Veteran's Heart Georgia Blog

I am the first son of a Korean vet. My dad always told us he was a clerk at “Headquarters” and never saw combat. After he drank himself to death, I learned that wasn’t true. My uncle told me he had been a ground pounder on the front lines. They had slept in 3 man tents, and my dad happened to be in the middle one morning… when he awoke to find his tent mates on either side had had their throats cut during the night. My uncle said he was never the same after that.

He married my mom after the war – and I came along less than 9 months later. He couldn’t stand to hear me cry and shoveled abuse upon my mom until I was 4 months old…then he started in on me too. When I cried I got hit, spanked, and yelled at until finally, he would leave. By the time I was one, I could spell my name and count 10 pennies; because if I didn’t get it right, I’d get slapped. He was determined to make me “tough” – and “smart” – “even if it kills him”. The first thoughts I can recall from my childhood was that I wanted to die. Infractions or weakness were beaten out me then until I was 12, but I’d learned at 9 they were shorter if I didn’t cry, so I stopped. My mom left him when I was 12 too, however the consequences didn’t leave, they were a part of me.

I was 18 the first time I attempted suicide, and attempted many more times in the next 13 years, until I quit drinking myself and started to make amends. I had become him. In therapy, I learned that I acted out the survivor’s suicidal rage he had manifest as violence directed outward in his denial, yet he finally attained the unconscious, denied goal of self destruction when his liver stopped working. He never allowed himself to know his demons.

I still struggle with depression at 55, and relationships are a challenge for me as I sometimes slip back into my old mindset when I’m under stress. I’m convinced I developed fibromyalgia from a lifetime of muscle tension that attacked the nerves in my myofacia, and I am further disabled from losing my right arm in my last attempt in 2004.

I’m encouraged to have found this website, and see an organized effort to help all of the wounded souls cut by wars and social misunderstanding of the consequences. Perhaps humanity will finally decide the cost of war is too great to bear any longer, and those of us with the unseen disease will stop passing on the sins of our fathers.

The first 17 years of my life were lived as a member of the Army “family” – a fact that I have spent much of my adult life trying to hide and disclaim.  I was born in 1963 and my first continuous childhood memories are of my father being in Viet Nam.  My mother was very proud of my father for his service and faithfully imparted this pride to me & my siblings.   We were raised knowing that our actions must always be considered in the context of how they might reflect upon our father.  We were always ready for inspection and in all ways we strove to do nothing to dishonor my father and the U.S. Army.  This was part of the glue that held us together and it also caused much inner turmoil for me as I grew up and yearned to extricate myself from my role and create an authentic path.  In recent years, I have been in a phase of re-visiting my childhood and my father’s service and have been seeing my life through a new lens, one that is refined with an adult’s heart and understanding.  As I have re-lived my and my family’s experiences with particular focus on the painful ones, I have found a treasure on the other side: a surprising lightness of being has come with seeing things more clearly as they really were and are.  My relationship with my family is closer than it has been in years – I feel like I can finally come home.