Invisible wounds

According to Wikipedia, PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma.  This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity, overwhelming the individual's ability to cope.

An easy paragraph to describe an overwhelming sense of feelings.  Since 1991, when I came back from Desert Storm, I have minimized my trauma and refused to talk about it.  I would talk about the atrocities I had witnessed over there, I even joked about them, but I never talked about how they affected me.  I also never talked about everything that happened while I was there.

When 9/11 happened, my husband was in  Chattanooga, teaching a class.  That evening, after watching the news all day, and without knowing why, I felt this overwhelming sense of panic and I drove to Chattanooga halfway through the night, just to be with him.  I never figured out why, but I had to do it.

I hadn't felt that sense of panic again until yesterday when I was watching the news footage of the bombing at the Boston Marathon.  I turned the tv on and the first thing I saw was soldiers, running towards some barricades and moving them to let the First Responders get in to help.  For some reason, I got that same, overwhelming sense of panic.  To the point of not being able to watch any more of it.  And I still can't watch it.

There are things that happened in Saudi that I haven't been able to face and I guess it's time to.  I do have PTSD over a decade later and it's haunting me in ways I can't explain.

I don't even know what else to write.  I know I'm not the only one who is suffering and I know that there are many out there who have it much harder than I do, but admitting the trauma, I guess, is the first step in the right direction.  Now, if I can just talk about it...