I realized that you don't have to deal with it all yourself.

I joined the Army to get away from Seattle.

I was born and raised here, never really saw the world

and that was my big motivating factor,

so I can go out and see the world.

I was kind of young, kind of naïve.

When I came back from Afghanistan,

I'd lost five friends in Afghanistan.

The best man for my wedding actually got shot three times.

It was kind of a rude awakening to life, in general.

And when I came back from Afghanistan,

I didn't really have very many triggers or very many symptoms

with Posttraumatic Stress except

for I kept having this reoccurring nightmare.

In the nightmare, it's silly,

but we were in this little valley and all

around us, we had hills.

And for some reason, me and the guys that were

down in this valley, we all had swords but yet hordes of,

I guess, bad guys kept running down the hills

and they all had guns.

And I realized, that's not a normal dream.

That's not a normal experience for me to be processing this.

About the same time, one of my Team Leaders actually,

actually he was a Squad Leader, started talking about some

of his dreams and going in and seeking counseling

from the counselors there on the military base.

And I looked up to him and I thought

that he was a great individual, great professional, and I said,

"He went and did this, I guess it's okay.

I guess it's acceptable."

That's really the moment where I realized that you don't have

to deal with it all yourself.