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I tried to avoid a lot of things.

Valerie Ovalle, US Army 2004 - 2005, talks about how she knew she had PTSD.

Transcript

I tried to avoid a lot of things

that happened to me in Iraq

or that I experienced in Iraq.

I found out very quickly

that even though I slept at a Wal-mart parking lot,

I was not able to go inside a Wal-mart

because of the crowds,

so I started avoiding large crowds.

I started avoiding having

my back to the doors or windows.

I always had to face the door or the window,

have my back to the wall.

I started avoiding,

I started avoiding Middle Eastern people.

If I would see them on the street

or at the grocery store,

I would literally

walk the other direction

because, and very far away from them,

because I didn't know,

I mean, they could have been,

they could have not been from Iraq.

They could have been from somewhere else,

but in my eyes,

they were the enemy

so I had to get away from them.

I even avoided my friends that I went to Iraq with

for a very long time

because I knew that if I started talking to them,

I would start having flashbacks

or remembering things that happened,

so, basically,

I wanted just to be alone.

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