I shook my head. "It's got nothing to do with war. Not my war, anyway."
She studied me for a long moment, eyes narrowing like she was reading text written too small. "Then what is it?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't find the words that would make it make sense without opening doors I'd spent years keeping locked.
Mama P leaned back in her chair, exhaling slowly through her nose. "I repressed mine for years. Saw a lot of good men and women die in Vietnam. Even some bad ones. Bodies I couldn't save no matter how fast I worked or how hard I tried. Blood on my hands every day that wouldn't wash off no matter how much I scrubbed. Decades went by. I lost two husbands to the disease of the past."
I looked up sharply. "Lost them?"
"They left me," she said bluntly, no shame in her voice. Just fact stated plainly. "Because I became unhinged. A terror to be around. Unpredictable. Crazy. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't betouched without flinching. Couldn't exist in normal life without everything feeling like a threat waiting to happen."
She said it like it was history, something she'd made peace with instead of something that still haunted her.
"But I got lucky," she continued, her voice softening slightly. "I volunteered at the VA most Fridays. Liked Fridays because they're just before the weekend. Figured the broken ones think they can be mended on a Friday, sleep it off on the weekend, get back to it on Monday like nothing happened."
I didn’t see where this was going. I let her talk. Needed to hear it more than I wanted to admit.
"Those were the only times I felt sane," she said. "Whole. Like I had a purpose that wasn't just surviving another day. And that's where I met him. A man so broken, so close to the edge, you could see it on his shoes. The way he walked. The way he looked at nothing like he was already halfway gone."
"Who was he?"
"Navy SEAL. Tough as they come. Multiple tours. The kind of man who'd seen things that would break most people in half and keep breaking them." She paused, her fingers tracing the edge of her blanket absently. "One day he disappeared. Just stopped showing up. I thought he'd done what so many had done—ate a bullet or a bunch of pills. Another name on a list too long to read without crying."
My chest tightened, something cold spreading through me like water finding cracks.
"But he came back a month later," she said, her voice lifting slightly with something that might have been hope. "And he wasn't the same man. There was light in his eyes again. Real light. Not manufactured. Not drug-induced or faked for the people around him who needed to believe he was okay. Real life."
I leaned forward slightly, hands clasped between my knees. "What happened to him?"
"He hugged me," she said simply, like that explained everything. "First time I'd seen him smile in two years. Started volunteering again, too. Laughing. Talking. Living instead of just existing. And one day, I gathered the courage to ask what had happened. Because by then I was lying in bed with a pistol under my pillow—not because of burglars or safety, but because I was ready to be done with it all. Ready to stop fighting a war that had ended decades ago but wouldn't leave me alone."
Jesus.
"The SEAL told me he'd gone to Costa Rica," she continued. "To see an American doctor who was beginning to treat veterans with psychedelics. Psilocybin. Ayahuasca. Things the VA won't touch but that were saving lives, anyway, pulling people back from edges they'd been standing on for years."
I frowned. "Psychedelics?"
"I thought it was foolish, too," she admitted. "Sounded like hippie nonsense. Snake oil sold to desperate people by charlatans who didn't care if it worked as long as it paid. But I kept an eye on him for weeks after that. Watched. Waited for him to crack, for the light to fade, for the darkness to come back like it always did. It didn't."
She met my eyes, her gaze steady and certain. "Finally, I asked for the doctor's name. That weekend, I flew to Costa Rica. And with the help of a caring team—people who treated me like a human being instead of a diagnosis or a problem to solve—I was given my life back."
I sat there, processing, feeling the weight of her story settle into the space between us like something physical.
"I'm not telling you this because I think you need to fly to Costa Rica," she said carefully. "I'm telling you because I suspect you're like I was—hesitant and stubborn about asking for help.Convinced you can carry it alone because that's what strong people do, because asking for help means admitting you're not as together as you pretend to be."
I opened my mouth to argue, to deflect, to tell her she was wrong, but she kept going.
"You've got to ask for help," she said firmly, leaning forward in her chair. "If you don't ask for help, you're committing the world's worst sin."
"What's that?" I asked quietly.
"If you don't ask for help, you're preventing someone else from being of service." She held my gaze, unblinking. "Now isn't that selfish?"
I couldn't disagree.
The words hit harder than I expected, cutting through the justifications I'd built over years like they were paper instead of walls. This only confirmed what I'd been thinking on the way in, what had been eating at me since Sophie told me about Jonesy.
She'd trusted me with her pain. With the worst thing that had ever happened to her. And I'd kept mine locked up like it was a weapon I couldn't put down, like sharing it would make me weak instead of human.
