The Things They Cannot Say

“She’s my responsibility,” he says matter-of-factly. “I have to be there for her, but there’s no warm and fuzzy, no tingles.”

Sperry says he knows things will always be different, but he believes there’s still some type of life out there for him. He had wanted to go into law enforcement after the Marines, but his cognitive abilities have been so severely diminished he knows he won’t qualify. Standardized tests he’s taken since returning from war show him in the bottom percentiles. He tried going to school when he came home but just couldn’t concentrate. He used to be smart, he says, and now he just doesn’t know who he is.

He also still has nightmares, wrapping past and present together in fearful imagery. In one, he’s driving the family car loaded with Hannah, the dogs and his sister’s children down Fallujah’s treacherous streets.

He thinks he can stay stable if he stays on his medications, doesn’t return to heavy drinking, learns a trade and raises his daughter. He likes spending time with his daughter and his sister’s children, making them lunches, taking them to and from school.

“Children are innocent. They don’t know the cruelties of the war.”

“Will you tell her your stories one day?” I ask.

“She knows Daddy was a Marine,” he says. “That’s all the stories she probably needs to know about that.”

Sperry knows his own innocence was lost in war.

“I was so young and naive. I’m in high school playing video games, but at seventeen you don’t really know what happens. We’re fearless at that age, but now [after war] we become petrified of death. Everyone I’ve been with [in Iraq] has been killed themselves or are now really messed up.”

In The Warriors, J. Glenn Gray wrote that the only way some soldiers, like Sperry, lose this naivete is through their own physical injury. “In most of these soldiers, the sources of their relationship toward death—as a reality for others only—is not too difficult to discover. They have simply preserved their childish illusion that they are the center of the world and are therefore immortal… Perhaps their own wounding is necessary. The look of shock and outrage on such a soldier’s face when that happens is likely to be unforgettable. At one cruel stroke he loses forever the faith in his physical immortality. His psychological adjustment to the new world he has to inhabit is certain to be harder than the physical recovery from his wounds.”

After our Christmas meeting, my correspondence with Sperry over the next year is sporadic and shows his significant mood swings, likely from continued drug and alcohol use. I’m familiar with this, recognizing the chemically induced patterns of emotional highs and lows in myself. In some e-mails he seems helpless, in others defiant.

February 21, 2010 (e-mail from Sperry to me)

Sorry I have been really struggling with all my demons lately. I keep numbing myself up with weed, pills, and alcohol. I have been thinking about trying to tell the doctors at my next Marine Corps. doctor evaluation that I am totally fine and trying to release me. I was a great saw gunner and they need my talents over there. I hate being on the sidelines watching other boys and men fight this war. I can walk and pull my trigger finger. I think I am addicted to combat. Sorry for all the delay i have been numbing myself pretty good and trying to forget about how fucked up this world is. I want to be there for you as well I know you know the same pain. How do you cope with pain and mind-racing? I think I might check myself back in a VA hospital but if i do that there go my chances of the army. I hate being on the sidelines, I use to be important now everyone takes me for granted. I am so lost…… Peace

September 14, 2010 (Facebook message from Sperry to me)

Well lets get right back into it. I have time to contemplate everything in depth lately. The man that was James before everything—was motivated, naive, full of hope, and had innocence. I just feel like that man died over there and I am stuck with an existence that does not feel—it just calculates everything, the risk of going out in public, numb to any emotion I act emotions out so people think I am somewhat fine. But I haven’t felt them then unless I am going 160 mph on a crotch rocket… I am told why are you not seeing your doctors? What are they going to do for me? They are not going to understand at all what I am going thru from the constant pains in my head, upper back, and hips, knees, feet. To not sleeping for days, nightmares, lack of feeling anything but anger, flashbacks, breaking down at the drop of a hat. To asking why did I lose twenty-six friends and I am still here. I constantly contemplate what the last few seconds for my friends were [like]. What were they feeling? I contemplate my death daily. Also my daughters. When I look at people I try not to, but I picture what they would look like dead. I smoke pot non-stop just to keep me from exploding. It calms me down. I think that if suicidal veterans would receive pot for PTSD it would calm them down and help them think things out. I have almost died so many times, I can’t even count…. I don’t know what to do anymore. Giving up is not an option. I am not a quitter.

Later, I learn through Facebook postings that Sperry has separated from his wife, Cathy. I’m not surprised. The challenges to their relationship seemed nearly insurmountable. Cathy told me that the effect of Sperry’s drinking and multiple medications had left her feeling isolated and alone. There were also the occasions, she said, when he was verbally abusive and his explosive temper sometimes made her fear for the safety of her daughter and herself. I ask her about it. It takes her a few weeks to respond, but finally I receive this:

December 29, 2010 (Facebook message from Cathy to me)

Hi Kevin, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to blow you off. It’s just that it’s been easier to just push my feelings aside and not think about it. And to be honest it does make me a little nervous having so many personal details out there. As far as our marriage, I feel like we are done. It hurts me to see him in pain and I really hope that he gets help and finds happiness, mostly for Hannah’s sake. I care about him and his well-being, but our marriage lacked passion for years. Maybe I am being selfish, but I feel like for years he put me down and I started to believe it and it turned me into a person I didn’t like. Maybe it was because of his own insecurities that he knew he was weak inside and was afraid of me being strong. But for the first time in my life I feel strong and independent. I feel like him and I brought out the worst in each other, some of it Iraq is to blame, but also at 19, we didn’t know how to be married and never truly respected each other. One example of this is, he got a motorcycle loan without talking to me first, and I got a credit card without telling him… we just started bad habits like that from the beginning. He is leaving this week to go to a rehab center out of state and I am very happy he is finally going to get help. I want to see him get better and I will always care about him, and I do feel sad for what has become of us. But, my feelings have changed for him, and it wouldn’t be fair to either of us to stay together. We have so many different views on everything and are not the same people we married. And I don’t feel like we are capable of being what each other wants in a mate. I do enjoy the freedom of being able to figure out who I am without someone standing in my way and I feel like I am a stronger person than I was then when we were together.

Shortly after, I see on Facebook that Cathy has changed back to her maiden name.

At the same time I e-mailed Cathy, I had also sent James a note asking him if he thinks his marriage was a casualty of his war injuries and PTSD and whether there are behaviors he wishes he could change.

He writes me back through Facebook, responding thoughtfully and candidly.

December 14, 2010 (Facebook message from Sperry to me)

I really do not like being away from Cathy because she was always that rock for me, but with all the stress that of the whole experience, I just was not the same confident person anymore I became very selfish, mood swings, and numb to any emotion. Unfortunately, I said and did so many bad things. There wasn’t a name in the book that I didn’t call her. I was just angry and violent. Then I found pot. This helped a ton into relaxing me and thinking through situations before I would fly off the handle. But the negatives that have come with it were the smell of it and me. Cathy saw that it helped me and wanted me to have it. During this time it was almost daily war between us. We both didn’t care what we said to each other. We hurt each other a lot. But it got to a point that we would yell at each other so much that a brick wall just went up in our mind to what each other was trying to say.