will just say that as traumatic events go, we brothers and sisters have it. I'm not nearly finished yet.

[LadyBlue]

During the period of time that all of the above was going on, serial killers were hunting young men and woman. The 60's & 70's brought about even more horror into the homes of small towns across the country.

Charles Manson
Manson and his gang of four people most notoriously killed actress Sharon Tate in 1969. The Manson Family, which was mostly composed of naïve and troubled young women, was convicted of killing seven people in total. The charismatic leader dreamed of a racial revolution that would eventually result in the Manson Family ruling the world.

Boston Strangler
The Strangler’s reign of terror in Boston lasted from the summer of 1962 to the winter of 1964. A total of 13 women were killed, ranging from 19 to 85 years of age. It’s believed that the women allowed him into their apartments, where he sexually assaulted and strangled them. Albert DeSalvo confessed to the 11 Strangler killings and two others, and was sentenced to life in prison in 1967. But doubt remains that he was the killer, and some believe that more people may have been involved.

Zodiac Killer
The crimes of the Zodiac Killer remain unsolved more than 40 years after they occurred. He killed five people in Northern California from December 1968 to October 1969, and sent a series of cryptic letters to newspapers taking credit for the murders. He claimed credit for 37 murders in total; but police have never found his identity, so the truthfulness of his confessions is in question.

Dean Corll
The Candy Man – a nickname he acquired because he worked in his mother’s candy store – was responsible for killing more than 27 boys and young men. Corll’s crimes became known as the Houston Mass Murders during the early ’70s. He employed the help of two teenage boys who assisted him in his abductions; one of whom eventually killed him and confessed his role in the murders.

David Berkowitz
The summer of 1977 was the Summer of Sam in New York City when the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, killed six people while alerting the police and media – not unlike the BTK Killer – detailing his crimes. The 24-year-old sharpshooter claimed that howls from dogs from around his neighborhood were messages from demons that demanded him to kill women.

Then came the likes of Ted Bundy -

Ted Bundy
It might have been Bundy’s good looks and charm that helped lure his victims into positions of vulnerability. He confessed to roughly 30 murders by the time of his 1989 execution, but criminal justice experts estimate that he committed several more. The victims were strangled and mutilated, and he slept with their corpses until they became unbearably decayed. But that didn’t deter thousands of women from sending him letters of adoration while he was in prison.

All of this and more happened in my formative years, years that should have held wonderful memories, and instead held and still hold memories of pain and sorrow.

[LadyBlue]

Now, my point to all this is, if my life was in constant turmoil, what about our parents? What about our teachers? How much of an impact did all those horrific events have on how we were raised, and how we would eventually come to raise our children?

I know personally, my parents put me inside or tried to put me inside a bubble of some protection. I was kept back from fully becoming the person that I should have become. Instead of flurishing, I turned into an emotional wreck. I was afraid to go out and live my life, I was afraid of change, I was afraid that at any time some terrible tragedy would happen upon me, and that terror was overwhelming.

So, let's fastforward to today. Generations have gone before us, media has come into our lives and we now see things instantly. We see and hear the horror up close and personal. Our children are now taking flight but not in the ways that they should be, instead they are immersing themselves in single person video games, they are glued to their personal computers and their IPhones, anything to tune out all the horror and tragedy in our world. And why shouldn't they? Their parents many times aren't home, they are working long hours to keep up with the neighbors and keep up their credit card payments and living beyond their means.

When are we going to realize that our children are also a sum of all their parts and their past? If we don't teach them, then no matter how much we buy them, we are not doing our jobs. They will become lost souls wondering through this lifetime, with no goals, not knowing who they are, and some will become statistics just like so many of the killers that we are seeing today. Our society has become one of the bad guys, our government leaders are becoming a problem, our law enforcement are over taxed to the point of turning a blind eye to many children who go missing because there are too many.

People, we need to wake up, we need to become a nation of caring, loving, giving people. We need to wake up to the realization that we are the teachers, we are the mothers, fathers, grandfathers, and grandmothers of all the children of the world. Black, white, red, brown, whatever color we come in, we are our brothers keeper.