PTSD

Lyrics by: Nora Freeman
Gaggle: NYC Metro
Tune: Love Me Tender

Note – this song emphasizes the horrors of war. It also describes the feelings of despair in a true story of one individual at the beginning of his personal struggle with PTSD. We know now that each experience of PTSD is unique and that all can be successfully overcome with patience and courage, yes, even memories such as this.]
Inspired by A Deserter’s Tale, by Joshua Key

Still so young, I’m just 18,
But I suffer night and day
My illness is PTSD
Will it ever go away

A country boy with chances slim
For college and career
Recruiters came to school to pour
Sweet poison in my ears

Your tuition, paid in full
If you sign right here
The army will take care of you
You’ll never go to war

To my dismay I was deployed
To the war zone of Iraq
Death, destruction everywhere,
It could not be more bleak

Told to raid a house each night
The terrorists to catch
But in the houses all we found
Were kids, their moms and dads

The men, we took away with us
No reason did we give
And left the women wond’ring if
They’d e’er be back alive

One time a baby cried and cried
Because I’d hurt her mom
I could not take the guilt and shame
And so discharged my gun

And then that baby’s crying stopped
It stopped forevermore
It haunts me now with all the rest
Of my Iraqi war.