"Got hope?" the Obama bumper sticker asked. (Hey, we're non-partisan here, it's just an illustration to make a point.)
The reality is, hope turns out to be VITAL, not optional, in someone's struggle to "heal." And "healing," of course, is not specifically an end-result, a "one and done" event -- but a progress along a continuum.
Even the Bible talks about how, "without vision, the people perish." Emily Dickinson, who it's easy to imagine as a profoundly depressed, but nevertheless highly imaginative New England poet, referred in one of her more famous poems to hope "as a thing with feathers." Meaning, pretty airy, light-weight, and able to fly away. Hard to trap and catch, hard to hang onto. If you put the two concepts together, though, hope is both necessary AND hard to hard to hang onto. No wonder it's so important.
Over the last few months, I've been watching as a hardened combat veteran, with severe PTSD, has stepped out of his comfort zone, and put his "hope" to the test: Hope that there was a life for him outside the realms of severe combat trauma. It's been incredibly interesting and refreshing to see what's happened to him since. And hope shows up at every turn. Without going into it in much depth here -- there'll be another time and place for that -- I've been able to see his physiology as well as his psychology change, in just a few short months -- and I've seen the renewal of "hope" this has caused within him. For one thing, hope to be considered more than just another "crazy, effed-up combat veteran" -- the mask he's apparently worn for society for years (decades, in his case). Hope that he can have an actual life and happiness beyond what he had been reconciled to, by virtue of "throwing off" some of what's hindered him (the Biblical wording here is purely incidental.)
The deal about having a mask that you wear, as a combat vet, because it's what society expects of you -- and it's also what allows you to keep other people at bay -- is a very interesting concept in its own right. It helps, but it also hinders. It frees, but it also constrains. And suddenly, with better health, comes the realization that it may be time to consider laying that mask down, at least part-time.
Whoa. Strangely...that turns out to be a tad problematic.
Because there is comfort to be found behind that mask, and safety, and worst of all -- familiarity. We all struggle with, "better the devil you know...than the devil you don't know." And even a self-imposed mask offers a modicum of comfort, though at great cost (what you miss out on, wearing it).
The combat veteran and I had a conversation the last few days that mirrors several others we've had over time, as he's received extremely positive -- surprisingly positive -- news from his medical providers. The sum of it is, he seems to feel he had an easier time picturing he was going to fade out and die...than actually revive and live. Strange, isn't it -- the rest of us just want to get well. But to the combat vet with PTSD, sometimes there's a fair amount of comfort (from the familiarity) of knowing things are bad...and likely to stay the same or keep getting worse.
What I've seen with this very courageous individual, as I've watched him fight to take this new hill, called health, is how hard it's been to reconcile himself to having hope now for an actual future, unmarred substantially by the PTSD that's dogged him so much from the past. Not that he'll ever be "over" it completely -- but getting quite a bit better, and healing both on the outside and on the inside? On the one hand, priceless. On the other hand, definitely scary. Stay tuned...this has been an incredibly interesting journey to watch, and it will continue to be.
