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$/(;%^5$^1'^21 ʔ*(77<NOVEMBER 26, 2021“If you’re looking for
ways to suppress your
PTSD, malt liquor
pairs well with
self-hatred and regret.”OPINIONgood only for a month. After that, he
kicked me out and I began living on
the Brooklyn streets in the dead of
winter. I still remember wearing white
Converse low-tops stuffed with plastic
bags on the insides in January, because
that was the only footwear I owned.
The one pair of pants I owned, black
Levis, was never not wet. My thin black
jacket was holding up like rice under a
faucet. I would frequently find myself
with my new friend Jeremy, also a
Navy vet, drinking 40s on a stoop in
Brooklyn; if you’re looking for ways to
suppress your PTSD, malt liquor pairs
well with self-hatred and regret. Inevi-
tably, a cop would appear to harass us,
an experience my fellow homeless vets
and I grew familiar with, even after we
identified ourselves as veterans.
It wasn’t just cops. Violence stalks
homeless veterans at every turn. When
I slept in shelters, I was often next to
ex-cons with any number of offenses;
according to the Department of Hous-
ing and Urban Development over
50,000 people move directly from
prison into a shelter every year.
Over time, I figured out how to
work the VA’s system. I learned how to
be persistent, how to be the squeaki-
est wheel. That helped me access my
GI Bill benefits, which allowed me to
receive the Yellow Ribbon scholarship,
enroll in classes at the New School and
find an apartment with a new friend.
My persistence helped me network
with other veterans to learn about
programs, therapies and group ses-
sions that helped me rebuild my men-
tal health. So many of us veterans are
ignorant about VA programs and ben-
efits because the VA fails to communi-
cate with us, and often stonewalls uswhen we do inquire for help.
Programs do exist, but you have to
know somebody. Or you need to call
with the dogged persistence of a debt
collector. It’s absurd to expect this
from those of us barely scratching out
our survival.
Depressed veterans calling the Vet-
erans Suicide Hotline have had their
calls dropped or gone directly to
voicemail, a failure so rampant that a
new bill was introduced this year to
tackle these deficiencies. Veterans are
yelled at by VA receptionists, rushed
through appointments with doctors
and, when we find ourselves houseless,
the medications keeping us alive dis-
appear into the mail or sit unclaimed
in pharmacies.
Instead of efficiency, scandals rock
the department. In 2014, a scathing
report showed that the department
falsified medical waiting lists to cover
up excessive wait times and delayedveteran care. More recently, in 2019,
a whistleblower asserted yet again
that the department’s official wait list
contained just a fraction of the actual
number of veterans waiting for care,
which the department denied. That
same year another whistleblower told
Congress the VA ordered her to sched-
ule fake appointments for veterans in
order to shorten the wait list. But the
public shaming didn’t lead to reform.
In recent years, nonprofits have
stepped in to fill in the gaps left by
the VA, like Call of Duty Endowment,
the National Coalition for Homeless
Veterans and Stackup. These efforts
offer hope, but I can’t shake the fact
that we have a VA funded by taxpayer
dollars that is tasked with honoring
the nation’s veterans with dignified
care—and it’s failing at this.
I’m in a better place these days. I
haven’t been homeless in years. I
recently moved into a new apart-
ment, and I’ve carved out a nice writ-
ing career. But I’m still healing. With
the pandemic, access to mental health
continues to be a struggle. Sure, I can
get my meds now, but with so many
other vets vying for attention from
therapists, I’ve repeatedly been told
that there were none available.
So I turn to those in my life for sup-
port. My writing group. A few friends.
My cat. Eventually, I’ll muster up the
energy to make more calls to the VA, to
seek out programs, to fight for my care.
But it’s sad it’s come to this. I left the
military because I was done fighting.ƠAlex Miller has written for THE NEW
YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST,
THE BYLINE BIBLE and THE CHICAGO
NEIGHBORHOOD GUIDEBOOK. He is
working on a memoir. This story was
supported by the journalism non-profit
organization the Economic Hardship
Reporting Project. The views in this
article are the writer’s own.RESPECT Army Sgt. Brian Pomerville
(left) and his wife Tiffany Lee at a
centennial observation at the Tomb
of the Unknown Soldier Plaza.