I am a survivor of Vietnam, though I was not born until 1978, three years after the end of the war.  My father was drafted when he was  
 eighteen to join the infantry division of the United States Army, from a pocket of Southwest Virginia where everyone was a poor farmer
 or coal miner.

My father Delmar Presley

 once the official diagnosis was made.  A cure never came.  Little did I know that twenty years later, after years of therapy and drugs, 
 I would receive the same diagnosis.

    I first saw my father in me in 1997, over my Christmas break from college.  I eagerly scheduled  myself to work 12 hours on 
 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

    “I can’t come home,” I told everyone. 

    “I have to work.”I didn’t want to see my father.  It was easier to keep him at a distance, easier to push things I’d rather not
 remember to the back of my mind.  The  times he took his gun and went to the river (I clung desperately to his legs, whether he
 would return or not, we never knew.) He locked himself in his room, did not come out to take a shower, missed Christmases 
 and birthdays, curled up like a baby, his back always against us.  When his eyes got big and wild, I dashed to lock myself in my
 bedroom closet.  It was the only place to escape his wrath.

    The Veterans Administration Hospital sent pills in droves through the mail, most of which he never felt like taking.  In the mornings, my
 mother changed the pads on which he slept.  The VA sent them in big boxes, to catch the sweat at night.  He had cysts removed from his 
 fingers, an entire lobe of his lung cut out, because of Agent Orange.  It was still in his body too. He had to stop working when I was ten.  
 His hands shook too much to hold onto a welder’s torch, and his nerves couldn’t take being around people.

   Sometimes I’d sit in his room and look at the pictures of him in his soldier’s uniform, his look so sad and serious.  His war medals hung
 in a perfect straight row, behind a glass case I was never to touch.  In my mind, he reached down for me.  Our hands were close.  I could
 feel his warmth, even through the glass that separated us.  

    My mother and I made a life of pretending we were fine.  Everything was fine.   We protected him, walked on eggshells, did anything 
 and everything notto provoke him.   We knew no other way.  I spent my childhood wondering if he was a bad person and a lousy father, 
 or if the war really made him what he was.

  “It’s not his fault,” my mother said.  “Not his fault.  Not his fault,” as if she could convince herself the more she said it.  “It’s Vietnam,”
 she always said,  lowering her voice as if the word itself was unspeakable.  We spent our lives avoiding saying anything about that war,
 though it raged  all around us.

   I did not go home in Christmas of 1997, stayed away for two years, swallowed loads of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs –use
 dolder men to fill the gaps.   I couldn’t bear to see the shrine my mother had created for him, the room filled  with posters of eagles in 
 flight, American flags, his Army boots and hat, a pocket New Testament—the only way she could have a part in the war.  That very 
 room was the place he always locked himself before he went to the river.

    I didn’t want to face the fact that I had  maintained no friendships in that town, hadn’t given anyone the chance to get to know me, 
 the only person they knew the fake one I had presented.  I didn’t want to face the nightmares that were triggered there, the place 
 where I could not be numb, where all the things I’d  remember would descend upon me like a black veil. 

    I despised my father, hated my mother, even resented my extended family of aunts
 and uncles, dozens of cousins.  Why hadn’t they noticed something was wrong—protected me from it?  I hated myself too.  Why hadn’t
 I told someone?  I hated all the things I didn’t say, the lies I’d created I wanted so desperately to become my own reality.

    Who were  these people I had lived under one roof with my whole life?  Why didn’t they tell me anything about themselves?  I realized
 then that we had  spent so much energy avoiding the war that there was none left to talk about anything else.  Worse still was the realization
 that though I had  been talking to myself forever, I didn’t know who I was.  Was I the sum of my actual experiences, or of the ones I made 
 up and called the  truth? Was I somewhere in the middle? 

    Some nights I curled into a fetal position on the apartment floor and cried.  I was unable to comfort myself.  I screamed inside until I was
 sure something had burst, wanted someone to find me and tell me it was going to be okay.  Like my father, I locked myself inside, did not 
 come out for Christmases or birthdays, sought refuge at the campus duck pond when I wondered if I should end it all. 

    When I did go to classes, I was panic-stricken by the normalcy around me, and didn’t fit in.  I didn’t know what to do with these strange 
 people. I picked sores in my scalp, convinced myself I was dying.  I couldn’t think of the most basic words to finish sentences, and 
 developed a stutter.

     Day and night tilted, sleep came in tsunamis—or not at all.  I could not discern between truth and fiction.  I envisioned my brain outside my
 body, a pink wrinkled orb that I would again and again reach for in my dreams, try to cram back into my head, reprogram in my sleep.
 Did my brain look like everyone else’s—or was I a freak? 

     I barely spoke to my family for five years.

     In 2007, I received my own diagnosis, the same that had plagued my father all those years:  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I was 
 teaching ninth grade English at the time, had created another life for myself, reentered therapy with the intention of talking about my recent
 divorce.  The more my therapist and I talked, however, the more I realized this would not be about my divorce.  There were deeper issues
 to be resolved. Problem was, I wasn’t sure what it would mean to open that can of worms.  Would it consume me all over again, take me 
 back to that place, inhibit my ability to function?  I had never tried to talk about what happened, wasn’t sure if I’d remember what the truth
 was anyway.

    But that day, for no reason in particular other than that it was the first time anyone had asked, I spoke about the war I did not fight in,the
 war that raged inside my father long after he returned, the war within our home, the war within me.  When I began to talk, I could not stop.

    Research says it’s likely that children with one parent who suffers from PTSD will experience PTSD themselves, trauma passed down
 through generations.

   Three years later, I cannot stop talking, still hard at work to wrestle my soul from Vietnam.  So is my father.  It’s been 35 years since
the war ended. It is only through breaking the silence that I have begun to heal.

     I created this blog to provide support and resources to children of veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and as a forum to
 be transparent as I try, for the first time, to build a relationship with my father. It is dedicated to my father, Delmer Presley.

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    I am so touched I don’t know what to say, yet I have to say something. I am quite sure no one who lived on the outer perimeter of your 
 life had no earthly idea things were as they were for you or for your family. I heard whispers the war had affected Delmer, but I though 
 it had just made him skittish and shy. I had no idea Christal. I am sorry, yet I can tell by your wonderful way of expressing yourself you 
 are well on your way to recovery. I hope you parents are also. I know what it is like growing up in a home where the pain inside is not 
 reflected on the outside. It has taken me 50 years to try and come to terms with it. I am so glad you have a good start at a young age.
 You have done a good thing with this blog. Most of us do not have any idea what it is like to live with the after effects of war. This article
 will help others who are experiencing it and help those of us who aren’t to understand.
 Sincerely,
 Denise Desai

____________________________________
   Leila Levinson

    To discover your story the first day my website is public gives meaning to all my work- both personal and public of the many past years. 
 I know your painall too well, your questions and confusion, the long healing you have embarked upon.The wounds of war go thousands 
 of miles deeper and wider than our culture acknowledges. But now that we children of veterans are beginning to tell our stories and to 
 connect with one another, we can start to change how we think of war. I look forward, Ms. Presley, to being in touch with you and 
 working with you.

    Yes, Christal, this was in you also, but so was the strength and courage you found in a cheap local pizza parlor, not so long ago. This 
 must come out to clear the way for tomorrow. Unlike you, when something is wrong, I don’t feel good, until it comes out; I’m not good
 at hiding. The night you “listened” to me, I started to heal from my ordeal with the depression (and all that goes with it) of the person 
 who tore my life apart. You must get the poison out too, there’s no shame in that, and the fact that you’re willing to do this so publicly, 
 shows me the courage I know you have inside you. This was not your fault, was not in your control, and you are learning that through 
 your amazing gift of writing. It’s a process; the learning, purging, healing process, it is in you……I’m listening…..