The one thing you cannot escape in your life is yourself.

You can really try, though.

I spent four years after my deployment trying. Alcohol, work, and being buried in more work did a decent job of it. Then I had a baby and exited active duty. Once I became a civilian again, I realized there were a lot of things wrong with me.

A lot.

I couldn’t go to the grocery store without panicking. I couldn’t drive my car without anxiously scanning the roadside. Daily tasks had to be written down, or else I would forget. I compulsively cleaned my house and awoke every night from disturbing dreams.

Did the blasts really affect my brain that severely?

I was deployed during the height of the surge in Iraq. A chaplain’s assistant, I accompanied a battalion of combat engineers and was continuously exposed to blasts from improvised explosive devices.

Now, more than 17 years later, I still grapple with the effects of the IEDs: headaches, confusion, memory problems, bouts of dizziness, sleep disturbances, slowed thinking, and, worst of all, behavioral and personality changes.

The blasts themselves were bad and the war was awful, but I struggle most with the aftermath.

Trying to unpack the war, my traumatic brain injury, my PTSD, and, well, everything has been the most unfun thing in my entire life. By burying them in humor and often willfully overlooking them, I minimized every single thing that changed the “me” from before Iraq to the “me” that morphed those 14 months downrange. I simply have been unwilling to process it.

Thinking of the war and the missions, the firefights, and IEDs makes me relive the moments I would rather forget. It happened long ago, but it seems like it was yesterday, as if my body and mind are permanently stuck in that far-off country.

I went through a few therapy sessions with VA, as well as a private psychologist. But those sessions made my symptoms a thousand times worse. After my first intense session, I had my first near blackout driving on a freeway. I can now only drive on sideroads. My dreams and sleep worsened, as well as my social anxiety. The storm inside me intensified. So the memories were shoved back in the mental box, far from where I had to process them.

Then I got a phone call from my former chaplain, with whom I had spent 14 months working alongside on our deployment. He was retiring and had gotten an MRI done, one that showed brain lesions from the IED blasts. We estimated how many we had been exposed to and the number shocked us both; it was more than 150.

If it weren’t for us traveling at least three to four times a week to multiple locations, we would never have been exposed to so many blasts, so many types. Controlled detonations and the enemy detonations alike. The two massive ones that knocked us out. The third one that partially knocked me out. The ones that we could feel in our heads and our teeth; those we didn’t lose consciousness for, but wished we had from the pain. Those you could feel in your entire body. Once the shock wave hit the vehicle, my head felt a sharp pain, almost as if being hit with a hammer, and then a blowback, or rocking sensation, that we felt in our chests and guts.

That is precisely why I avoided processing anything. Who in their right mind wants to think about that crap?

Not me.

But now, after almost 18 years being home, I do.

I am 42 and not getting younger. My memory is deteriorating. I will ask for new scans at my next yearly doctor’s appointment. I fear dementia as I age further, and I want treatment that might help me retain some cognitive functioning.

I also want peace now. I owe the younger me grace and understanding that I didn’t know how to give myself at the time. I first started experiencing problems when I was in Iraq, but kept quiet, afraid that admitting any symptoms would cost my job. Perhaps I also didn’t want to admit it to myself: Who wants to say they have brain damage?

Now I am ready to face it. Psychologically, emotionally, and medically.

I know exactly how it feels to be a prisoner of my own mind and to hold the key that unlocks the cell door, but refuse to use it. We have been conditioned to suck it up and drive on. But could I live the rest of my life this way?

No.

There is now a noticeable internal lightness when I sit and think back, even write things down. I still have PTSD. I always will. I certainly still have TBIs, and that damage will always be there.

But I am more at peace with all the things I went through. I understand them better and I can say that it wasn’t my fault. How my body responded to the IEDs was normal. I wasn’t defective or weak like I used to think. I did my job. I did it without fear and I tried my best. And I came out of it alive.

This War Horse Reflection was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Rosemarie Ho, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.