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Micky D.

Micky D., E-4, U.S. Army, OIF 2003-2004 That was a photo of me and my pet monkey in the Philippines. I tried to reintroduce it to other monkeys shortly after I bought it, [but] the other monkeys won't have anything to do with her. So, she's kind of like an outsider. So, we got along pretty well, and as long as I was relaxed, she was relaxed. I learned a lot of neat lessons from having that monkey around; patience and self-control, mostly. I was in another country, and I just felt strangely comfortable around this shot-up coffee delivery truck...I understood it. It got sprayed with machine gun fire. I’m just so used to that kind of stuff, and even just looking at it now, it’s really fine. It’s a really weird feeling. Not comforting, but very familiar. This was a really calm day. It was just really serene, you know. Everything was perfect, you know. There was no, there was nothing bad about the day. It was a perfect day. Normally…days are cloudy with a lot of things coming in and out, because my mind isn't necessarily as clear as I’d want it to be...but that was just a perfect day. That’s after a medication reaction. You know, in the VA, [they] conduct research. Most of medicine is practice and research, so you just keep trying [stuff] until something works. I only take half of [the medicine] I should, because it makes me like a zombie. Like a non-feeling husk of a human being...So, I'd much rather be an angry, hypervigilant, nervous, human being than a husk. I just don't feel comfortable driving anymore…I was Convoy Security, so every day for over a year I was shot at and people tried to kill me. So, I tend to look for weird stuff;  I'll pay more attention to a car’s trunk, thinking that somebody could come up, spray a machine gun at me. You shouldn’t be looking at that kind of crap when you’re driving. It's not safe. It's probably worse than texting. That was taken on top of a volcano. I had set a goal for myself. When my back’s hurting really bad, it prevents me doing a lot of things. I still really like to go out and do things. I didn’t think that I could actually climb up a mountain, or hike up a mountain with a volcano, and I did! I have a tough time remembering things, because I don;t sleep.  I have a tough time remembering how long things happened in the past.  Sometimes they give you medication that just makes it so you stay asleep, but then I get to experience the wacko, crazy nightmares.  It will be 8 hours of sleep, and I wake up and think, 'Oh thank God.'  And I'm so exhausted and drenched in sweat.  I prefer just waking up every 45 minutes, you know? I don't really like staying in one place for very long. People do different things with that. I chose to get as far away from English speakers as possible. It’s tough for me to function in normal American society. I don't know why. I tried dealing with it different ways. I’ve spent lot of time out in the woods. Some people call it [being] homeless; I call it being an outdoorsman.
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Micky D., E-4, U.S. Army, OIF 2003-2004


Micky enjoys travel and spends part of the year living in the Philippines. He describes himself as an outdoorsman; he has hiked the Appalachian Trail, climbed a volcano, and run with the bulls in Spain. He says he meets many fellow Veterans hiking the Appalachian Trail; they like to help each other and other hikers along the trail using survival skills they learned in the military.

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