Skip to content

The nightmares I deal with are the main problem.

Tyler Jones, US Marine Corps 2002 - 2006, talks about how he knew he had PTSD.

Transcript

The nightmares that I deal with are the main problem.

No matter what, I don't sleep.

I try, I'm lucky if I can get two, maybe four hours.

Four hours would be a very good night.

And that's, I've been prescribed medication to actually

help me sleep, and I can still wake up from that

and be wide awake, ready to rock-and-roll, go to work,

run a PFT, you name it, I'm good to go shortly after.

I, dare I say I'm afraid to sleep, I'm terrified of sleep.

And it's the same kind of terrifying-ness that kids get

when they watch "Alien" for the first time

and they shouldn't have, and they are afraid

that thing's going to pop out of their chest.

It's the same thing, except it's not a space monster

popping out of their chest, it's watching one of my friends

get killed, it's smelling the burning of my own flesh

off my bone, even though these things never happened,

this is what I deal with.

It's like walking through Dante's Inferno, but instead of it

being hell and sinners, it's just Iraq and war,

a much worse war than I actually experienced.

And I don't know why that is, if it's an overactive

imagination or if it's simply my own subconscious

or something going with this idea and taking it to

an extreme logical end or whatever, but it's what plays out

when I close my eyes at night, and it keeps me up,

and I am terrified of it.

Published At