Getting support and living a positive life
Tesha:
My name is Tesha, and I have been married to Timothy for five years this July. I went with him to Korea, back to the States, and I was with him pretty much after his deployment. He never talked to me about his job, it was always a big secret. “I can't tell you what happened, I don't want to talk about it.” It was just a snap of the hand and he's from 0 to 100. I myself am a schoolteacher, so immediately when I went to Korea with him I recognized he had, something was going on. The drinking was pretty heavy. I mean, it was almost every other day. The attitude, the just “I don't care,” you know, “I can't help it, I'm gonna to do what I want to, I'm just going on a rampage!” We could not go out to social scenes, clubs or anything with a lot of people around, because it's always “I'm looking over my shoulder,” and eventually I just asked him, “Look, you have to go get some help, you have to go talk to someone. If you don't want to talk to me, I don't care, but I can't stay here in this house if you don't go talk to someone.”
He went to the psychologist there on post, there in Korea. The counseling, I think, was, it was calm, it was patient, it was, “Let’s see how you react to this situation,” and he would, he would talk about his counselor in such a-a high authority because it was, like, “I can really talk to this person, and, you know, and I feel comfortable,” and so I was so happy about that, that the counselor was the man that he was, that he was able to talk to and just let it all out, and when he came home to me as a husband he was better as a husband because he was able to talk to someone about it. They prescribed him medication, which I thank God for because it has been a miracle worker.
We did have a great support group. The women, for some reason I guess we were all just opened up to one another, and so just to hear that another woman has went through the same thing, that was helpful. You know, and I don’t think if I didn’t have that military support group, talking to a civilian wife and she would probably be, like, “Your husband’s doing that?” You know, but a military wife knew immediately “Oh, yeah, this is probably what’s going on.” I knew right then that “Okay, they’ve experienced the same thing and this isn’t anything new that we can’t get through.”
Before the attentiveness and paying attention to small details he just could not focus on things, so now he’s able to sit down and watch a movie without getting up or, you know, “I can’t sit here, I’ve got to move around.” He’s able to do stuff around the house. As far as the drinking he has stopped drinking, and I’m so glad about that, and he plays the drums there at our uncle’s church and it’s able to give him an outlet. He’s able to be free, be his self, he doesn’t have to think about anything else in the world but God and focusing on the drums, and I think that’s good for individuals and especially Veterans coming, you know, back home and different things because they need that outlet. They have to have something, but it needs to be a positive outlet.
You have to follow your gut feeling. It’s given to us for a reason, and a lot of times we ignore it and I’m so glad I went with my gut feeling that “Something is wrong. I don’t know what, I can’t pinpoint it because I’m not a counselor,” but I knew something was wrong with my husband, or if it’s your wife, something is going on, you have to follow your gut and just don’t go to them in a mean way or forceful way but go to them, “Letting you know that you’re, I’m here to support you, I love you, but we have to do something different. You have to get some help. It’s only to benefit you. It’s not for me but it’s for your benefit, because I want you to be able to function in society too and be able to live a joyful life as well.”
