Transcript
One of the really helpful things that came
from my first 16 week course on PTSD right after I learned
that I had PTSD had to do with smells.
And my issue with my symptoms were that I had no explanation,
feeling sort of like I was crazy because I might start
out a really beautiful rare sunny day in my part
of the country and get in the car to go to work or go
to school and a transition would happen that was just a mystery
to me and my mood would sink really deep.
I'd just be in a huge funk, and it might last two or three days
and many times this would happen.
And then I learned that even though I knew I didn't
like driving behind buses that were running diesel engines,
that it was more than just not liking them, that was a trigger
that I didn't recognize but the smell of unburned fumes
of diesel in hot weather was what I smelled day after day,
hour after hour in Vietnam
because that's how you dispose of human waste.
You put it in barrels and you burn it.
There are no sewer systems, no septic systems.
And it took me a long time and help from someone else
in that group to make that connection.
Even though the smell was almost identical or identical
to what I'd experienced that became a trigger.
I didn't on my own recognize it because the beautiful greenery,
driving across the bridge on the lake in my own car,
all of those things was so not Vietnam that just the odor
from Vietnam just didn't seem
like it could possibly be the cause
of what was happening to me.
And yet I was feeling like I was just crazy or broken in a way
that was unexplainable.
It turns out it was explainable and I still don't like the smell
of buses in any weather but now I don't go into two
or three day funks over it.
I just get a little pissed off about the whole thing
and wish they'd burn better fuel and more efficiently in buses.