Reflections of P T S D: With My Perfect Flaws

By Tim Segrest

In my first book, Perfect Flaws, I wrote that the book was about nothing and something at the same time. However, in the past year or so, I have arrived at a different conclusion. I have seen many horrid things as a sniper in a Special Forces unit. The details are irrelevant here, there are some in the pages inside. I can honestly say that this book is about how a person, such as I, deals with PTSD and its expressive turmoil it plays inside our minds. It is, in my opinion, incurable and the phrase, "get over it," should never be in the same conversation. I am not promoting poetry as the only means of self-healing. I am, more importantly, trying to encourage other veterans to do something to aide in healing themselves. It's hard work but one cannot rely on medications and outside influences to heal them. Just in combat, much of the time, you can only rely on yourself. You must want to live.

I have dove deeper in this book to explore topics outside the combat zone. Topics assigned to me in college classes, as well as everyday life. I did this because we are not in combat anymore. Everyday problems blend into our past world, an avoidable part of living in society. But, through the same self-healing methodology, I feel you can tackle them as well. But then again, like I already said, you must want to.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 6, 2008
• ISBN: 9781456724450

Tim Segrest

Tim Segrest is 44 years old and grew up spending alot of time at the beach in California.  He joined the military in 1983 and retired in 2004 as a disabled veteran, and  was diagnosed with Degenerative Spine Disease in 1997.  Tim currently resides in New Mexico with his lovely wife.  The author can't say why who he is validates his writing these poems, sorry—you'll have to answer that on your own.

Book preview

Contents

No one at home

CROSSROADS

The Writer

MY CURE

Just Another Day

Frame by Frame

Lover, never my wife

We Always Win

Shapes and Sizes

What Weekend?

Life is Funny, Don’t you think?

My Death Will Not be the End

Feeding Cancers

Warrior of my God

My little fishing hole

Grumpy Old Fool

A Little Less Lost

I WISH I COULD

To Stay Alive

Job Well Done

Little Creatures

Signs

How to Start

Biological Machines

Afraid to Sleep

Pedophilia, the truth of it

MAN & MURDERER

The Final Battle

AGAIN

May I ask you a Favor?

Suffocation

ALL I CAN DO

Intentional scaring

Names

Sit

Relevance

I Killed

GOD TELLS ME

Show them no pain

TABS

To My Fellow Sniper

Show them no fear

Necessary curse

It Creeps

Child to Man, Man to Child

GONE

This Fight

World of Darkness

A New Quest

Snakes Thoughts

DEATH

So Very Real

Becoming Father

A Turn of the Wrist

Once, We Were Soldiers

Volume Dial

The Black Crow

Addicted to Murder

DO I WANT IT DONE?

Desert town

I’ve

Not a killer

Something is coming

So fucking tired

My Two-headed Pink Elephants

LOVE AND HATE

I Think it is Safe

I Think its Safe

Red Eyes Glowing

In the air all around

July 9, 2007

I have reached

SLUMBERING THOUGHTS

Unimaginable

WE ALL CRY THE SAME

MY NIGHTMARE, 9/5/07

Hear Me Hilda, Please

Sorry Hilda

Letter from Hilda

Reply to Hilda

Have a Good Christmas: Rejoice

Nothing More to Give

The Lack Of………

REASONS

Safety

I AM ME

The night in hell

My feet, my God

BEING EXPENDABLE

THE COST

My Complaint

MY AFTER AFTER-LIFE

PAIN

A FOOLS CONTROL

HOURS TO DAYS

Tired of the Time

Coming of Death

So Much Easier

Its Simple Name

The dark coat

Peace

The Unreachable Light

The Very Future

A few Happy Thoughts?

My…….Warrior Within

Why Has It Become?

To Sit Alone

DON’T LOOK AT ME

Assumptions

How can they? How can anyone?

Tell Me

Who the Fuck Can Say

A Rainy Night, Not Long Ago

No Bloody Chance

Fallen leaves

No one at home

Once again I ask you

To come into my world

I don’t seek pity or your sympathy

But to see it through my eyes

To understand through my heart

The pain

It lessons but is never gone

People, do they really understand?

Some, they hide their eyes

Ignorance is their personal blessing

I’ve tried to push

Till my body numbs

And my vision blurs

But still      the demons

They wait quietly patiently

Until I close my eyes

I see no need to show my anger

So, I pretend to have energy

Until the pain overpowers

My thoughts ideas

My emotions

They hide in my fear

My God

I need an answer

I need to know

How will this torment end?

I know the pain

Will eventually win

I just desire for a moment

A moment of no pain

A moment of no pills

Emotions      crutches of my mind

Lacking the means

The tools

To mend what I have lost

(1 of 2)

halfman halfchild half of what I was

I ask this question

Every damn day

I sadly know that

I have learned through time

That I will not get an answer

I will never

Get an answer

Ideas of emotional intimacy

A man strength lies within his heart

His resistance lies within his soul

My heart has weakened

through the years

My soul is almost nonexistent

It hides in fear

Without either

I will

Never

Get

A

Answer

(2 of 2)

Introduction

Why a Second Book

Why does someone publish a second book? especially after a not so great reception of a first book? I can only guess the reasons vary as much as the stars in the sky. However, to me, it’s because of what and why I write.

You see, my poetry is very much like personal explanations of what a person feels at that specific time of their lives. This is especially true for my poetry because I wrote it for a form of self-therapy. For this reason, I will never write for any other reasons. In fact, after I published my book Perfect Flaws, I find it hard not to write to this very day. If you’re not familiar with the reason why I first started to write, I’ll quickly restate it again. I started writing when I was diagnosed with acute Post Dramatic Stress Disorder, known as PTSD. I wrote them as an away to face my demons and attempt to deal with them without committing suicide. But, that was a personal reason why I wrote them, not why I published them. I published them to help other veterans see that they are not alone. It is my sincere hope that a veteran read them, and realized that if I could do it, then they could as well. Do what? You may ask, I hope they have found an avenue to help them face their demons, no matter what it is.

But, as I have continued to write, my poems have showed me things, new discoveries within my soul. In matter of fact, I realized that I had more than 200 pages of new poems in binders in my office. Then, I started to think. I wondered if any veterans actually started writing, and if so, if they have continued like I have. I started to feel bad that I wasn’t sharing my new poems with them. The only ones who regularly heard them was the writers group at the Albuquerque VA. They seemed to enjoy them and told me so on a regular basis. Actually, I think they show a happier, more stable person than when I wrote my first poems. Some, however, show that my mind creeps into the dark side from time to time. I think it is unavoidable. I talked it over with my wife and she suggested that, perhaps, I could publish a second book for the same reason I did my first book. After careful consideration, I came to the decision that doing a second book might be a good idea.

So, here I am, writing the first pages of my second book. I plan to use the same format except for fewer pages of explanations. I don’t feel they are really necessary. I feel you will be able to get a feeling for my mental and physical conditions from the poems themselves. However, if I think there is a need, I will do as I feel required.

Well, you may be wondering what is in store for you in this book I have created. I can say it’s much of the same, but with something else as well. According to readers of my newer poems, they usually make two observations. The first observation is that I have dealt deeper into some areas that most will not go to, which has increased my intensity in some poems. The second observation is that they have increased in length. All in all, they say they have improved, but I’ll let you be the judge in that.

However, the fact that I write what I feel, and feel what I write has not changed. I never consider subject manner, language, or what might be, so-called, politically correct. I don’t say this to make you put the book back on the shelf, I tell you this because it is the honest truth, and without that, you have nothing.

So please enjoy my book, and for your own sake, don’t try to find hidden agendas in my words. All I ask is that you truly read them not rush over them to get done.

CROSSROADS

Once again, I find myself at the crossroads

The crossroads of life, as the black crow soars

This urge to explore through paper and pen

Interactive feelings, both good, bad, and sinful

My imagination seeking horizons not known

My imagination also buckled from what is known

Everyday, I gaze out my window at the sky

The sun shines yet I know darkness will arrive

I realize no answers lies in what I can see

It lies in what I have subdued, it lies in me

But I fear what I might leave behind

Behind things that make my world shine

It calls me, this anticipation of what’s real

What I’ll find, and the anxiety also I feel

To venture into the past so deeply obscured

The boundaries, redrawn, seeking a final cure

Will the haunts get their vengeance?

Or shall their understanding come to past?

(1 of 2)

Questions, answers, they all melt into one

One can’t survive without the other, yet it’s done

They work in opposites, an unhealthy quest

To give up would be the easy, mentally less

To give up would never provide what I need

So I push, push with every fiber I can bleed

Through everything, it’s my nature as a man

Though the truth bears weight, as it only can

This race of living and dying is the final test

We were strong, the Gargoyle that lies within

But I fear I have weakened over times quest

My mind floats as do my thoughts I try

The thoughts I try to find in the dark

I see the black crow as it comes to me

It brings nothing and asks for the same

The same in return, it only points

Points to the crossroads of life

Light and dark, it knows neither

I wish for the same

Which way do I go?

I have no idea

Nobody does

The crossroads

Don’t really

Exist, fate

Directs

(2 of 2)

The Writer

A Writer

Handwritten notes

Mere ideas of the strange

The unknown – things

No one dare speak or think about

Married to these thoughts

His stories – idea that invade

And can occupy the past – present

And to his own dislike

The future

So fragile

That outside emotion – either

His own or that of others

Can destroy it – to which

It may never return

Or be written

The anger

The promptness of the present

Nightmares of the past

Or worse – fears of the future

He seems so very much out of

His control

(1 of 3)

The solitude

We yearn for the quiet

Tranquility to call our own