For Troops Needing Psychological Help, Asking Can Be the Toughest Hurdle Memories are the tools that help make, shape and build who we are as people. They can keep you strong. But they can also lead you astray, controlling and altering your thoughts and emotions. During both of my deployments, memories of home gave me the drive to carry on, to keep my Marines safe, to get back to my family. Each care package containing snacks, junk food, pictures and letters helped re-establish connections to the world I had left behind. My wife, Christy, always sprayed perfume in those packages, and the scent, for the briefest second, brought me back to her. Memories also haunt me and have in some ways changed who I am. I have dived to the floor in front of my family after loud pops. In benign shopping malls, I have experienced panic attacks that forced me to wait in the car while everyone else finished shopping. Post-traumatic stress disorder has become an everyday battle for me. But I also believe there must be ways to ease this transitional period, and to help other people understand that PTSD is not a "scarlet letter" but a badge of honor. The Marine Corps taught me many things that I still use, and some I may even pass on to my children. The one thing the corps did not teach me, however, was how to handle the world outside the military, and how different I was going to be. While I was on active duty I did two combat deployments to Afghanistan. To say they were challenging would be less than a understatement. After my first tour I was no longer a "boot" (Marine Corps slang for new Marines who have never deployed). I was looking to become a team leader. I was ambitious. But I was also lying to everyone, especially myself. In the military, a sense of machismo is encouraged. But this manly attitude of "I'm O.K.; it was just another day" only helps mask the issues we face. You are almost forced onto this path without choosing it for yourself. Simple statements such as "I'm having trouble sleeping" or "I want to talk to someone" or "I don't feel the same" can lead to months of being evaluated - and even of becoming a pariah. So service members keep their problems to themselves, or occasionally talk only to their immediate leaders or closest friends. In those cases, sometimes the blind are leading the blind. The time has come to change the perception of PTSD to allow greater honesty and healing. A friend from the corps who struggled with PTSD committed suicide last year. I vividly remember the morning my phone rang with the news as my family and I were shopping for a car to replace the truck I had wrecked driving in heavy fog. I was beside myself with anger at my own stupidity for driving under those conditions. Then my phone rang with the news, and seconds later I was in tears. I could barely respond when my wife asked what was wrong. We pulled over so I could gather myself and not frighten the children. Somehow, it feels worse to have lost him in America than in Afghanistan. A year later, I still ask myself whether I or anybody else could have done something to save him. What can we do to save the next Marine, the next veteran, struggling with suicidal thoughts? The first step would be to make it easier for veterans and active-duty service members to ask for help. The second step might be to help the rest of society understand that many veterans are struggling to find their way back to normal. If we do not take those steps, the nation may face another record year for military suicides and ever greater divisions between veterans and the rest of society. R.I.P. Cpl. Marco S. Grosso 5/20/1989-11/7/2011 Zachary Edward Bell served with the First Battalion, Sixth Marines, from 2007-11 as a rifleman, deploying twice to Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He lives in Tennessee with his wife and two children and works for a nonprofit veterans" organization.