Reply #114: "Two Frustrated People" - good call [View All]

[Mabus]

It happens here a lot too. There are a lot of threads where people concur about a conclusion or result but differ as to get there. Some disagreements are more vehement than others and the end result is people ending up talking past each other and only half listening to the other side. Some people are convinced that they're course of action is the only correct one that they would rather go to their graves than try to see it from someone else's perspective.

With all that said, my gut reaction is to stick-up for Tina because I understand where she is coming from. I met Tina and Cloy back in October. Tina was the one who told me about the Michael J. Fox ads for Claire McCaskill. She had gotten a sneak preview at it and she told us it was a powerful ad that would probably change the tide in Claire's favor. Tina was right. It was during the course of that evening when the topic of Cloy's redeployment came up. Cloy had been there most of the evening but he sat off to the side. His chair was near the front door but pushed back just far enough that he was out of the way. Actually now that I think about it, he was nestled between the front door and one of the front windows. He stayed on the periphery of the main crowd and didn't engage people very much. Whenever someone new came in the house Cloy retreated farther away from other people.

At one point, Cloy got up and went outside to smoke a cigarette and that was when Tina told us about Cloy being redeployed. IIRC, he had already gotten his orders. She told us the problems they were having getting him care through the VA and that he was suicidal. What struck me about that conversation was I lost a friend who had multiple deployments to Iraq. He committed suicide. He didn't want to go back. He couldn't get into the VA. He started self-medicating with large amounts of alcohol. When that didn't work he began supplementing it with over the counter medications like cough syrup and sleeping pills. From there he went out to the streets to buy pain pills and anything else he could find to numb himself. He sent his most precious belongings to my old roommate/his ex-lover and then he committed suicide on Veteran's Day in 2005. All of a sudden, it hit me, Cloy was acting like Scott right before he went on the first of many drinking binges.

Scott, who was once the sparkle to every party, had started pulling away from people. Scott was gay and most of his family, the RW compassionate Christians he grew up with rejected him. Scott's family were his friends but after he came back from his second deployment Scott had changed. This war changed him. He had nightmares and he was jumpy. He was distrustful and didn't like quick movements. Scott got rid of his cat because his nerves couldn't take it when the cat ran around the house. The cat's furtive movements totally freaked him out. He stopped answering the phone and the few times he did he was drunk out of his mind. He didn't think he was worth talking to anymore. He didn't feel like he was human anymore. He didn't talk about what he saw, heard or did while he was there very much. Most of the time it was like those periods of time didn't exist for him. But every once in a while he would talk about it and that's when his internal conflict became apparent: he was proud that he had served his county but he wasn't proud of what he had done.

Scott tried hanging himself, more than once. He slit his wrists several times. He tried to get help at the VA but was put on a waiting list. Then he got discharged but he still couldn't get help. He was unable to keep a job. He apparently couldn't take it anymore. He called his ex-lover and told him that he would like to go out to California to visit him and get his head together. Scott then packed up his valuables and told my friend he was sending them out to him. Scott was pretty vague about when he would be out there for his visit. He called my friend and made sure the packages had arrived. He then explained why he wanted his ex-lover to have the items. He took several bottles of over the counter sleeping pills, downed a couple fifths of vodka (although to be truthful there were a lot of empty vodka bottles around the house), slit his wrists and was in the process of trying to hang himself when he slipped, hit his head on a table and bled to death from the head wound.

When Cloy talked about his time in Iraq that evening, it was evident that he was very proud of having served his country, but like Scott, he wasn't particularly proud of what he had done. I saw a lot of Scott that evening in Cloy and my heart breaks when I think about it. As a result, I have a lot of empathy for Tina. I saw someone I loved (I still love Scott) go downhill mentally and physically and there was not a damned thing I could do about it.

Tina's being a mother. She wants this war to stop because she has a son who has been and will be damaged because of this war. She's doing it because she loves her son. She's doing this because she knows Cloy isn't the only one who has been affected. She's a mother who knows that her son is in a very fragile mental state and she wants to get him help rather than send him off to war again. She's doing it for all the right reasons and she's doing the best she can.