E03: Critical Reading – thathawkman

Like Brannan’s symptoms. Hypervigilance sounds innocuous, but it is in fact exhaustingly distressing, a conditioned response to life-threatening situations.

• She states that Branan’s symptoms and Hypervigilance are similar
• The author assumed that the readers though Hypervigilance sounds “innocuous” or harmless, which never seemed to be the case at all just by name alone.
• Brannan’s symptoms may seem harmless then, but the author states that it is much more distressing than it may come off to be

Caleb has been home since 2006, way more than enough time for Brannan to catch his symptoms.

• In potentially 7 years, as the article was published in 2013, Brannan had ample time to start absorbing the symptoms that Brannan sees from her husband

The house, in a subdivision a little removed from one of many shopping centers in a small town in the southwest corner of Alabama, is often quiet as a morgue. You can hear the cat padding around. The air conditioner whooshes, a clock ticks.

• It is specified that the house is away from the many shopping centers, so they try to avoid as many people and potentially loud ambient sounds
• The house is painted to be almost too quiet, where they can hear the minuscule sounds. This is probably for Caleb’s sake as sudden noises would further torture Caleb.

 When a sound erupts—Caleb screaming at Brannan because she’s just woken him up from a nightmare, after making sure she’s at least an arm’s length away in case he wakes up swinging—the ensuing silence seems even denser. Even when everyone’s in the family room watching TV, it’s only connected to Netflix and not to cable, since news is often a trigger. Brannan and Caleb can be tense with their own agitation, and tense about each other’s. Their German shepherd, a service dog trained to help veterans with PTSD, is ready to alert Caleb to triggers by barking, or to calm him by jumping onto his chest.

• When the silence is gone, it usually is a result of Caleb freaking out, which makes the monotony more appealing but tense.
• Brennan makes sure to be an arm’s length away from Caleb, indicating that either she is wary about his condition or it isn’t the first time it has happened. It also further shows the tenseness of the family members in regards to Caleb.
• The entire family is doing everything they can in trying to keep Caleb as calm and safe as possible; but, doing so is making the entire family completely tense.

This PTSD picture is worse than some, but much better, Brannan knows, than those that have devolved into drug addiction and rehab stints and relapses. She has not, unlike military wives she advises, ever been beat up. Nor jumped out of her own bed when she got touched in the middle of the night for fear of being raped, again. Still.

• Brannan knows that it isn’t the worst that Caleb could have potentially been.
• Other husbands have acquired drug problems to cope with stress, showcasing how negative this stress really is to have to resort to drugs
• Other military wives are in even tenser situations.
• The wives have been beaten up and or panicked by being touched, which indicates accidental abuse
• The word again also indicates that the wives may have experienced the

“Sometimes I can’t do the laundry,” Brannan explains, reclining on her couch. “And it’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m too tired to do the laundry,’ it’s like, ‘Um, I don’t understand how to turn the washing machine on.’ I am looking at a washing machine and a pile of laundry and my brain is literally overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to reconcile them.” She sounds like she might start crying, not because she is, but because that’s how she always sounds, like she’s talking from the top of a clenched throat, tonally shaky and thin.

• Brannan knows how to do laundry and her incapability to do the laundry isn’t based on her willingness to do it but her mental capability to.
• Brannan starts to panic doing laundry as the environment has been a place where that small action can cause panic
• It’s noted that she always sounds that she’s on the verge of tears because the tone of her voice instead of actually being on the verge of tears. This sounds a bit off as anyone with that amount of stress and panic will sound like they are about to cry.

We raise the blinds in the afternoons, but only if we are alone. When we hear Caleb pulling back in the driveway, we jump up and grab their strings, plunging the living room back into its usual necessary darkness.

• When Caleb is not around, the family can become a bit more relaxed and enjoy things that the family used to do.
• Jumping up and lowering the blinds immediately when Caleb hasn’t even entered the home shows how much the family is attempting to soothe Caleb and how urgent the matter is to them.
• It indicates that family may treasure the time without Caleb, as when he returns the family immediately has to become tense again in order to cater to the struggling veteran.
• The word necessary also indicates that it may be unwanted by the family, but is needed for Caleb so the family will undergo it.