My name is Bryan Escobedo.
I was born and raised here in Houston, Texas.
I spent five years in the Marine Corps and got out as a
Sergeant with the three tours in Iraq.
Rebecca and I met online.
And I was on my first deployment.
We wrote every single day.
And he was stuck on a ship.
He would to wait in line for like, an hour just to write to
me for five minutes.
She really is my best friend in the world.
And she knew me when I went through my hardest time.
And she stood by my side.
Thank you for this delicious breakfast that we're about to
have. And let us have a wonderful day.
Amen.
I wanted to be in the military since I was a kid.
The first episode of G.I. Joe, I wanted to do that.
That's what I wanted.
Bryan is my baby.
He's my son.
He was happy.
And free-spirited.
When I first met him, he was a different Bryan to
the one I know now.
Everybody knew me as just the happiest due.
Even in the Marine Corps, I was always like, the funny
dude, making everybody laugh.
But there was a time where there was just no laughing.
In the war zone, he had a different mind frame.
And he just forced himself to become desensitized to a lot
of things so that he could cope and do his job.
On my second deployment, I got hit three times.
Four bombs hit my vehicle.
This is what I was wearing when I got blown up.
And that's my blood from the IED, from my face.
Yeah.
That was nuts.
In order for me to survive in that environment under those
extreme emotional conditions where I was just living in
fear, living with anxiety, I had to go emotionally numb.
Unfortunately, when he returned, it all came out and
was on top of him.
I didn't realize how messed up I was until
I got back to America.
I started having pretty horrible nightmares.
And then, I couldn't focus on anything.
I was having constant flashbacks.
The whole time I was awake, I was miserable.
I was angry.
I found that we were fighting more.
And I was thinking, we don't get to see each other often.
Why are we fighting?
I couldn't feel any excitement about life, nothing.
I stopped listening to music I stopped talking
so much to me friends.
I isolated myself.
I would just stay in the room all day and just drink and
drink and drink and drink.
And I didn't know why.
He tried hard not to shut off from me.
But he was shut off.
I knew that I had PTSD.
But I didn't know that I'd be scared to drive on a simple
American road.
You become suspicious of everything.
Like mountains of trash, dead animals.
You're expecting everything to be booby trapped.
And when you start thinking like that, everything seems
like a threat in your environment.
It kind of makes you go nuts.
As military people, you find it very difficult to admit
your own weaknesses.
Because also that's completely contrary to the military
philosophy.
So when you have PTSD or you have anything like that or any
sort of emotional stress, you just suck it up.
I didn't know about PTSD.
So it never even occurred to me that there was something
affecting him that was out of his control.
Rebecca encouraged me to get help.
My brother encouraged me to help.
He had been to war already.
So he could recognize all the stuff that he went through.
What's up, my man?
[INAUDIBLE]
What's up, big dog.
I actually moved in with my brother when I got back from
the Marine Corps.
And he understood me very well.
And he was very patient with me.
I was isolating myself and all the simple things that people
with PTSD do.
And he helped me out.
I didn't want my mom to see how different her sons had
become throughout the years.
She worries enough.
And she has an image of what we were.
And I didn't want her to see one of us freak out, just have
a PTSD moment.
'Cause it happens.
There a sadness there.
There's something that was lost. But what I have is the
hope that somehow it'll get better.
I've been to one-on-one psychologists at the VA.
I've been to multiple different forms of therapy.
You have to surround yourself with good people that want to
see you do better.
And you have to take advantage of programs at the VA or the
nonprofit organizations that are there to
help Veterans out.
How you doing?
Good.
Good to see you, man.
There is so much more help and understanding
than you'd even realize.
But you have to get off you butt.
And you have to go and seek it.
I forgot that there was good in the world.
And every time I saw Rebecca, it brought it back.
It was like, oh this is the reason I'm going to live.
This is the reason that I shouldn't do
anything crazy to myself.
It just starts with saying, you know what?
I want to fix this.
It takes a lot of courage to go against that military
training that you have to admit that there's something
that's broken inside you.
You need to fix it.
That's the very first step.
Even if it's just a friend or a family member or just a
hotline, do something.
It all starts with going to the VA.
And there's a whole community of Veterans that just want to
help you out.
People that have been in your same shoes, that know what
you're going through that have already overcome this.
You just reach your hand out and connect to somebody else
that knows what you're going through and
know how to help you.
That's all it takes.