Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, has seen its share of wounded military men and women. Many have war-inflicted wounds you can see. Many others have something not so easily detected: post-traumatic stress disorder.
Sgt. Matthew Pennington is one such survivor. James Dao brings his story to clear relief in his reporting for the NYTimes, "Acting Out War's Inner Wounds."
When I read the article I was reminded of the line by pre-eminent writer Zora Neale Hurston that I have embedded in my email signature line and on which I have written: "There is no greater burden than carrying an untold story." I believe that what Hurston meant is when we share our stories we find we are very much alike. I don't know whether the sharing or the reflection of our experience in that of another human being is where the burden lightens; but I can tell you that it does.
“We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the Listener to say - and to feel - ‘Yes! that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it. You are not as alone as you thought.’” [John Steinbeck]
The story continues:
"For Mr. Pennington, medications seemed to worsen his depression and therapy did not ease his anxiety. He seemed headed for divorce, isolation and perhaps alcoholism. And there his story might have ended, a case study on the intransigence of war’s psychological scars. But it did not end there.
In 2009, an unexpected opportunity landed in his e-mail inbox: a casting call, forwarded by a friend in Nashville, from an undergraduate filmmaker looking for someone to play a combat veteran who had lost a leg, had post-traumatic stress disorder and lived in Maine.
This is my life, Mr. Pennington thought.
So on a lark, Mr. Pennington — whose last appearance on stage was in middle school and who had become nervous in crowds and, indeed, avoided most human contact — decided that fixing his life depended on performing before a camera.
“I thought acting would be so out of the normal that it would force me to deal with things,” he recalled. “I wanted my life back.”
The struggle by wounded veterans like Mr. Pennington to reclaim their lives is the unfolding next chapter in America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2001, 46,000 American service members have been injured in combat, perhaps a third or more seriously. Those veterans now face years of rehabilitation at a cost of billions of dollars annually.
In the coming weeks, The New York Times will profile a few of those veterans. Their cases say much about the critical importance of high-quality health care and loving families. But as with Mr. Pennington, they also underscore the individuality of recovery, where the most effective therapies are often discovered by the veterans themselves."
I am not writing a happy ending. That's not for me to write. If one is written it will be Pennington's doing. What strikes me is that yet again the story of who we are, where we've come from, what we've seen, how we have persevered will help all of us get home.
You might wish to click here to watch the story in video form.
