say_or_do

[deleted]

Does the place you work out of have a percentage cut or rent type deal?

My father lived with PTSD from three different wars both as a Marine and civilian working for the DOD: he worked on the ground during multiple excursions in South America(, he worked in the gulf war,(after this one he ended up breaking his back and legs after going to the airborne jump school) and as a civilian he worked on the ass end of the Iraq war and was later moved from camp leatherneck(I think) to Afghanistan.

In Iraq he would call my mom, my brother and myself when he could. About three out of five times the call would get cut off only after we hear mortars impacting and the loudspeaker guy warning everyone. Every call that would happen like that my brother and my mother would break down but I would stay strong and be the man of the house like my dad had told me to be which was hard. I was worried about him and after everyone went to sleep I would cry because I would miss him so much and I would do it in my room because I wanted to be the strong one. After he came home from his deployment switch to Afghanistan he wasn't the same.

You could tell immediately when he got in the car to come back home to us. He was watching the side of the road and when he would see something he would lean forward and go to reach for where the radio was in the Humvees he would use. A week later he would yell and scream in his sleep. "Don't go through the door!" "Grab that and throw it" "can you get over there??" "DARREN!!!!" It was loud and very scary for 13 year old me. I thought what was it about a stupid little dream that could scare my life long hero so much? A couple months after that he started drinking way too much but never before or during work. He then started to get angry very easily when he was with us but he would usually stay upstairs in bed when he was home after making us dinner.

One year later our family fell apart, my hero and mom started divorce proceedings the summer I was about to go into high school and it hit me hard. How could my dad fall apart like this? A year after the divorce I figured out why. He had gotten a silver star and multiple accommodations from the British. The official story goes that some British royal soldiers and some American contractors were going out on a patrol type thing and in an alley way they came under fire from the top. The HUMVEE was dead so they had to move because in any dangerous situation like this you always keep moving no matter what. So they get out of the vehicle. The driver gets hit and goes down. My hero jumps on the fallen Brit to cover him. 15 minutes later he's sitting behind a wall somewhere and is plugging bullet holes. He says the rest is a blur but you can pick it up if you listened to him sleep when it was seriously bad.

So, my questions are:

Should I have woken him up when he was having issues? He had already attacked me when I tried over something that happened to him in South America(Molotov cocktail to the back, my mom was pulling glass out of his back for awhile after that) but I didn't care because he looked miserable.

Why wouldn't he go to a psychiatrist/therapist for this?

Why did he give me the star? I don't want it because I didn't earn it the way he did but he said "You were the man of the house and you waited for me to take back over my duties here, you went through more here then I did there" which hurt me for some reason.

And last, why didn't he ever tell me about the Brit who went down or even his name?

Like the place called pancakes plus down the street from me which has been there for over 60 years and they're always packed before the ihop. The ihop is usually people's second choice around these parts.

Fuck that. They can go fuck themselves. 50 percent???