The Foreign Service Journal, January 2008

state blocks away from my apart- ment in Georgetown. I don’t remember precisely how, but I burned myself several times so badly that I scarred — yet I didn’t feel it. I only noticed the burns the next day. Rage overwhelmed me. I nearly attacked another person in one of my FSI training classes, but walked out of the class in time and had a meltdown in the bathroom. (That poor woman had no idea how close she came to being strangled by me for making a completely inno- cent comment.) I couldn’t keep up the pretense of being normal any longer. After that incident, I began private treatment on Aug. 24, 2006, and was diagnosed with PTSD almost immediately — though it took months before I could accept that diagnosis completely. None of what I was going through made sense to me, in fact. All I knew was that there was something seri- ously wrong, because I couldn’t sleep or focus on anything. Be- cause of my constant state of rage, the only thing I wanted to do was leap on the enemy and rip him to shreds. Leaving the Enemy Behind I thought therapy would help me figure out who the real enemies were, so I would know whom to attack. All the while, some part of me knew this wasn’t right: I had left Iraq and, logically, I must have left my enemies behind. Still, I was not able to get rid of the feeling that I had to be on the lookout all the time, and that if I let my guard down I might get killed. The world had become a fundamentally dangerous place to me, and people who did not understand this or see things that way made me angry. After all, back in Iraq, people who F O C U S J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 Fearful of being labeled a “quitter” or worse, I chose to return to Iraq despite my symptoms.