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After months of therapy, two trips to a hospital psychiatric ward and a continuous cycle of ups and downs with his family, all of it spinning out of his post-traumatic stress disorder, former Army Sgt. Loyd Sawyer remained in the basement — both literally and figuratively.
When his wife, Andrea, wanted to talk about something important, Loyd headed downstairs.
If he needed to wash dishes or vacuum the carpet, he instead logged onto the computer in the basement.
When his boys wanted hugs or playtime, Loyd played video games in the basement.
"Isolation — it's just too easy," Loyd explained. "I don't get in arguments if I'm in the basement. I don't have problems. I don't have to worry about my schedule. My schedule is, 'I'm going to the basement, leave me alone.'"
Sometimes, he could push past the basement. If he snuck in the back door of Wal-Mart, he could avoid the mad rush at the main entrance and buy Andrea a gift for Mother's Day. If he could identify the exits, he could watch his son in a school play.
And if he stayed on schedule — no oversleeping, no bad phone calls, no missed appointments — he could have a "good day."
"Some days, everything's fine," he said. "The other days, I get up and just feel like I'm about to die. As long as I can stay in the basement, it's a good day."
But even as he struggled with human interaction and a fierce need to be by himself, he still wanted to be a part of his family.
Haunting memories
Foremost in his mind remained vivid memories of the six months he spent in Iraq processing more than 300 bodies as a mortuary affairs specialist, and the several months he served at Dover Air Force Base, Del., embalming body parts of dead U.S. troops that came in without torsos attached.
Even as he got a handle on his nightmares and flashbacks, he still couldn't quite embrace his civilian existence.
"I guess one day I'd like to be able to tell people that the next time they decide they want to go and invade another country, I've got the memories of those kids' faces in my head and they stay with me," Loyd said. "And to try to block them out, I feel like in the future it would be bad to not be able to express to somebody the full emotion that was involved in that situation.
"That's the struggle — the inhumanity of war."
Closer to home, the Sawyers had to make a family decision: How do we get over this hill?
Andrea and Loyd went weekly to couples' marriage counseling. Their oldest son, Caleb, remained in counseling. Their younger son, Noah, had taken to acting as if Loyd didn't exist.
A program at a VA hospital offered a potential three-month respite where Loyd could take classes, connect with other veterans and learn to reintegrate with his family. But after his deployments to Iraq and Dover, the idea of going away again was fraught with anxiety — and not just for Loyd.
Caleb was concerned, saying he didn't want to "lose" his father again, even though he knew it would probably benefit his dad.
Loyd worried about not being a physical presence at home, even as he acknowledged he was not much of an emotional presence.
"I think I have made more of a connection with [the boys]," Loyd said. "They don't require as much interaction: 'Just tell me you love me and hug me.'"
It wasn't so simple for Andrea.
"A lot of times, it feels uncomfortable," Loyd said. "Sometimes I do find we can cuddle up on the couch or curl up in bed, and everything's good. Other times, if I've got a lot of stuff on my mind, I just don't want anyone to enter my own little private space."
The lapses into arguments, loneliness and, sometimes, meanness had led them to talk of divorce again and again. Sitting in the front room of their townhome, away from the boys and her husband, Andrea cried as she described what it was like to live with Loyd's anger and avoidance, the days it felt more like digging in for battle than settling into family.
"Sometimes I wonder why I'm still here," she said. Then she rubbed the tears off her face, and dug back in, like she always does. "I love him."
In September, Loyd loaded his gear and his scooter into his truck and headed toward a VA hospital in West Virginia for a three-month inpatient program.
'Who am I?'
"This isn't a cure," Loyd said, sitting in a bare-walled room with two single beds. "That's the first thing they tell you here. I'll probably always have PTSD, but I need to get it under control."
He pulled out a chart he created early in his time at the hospital. "Who am I?" he had written. "What do I want to change?"
On his list: Worries about small things that don't matter. Wants to be more flexible and adaptive.
He talked about the concrete changes he wanted to make — putting away his uniforms and being done with the military. Stop listening to everyone else's issues and problems and stop trying to find solutions for them.
"It's a way for me to not deal with my own stuff," Loyd said. "Another avoidance technique. 'Here's a person, here's a number to contact.' I've got to focus on what's helping me. It's either that or stay stuck.
"I guess that in all the different programs that I've been through, they've been trying to tell me that," he said. "And I guess I just didn't want to listen. I wanted to wallow in it and be miserable.
"I'm sick of being miserable."
His classes focused on daily living skills: how to deal with an irate boss or bad traffic. How to communicate with your spouse. How to deal with your own anger.
"The anger class is really good," Loyd said. "You walk into class and the leader just fires into one person. I've seen it almost come to blows. On several occasions, I get picked on — I'm the target."
In class, it was safe, though the emotions were real.
Fellow patients helped. If he wandered off by himself, someone eventually would come find him and ask: " 'Are you isolating?' It's the big joke around here," he said. "Sometimes they'll pound on the bathroom door when I'm in the shower, 'Are you isolating?'"
They would knock on his door and drag him out to play video games or music or watch movies and order a pizza.
"It's peer counseling," Loyd said. "Sitting and talking to other guys. Instead of one hour a week [of group counseling], I've got three hours a night."
It was not as bad as he thought it would be. "It's been enjoyable," he said. "We've had some fun times here. There's been a lot of shenanigans."
There are rules, too. Loyd said the counselors were strict about making sure patients don't take anything they shouldn't, and do take the medications they've been prescribed.
But at home, Andrea worried. She worried when VA took Loyd off his meds and tried a new program. She worried when she called over and over again and no one at the hospital would return her calls. She worried when their family counselor called and got the same results.
Yet she also enjoyed the stress-free atmosphere of Loyd not being home. The house was calm. The boys knew what to expect. She didn't have to worry about facing an argument every day.
For his part, Loyd talked to Andrea every day. "I miss her," he said during his stay at the hospital. "I miss my family."
Reuniting
His first visit with his family a couple of weeks after arriving at the VA facility didn't go well.
Andrea worried because he was off his meds. He worried because being off his meds allowed him to feel emotions that had been hidden behind a shield of mood regulators and antidepressants.
Yet for the first time in months, he made a move on his wife, sidling in close to her at the hotel she and the boys stayed at during the visit.
She misunderstood. "I was like, 'Back off!'" she said. "It had been so long, I just didn't know what he was doing. He was in a snit."
That night, he went through the phone bill and called everyone Andrea had called over the past week, essentially accusing her of cheating on him.
"'When are you going to get that I am here despite every sane reason I have to pack my s— and leave?'" she asked him.
She was frightened. "I don't feel like things are getting better," she said. "The paranoia's certainly worse."
He returned to the hospital frustrated, but still ready to change — hoping to change.
Because he had already been through so much therapy prior to arriving at the VA hospital, some of the program was a repeat for him. He didn't have substance-abuse issues, for example.
But other aspects, especially coping strategies, hit the mark, he said. He now knows how to get help when he needs it; he has tricks he uses to remember things when he's distracted or having memory problems; and he can go out and play horseshoes or to a museum without feeling trapped.
"Some days, I feel really confident that I can make it work. Other days, I kind of doubt some of the things I've learned. I run into a stressful situation and I just crash and burn. They said it will take practice."
He worries about his communication skills. "I need to learn to communicate, and clearly — not just let words fall out of my mouth," he said. "And if something does fall out of your mouth, you say, 'I know what that sounded like, this is what I meant.' My wife and I have been working on that for quite some time."
The classes have caused him to consider, for the first time in a long time, the possibility of a 9-to-5 job, rather than doing electronics repair alone in his basement.
"There's no magic pill; there's no magic program; there's no magic solution," Loyd said as he prepared to leave the program. "You find solutions for each symptom. I think I've got more strategies to help deal with the day-to-day symptoms. We'll find out when I get back home."
Coming home
He packed his bags, once again, for the trip home in late November. His boys would have to get used to having him around again. Andrea would have to let him retake the "dad" role she had handled for three months. Everyone would have to roll with trial and error as Loyd tried to hone his newly learned skills.
"The kids are nervous about me coming back," Loyd said. "I'm nervous about me coming back. Andrea finally cornered me and said, 'You're going to sit down and talk to me.' I didn't want to talk about coming back home. When I get back home, we'll take it from there."
And everyone would have to have faith that he can succeed, in spite of the years of struggles.
The family will continue to go to counseling, and Loyd said he would sit down with his counselor again and try to figure out what's still bothering him.
"I don't really look forward to doing that," Loyd said. "I never look forward to … digging into my past."
But if he doesn't, he'll still have strong emotional responses to his psychological wounds. He has to get the story out until it's not so hurtful to think about it. He talks about the others in his program — Vietnam veterans still coming in to deal with substance-abuse issues or nightmares that never went away or relationship issues that led to ugly divorces.
"You can care about [the survivor's guilt], or you can care about your wife and family and kids," Loyd said. "Or you're one of these guys walking in the halls 30 years later still not dealing with it. It's sad to think that in 30 years I might be one of those guys."
That motivates him — that fear of being unable to move on, of never being happy or at peace.
"I think I've made progress, but we'll find out when I get home," Loyd said. "How much is it going to stick with me? How long will it be effective? Or do I end up right back here again in a year?"
