The controversy of the Iraqi War was inevitable for the country and media to debate after we hit the insurgency phase. After all, that was when the casualties actually began to mount and the true cost of the Iraq War began. Public opinion about the war began to truly decline. The public expected us to unseat the Iraq leader, we would find someone to run the country, and we would simply leave Iraq to their future which should be bright now that a dictator wasn’t running things.

Debate raged in the media during the many years we were in Iraq following the successful invasion. I noticed this debate in my own country from the beginning while my friends and I continued to fight the war through its many stages. It was hard to ignore. Soldiers, American Soldiers especially, need the moral justification to fight and possibly die in war. I am not sure if this is a universal requirement but American Soldiers need to believe they are fighting on the side of right.

Wars are always different for those who take part versus those who sit at home and watch it on their televisions. This is the closest most people in this country get to war other then speaking with friends or family who have been in the military. Either because of the way wars are reported now, or the accessibility of war reporting, or the duration and cost of the war itself, the Iraq War will be a point of discussion for many decades to come.

The ultimate judgment of the Iraq War will be determined, not by you and me, but through history. People many years from now will study the Iraq War with the critical eye of time. They will research and determine its long term effects, the cost, and ultimately whether it was successful or not and make this determination without the emotional baggage that those of us living now carry.

So much of the struggle with PTSD, when you get past the anger and the nightmares, is trying to piece together the relationships that you have left behind. I have spent the last 18 months learning to rebuild those relationships.

PTSD sufferer Roy Smith has learned, “Understanding you have a choice is one of the most important steps to winning your freedom from the hell that is PTSD.”

I envy how easily children can learn almost anything. This was demonstrated on repeated occasions by my children every time we moved to a new base.

Sleep for most people is something they look forward to at the end of a long day. The same used to be true for me. All that changed once I went to war. Then the nightmares found me and sleep ceased to be a respite from the day’s stress and fatigue. In the intervening years, I have learned a fair amount about sleep and dreams and especially nightmares.

There is an aspect to our military’s capabilities that rarely receives as great exposure as our military fighting prowess and that is our capability to provide humanitarian relief efforts.

Understanding PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, is important for anyone whose husband, wife, son, daughter, or friend has been diagnosed with this very persistent and misunderstood problem. This article is my attempt to provide first person experiences with PTSD in order to help those like me. It is a firsthand account, in my own words, of what I experienced and witnessed around me during the most difficult part of my life. Hopefully, this article will provide both PTSD sufferers and those closest to them an understanding of what PTSD is and what those with it have to endure to get better.