Life is About Choices and the Decisions We Make
Life is About Choices and the Decisions We Make
Life is like a road. There are long and short roads; smooth and rocky roads; crooked and straight paths. In our life many roads would come our way as we journey through life. There are roads that lead to a life of single blessedness, marriage, and religious vocation. There are also roads that lead to fame and fortune on one hand, or isolation and poverty on the other. There are roads to happiness as there are roads to sadness, roads towards victory and jubilation, and roads leading to defeat and disappointment.
Just like any road, there are corners, detours, and crossroads in life. Perhaps the most perplexing road that you would encounter is a crossroad. With four roads to choose from and with limited knowledge on where they would go, which road will you take? What is the guarantee that we would choose the right one along the way? Would you take any road, or just stay where you are: in front of a crossroad?
There are no guarantees.
You do not really know where a road will lead you until you take it. There are no guarantees. This is one of the most important things you need to realize about life. Nobody said that choosing to do the right thing all the time would always lead you to happiness. Loving someone with all your heart does not guarantee that it would be returned. Gaining fame and fortune does not guarantee happiness. Accepting a good word from an influential superior to cut your trip short up the career ladder is not always bad, especially if you are highly qualified and competent. There are too many possible outcomes, which your really cannot control. The only thing you have power over is the decisions that you will make, and how you would act and react to different situations.
Wrong decisions are always at hindsight.
Had you known that you were making a wrong decision, would you have gone along with it? Perhaps not, why would you choose a certain path when you know it would get you lost? Why make a certain decision if you knew from the very beginning that it is not the right one. It is only after you have made a decision and reflected on it that you realize its soundness. If the consequences or outcomes are good for you, then you have decided correctly. Otherwise, your decision was wrong.
Take the risk: decide.
Since life offers no guarantee and you would never know that your decision would be wrong until you have made it, then you might as well take the risk and decide. It is definitely better than keeping yourself in limbo. Although it is true that one wrong turn could get you lost, it could also be that such a turn could be an opportunity for an adventure, moreover open more roads. It is all a matter of perspective. You have the choice between being a lost traveler or an accidental tourist of life. But take caution that you do not make decisions haphazardly. Taking risks is not about being careless and stupid. Here are some pointers that could help you choose the best option in the face of life’s crossroads:
• Get as many information as you can about your situation.
You cannot find the confidence to decide when you know so little about what you are faced with. Just like any news reporter, ask the 5 W’s: what, who, when, where, and why. What is the situation? Who are the people involved? When did this happen? Where is this leading? Why are you in this situation? These are just some of the possible questions to ask to know more about your situation. This is important. Oftentimes, the reason for indecision is the lack of information about a situation.
• Identify and create options.
What options does the situation give you? Sometimes the options are few, but sometimes they are numerous. But what do you do when you think that the situation offers no options? This is the time that you create your own. Make your creative mind work. From the most simplistic to the most complicated, entertain all ideas. Do not shoot anything down when an idea comes to your head. Sometimes the most outrageous idea could prove to be the right one in the end. You can ask a friend to help you identify options and even make more options if you encounter some difficulty, but make sure that you make the decision yourself in the end.
• Weigh the pros and cons of every option.
Assess each option by looking at the advantages and disadvantages it offers you. In this way, you get more insights about the consequences of such an option.
• Trust yourself and make that decision.
Now that you have assessed your options, it is now time to trust yourself. Remember that there are no guarantees and wrong decisions are always at hindsight. So choose… decide… believe that you are choosing the best option at this point in time.
Now that you have made a decision, be ready to face its consequences: good and bad. It may take you to a place of promise or to a land of problems. But the important thing is that you have chosen to live your life instead of remaining a bystander or a passive audience to your own life. Whether it is the right decision or not, only time can tell. But do not regret it whatever the outcome. Instead, learn from it and remember that you always have the chance to make better decisions in the future.
Timothy Kendrick International
The Seven Decisions DVD Special by Andy Andrews
Life is like a road. There are long and short roads; smooth and rocky roads; crooked and straight paths. In our life many roads would come our way as we journey through life. There are roads that lead to a life of single blessedness, marriage, and religious vocation. There are also roads that lead to fame and fortune on one hand, or isolation and poverty on the other. There are roads to happiness as there are roads to sadness, roads towards victory and jubilation, and roads leading to defeat and disappointment.
Just like any road, there are corners, detours, and crossroads in life. Perhaps the most perplexing road that you would encounter is a crossroad. With four roads to choose from and with limited knowledge on where they would go, which road will you take? What is the guarantee that we would choose the right one along the way? Would you take any road, or just stay where you are: in front of a crossroad?
There are no guarantees.
You do not really know where a road will lead you until you take it. There are no guarantees. This is one of the most important things you need to realize about life. Nobody said that choosing to do the right thing all the time would always lead you to happiness. Loving someone with all your heart does not guarantee that it would be returned. Gaining fame and fortune does not guarantee happiness. Accepting a good word from an influential superior to cut your trip short up the career ladder is not always bad, especially if you are highly qualified and competent. There are too many possible outcomes, which your really cannot control. The only thing you have power over is the decisions that you will make, and how you would act and react to different situations.
Wrong decisions are always at hindsight.
Had you known that you were making a wrong decision, would you have gone along with it? Perhaps not, why would you choose a certain path when you know it would get you lost? Why make a certain decision if you knew from the very beginning that it is not the right one. It is only after you have made a decision and reflected on it that you realize its soundness. If the consequences or outcomes are good for you, then you have decided correctly. Otherwise, your decision was wrong.
Take the risk: decide.
Since life offers no guarantee and you would never know that your decision would be wrong until you have made it, then you might as well take the risk and decide. It is definitely better than keeping yourself in limbo. Although it is true that one wrong turn could get you lost, it could also be that such a turn could be an opportunity for an adventure, moreover open more roads. It is all a matter of perspective. You have the choice between being a lost traveler or an accidental tourist of life. But take caution that you do not make decisions haphazardly. Taking risks is not about being careless and stupid. Here are some pointers that could help you choose the best option in the face of life’s crossroads:
• Get as many information as you can about your situation.
You cannot find the confidence to decide when you know so little about what you are faced with. Just like any news reporter, ask the 5 W’s: what, who, when, where, and why. What is the situation? Who are the people involved? When did this happen? Where is this leading? Why are you in this situation? These are just some of the possible questions to ask to know more about your situation. This is important. Oftentimes, the reason for indecision is the lack of information about a situation.
• Identify and create options.
What options does the situation give you? Sometimes the options are few, but sometimes they are numerous. But what do you do when you think that the situation offers no options? This is the time that you create your own. Make your creative mind work. From the most simplistic to the most complicated, entertain all ideas. Do not shoot anything down when an idea comes to your head. Sometimes the most outrageous idea could prove to be the right one in the end. You can ask a friend to help you identify options and even make more options if you encounter some difficulty, but make sure that you make the decision yourself in the end.
• Weigh the pros and cons of every option.
Assess each option by looking at the advantages and disadvantages it offers you. In this way, you get more insights about the consequences of such an option.
• Trust yourself and make that decision.
Now that you have assessed your options, it is now time to trust yourself. Remember that there are no guarantees and wrong decisions are always at hindsight. So choose… decide… believe that you are choosing the best option at this point in time.
Now that you have made a decision, be ready to face its consequences: good and bad. It may take you to a place of promise or to a land of problems. But the important thing is that you have chosen to live your life instead of remaining a bystander or a passive audience to your own life. Whether it is the right decision or not, only time can tell. But do not regret it whatever the outcome. Instead, learn from it and remember that you always have the chance to make better decisions in the future.
Timothy Kendrick International
The Seven Decisions DVD Special by Andy Andrews
Myspace.com Blogs - Hunting Wild Pigs... A story for our time.... - Timothy Kendrick - Best Selling Author MySpace Blog
Link Hunting Wild Pigs... A story for our time....
| A chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, 'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?' The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity. The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms - just a little at a time. One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government 'help' is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life, then you will probably delete this email, but God help you when the gate slams shut! In this 'very important' election year, listen closely to what the candidates are promising you! Just maybe you will be able to tell who is about to slam the gate on America. 'A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have. ‘ Thomas Jefferson |
Subliminal Programing - How It Works
The human brain is a very powerful tool. However, it has been estimated (by Einstein) that we only use about 5% of our minds consciously. So, to use more of our brain, we have to learn to use our brain not just consciously, but also at SUBCONSCIOUS levels. It is your subconscious mind that is the real power center of your being. The subconscious mind serves as our personal computer. It regulates your heart, plays chemist for your digestive system, and analyzes input from your senses like an ultra sophisticated computer - which it is
Subliminal is defined as: “Below the threshold of conscious perception”. The threshold of consciousness is the dividing line between something can be processed by the conscious mind and something that enters the subconscious mind without any processing.
While inadequate to produce conscious awareness, it is able to evoke a response that can influence the behavior and mental processes of one's mind.
The subconscious mind does not have these reasoning skills, and thus has no ability to distinguish right from wrong, or judge the information it receives. When a message enters the subconscious mind, it is taken as a true fact and stored for future reference. For this reason, the strength of subconscious messages has virtually no boundaries, and can thus be dangerous when used improperly.
However when used properly they can definitely be counted on to show results.
Subliminal programming is a technology that has been around since the 50's. It involves sending a message direct to the subconscious mind, therefore bypassing the critical conscious mind. This can be achieved a number of ways, such as whispering quiet suggestions against a music background, or flashing messages at high speed in front of the eyes. While these suggestions cannot be consciously heard or seen, our subconscious mind will be able to receive and store these suggestions as the human brain is highly susceptible to subconscious messages.
These suggestions when repeated over time on a day-to-day basis with consistency will then be able to influence your attitudes and abilities. So with the right messages, subliminal programming can be used as a powerful tool to help improve your abilities and change your behavior.
Click Here for a FREE subliminal CD
The rules for being a human being
The rules for being a human being
You will receive a body
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period of this time around.
You will learn lessons
You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called Life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.
There are no mistakes, only lessons
Growth is a process of trial and error: Experimentation. The ‘failed’ experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately ‘works’.
A lesson is repeated until learned
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.
Learning lessons does not end
There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
There is no better than here
When you are there has become a here you will simply obtain another there that will again look better then here
Others are merely mirrors of you
You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.
What you make of your life is up to you
You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
Your answers lie inside you
That answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.
You will receive a body
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period of this time around.
You will learn lessons
You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called Life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.
There are no mistakes, only lessons
Growth is a process of trial and error: Experimentation. The ‘failed’ experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately ‘works’.
A lesson is repeated until learned
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.
Learning lessons does not end
There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
There is no better than here
When you are there has become a here you will simply obtain another there that will again look better then here
Others are merely mirrors of you
You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.
What you make of your life is up to you
You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
Your answers lie inside you
That answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.
Iraq War's punishing toll on veterans
Iraq War's punishing toll on veterans
Vermillion man fought pain, suicidal despair
By Steve Young
syoung@argusleader.com
VERMILLION - In the dark, late at night in his bedroom, Tate Mallory could not bury his head deep enough beneath the pillow to escape the explosions and the death and the excruciating pain.
Three months after he was gravely wounded in Iraq, Mallory would stare into the black night and fight his own personal war against terror.
He kept thinking about dying. He questioned his faith. Mostly, he kept seeing bombs exploding and Iraqi friends being killed and wondered whether death was better than this.
"When you're all alone in a dark house at 3 in the morning, that's where it starts working on you," the 35-year-old White River native says. "So many things that happened were horrible. You just can't forget."
The exact numbers are difficult to pinpoint, but Mallory is among scores of South Dakotans who spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan - as regular military, as National Guardsmen or reservists, or as civilian workers - only to return home psychologically wounded by war.
About one in six of the 750,000 U.S. veterans who have been to the Middle East have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. That rate is expected to climb higher since it can take months, even years, for the condition to manifest.
In fact, experts say the PTSD rate among Iraq veterans could eclipse the 30 percent lifetime rate found in a 1990 national study of Vietnam War vets. That is because soldiers still on active duty are being deployed longer and more often to Iraq. Likewise, more health care providers are aware of the disorder and will properly diagnose it.
In July 2006, Mallory took 14 years of South Dakota law enforcement experience with him to Iraq to work for a Virginia-based company called DynCorp that recruits and trains Iraqis as policemen. A civilian, he spent every day alongside U.S. military personnel, experiencing the same stresses and dangers.
Suicide bombs went off at police stations moments after they left. Mortars and rockets peppered their camps. Each approaching vehicle was scrutinized suspiciously, each building studied for the sniper who might be hiding inside.
"You're very cognizant of what the dangers are wherever you go," Mallory said. "It does wear on you psychologically; there is no real down time over there."
Working in arguably the most dangerous area of Iraq at the time - the cities of Anah and Rawah in the Anbar province of western Iraq - Mallory saw Iraqi policemen he had recruited and trained killed. And if not them, their family members.
"The level of violence was just unbelievable," he said. "You'd see it firsthand."
A person couldn't help but be affected by such exposure, said Dr. Paul Rentz, a clinical psychologist for the Veterans Administration in Sioux Falls.
"If you take a board and bend it for 12 months and then stop bending it after 12 months, the board doesn't spring back to the same condition it was," Rentz said. "Similarly, you can't live in a posture of impending attack and have it happen for a 12-month period and not have it affect you."
Searing pain, problems linger after explosion on convoy
For Mallory, the constant fear of what might happen exploded into reality Oct. 17, 2006, when a convoy in which he was riding in Anah was attacked.
It was evening. His three-Humvee group was on a narrow road, weaving through a residential area, when there was a loud explosion.
Immediately, his vehicle went dark, and Mallory felt a tingling, hot sensation in his lower back. He called out that he thought he'd been hit. Then, seeing flames under his seat, he opened his door and fell head-first to the ground.
A rocket-propelled grenade had hit him in the right side of his lower back, fragmenting but not exploding as it exited his lower abdomen and then went into and out of his right leg. As he lay on the ground, he opened his bullet-proof vest and saw the blood pouring from his body. The femoral artery and nerve in his right leg had been severed.
"I knew I was going to die right there," said Mallory, a single parent with four children who were staying with his ex-wife back in South Dakota. "I said, 'Captain Farris, Ed, I think I'm hit.' He started to pray with me. I told him, 'Make sure you tell my kids I'm sorry.' "
A young Marine, a lance corporal named Ruiz, came quickly to his side, rolled him over and, seeing the wound, poured a powdery substance on it.
"He called it 'Quick Clot,' " Mallory recalled. "It gets hot, and it bubbles and sizzles and cauterizes the artery. Pretty soon, I'm starting to think, 'Yeah, I'm going to live.' "
A fast trip to a combat outpost in Anah got him a needed shot of morphine. Then it was on to operating rooms in Al Asad and Balad in Iraq before he landed in Landstuhl, Germany, for "eight or nine surgeries to clean out the wounds and do repair work," he said.
On Oct. 28, he was flown into Omaha then driven by ambulance to Avera McKennan in Sioux Falls, where he spent the next six weeks recovering and rehabilitating.
The rocket left the top of his right leg "dead, with no feeling," Mallory said. He'll always have a limp. And for now, he always seems to have the pain.
"It's like lightning strikes down my leg," he said. "It hurts so bad, I'll get nauseated. That's been one of the biggest problems."
Haunted by memories, lashing out at family
When he finally left the hospital, Mallory went to stay with his older brother, Brad, in Belle Fourche. The pain continued to torment him as 2006 turned into 2007. And, although his family saw hints at Avera McKennan that Mallory seemed different after his return from Iraq, they didn't realize how wounded he was psychologically until he left the constant care and attention he was receiving at the hospital.
"When he got away from that and had more time to think about it, what he had been through, mentally that's when it started kicking in," Brad Mallory, 46, said. "He had more time to dwell on it. ... the mistakes made, the things that had happened, the things that he had seen."
Mallory couldn't sleep because of the pain. And he couldn't get Iraq out of his mind. It was on television. It was in the newspapers. At times, he would slip out of his brother's house and check into motels to get away from the daily reminders.
Adjusting Tate's medications to find the right combination for the pain was a struggle, Brad Mallory said. If he ran out of pills for any amount of time, "it was a bad day or two just to get him back where he needed to be," his brother said.
Mood swings became increasingly exaggerated, too. He lashed out at family.
"The littlest things didn't anger me, they infuriated me," Mallory said. "My reaction was so disproportional to what it should have been. I basically turned on most of my family and said I wanted nothing to do with them."
Drugs helped take edge off, counseling has brought relief
A year ago, on a day that his pain medications had run out, Mallory decided he had had enough. As his brother tried to coax him into the car to go to the hospital in Spearfish, Tate Mallory begged instead for his life to be ended.
"I said, 'Brad, this isn't living. If you love me as a brother, you'll find a way, basically, to end this,' " Tate Mallory said.
Brad Mallory looked into his brother's eyes and knew that he wasn't kidding.
"That dead look in his eyes that said, 'I've had enough' ... it was like looking at a wounded deer. You look in their eyes, and they're kind of dark and glassed over. They know it's over," Brad said.
His weakness was humiliating, Tate Mallory said. He'd been in law enforcement 14 years - as a sheriff in Mellette County and as a policeman in Murdo, Brookings and Beresford. He'd been to car accidents. He had seen humanity at its worst and never flinched.
Now that fear of looking weak - and believing the stigma of mental illness would cost him a future in law enforcement - kept him from seeking help.
"I'm so scared that I will not be able to find work," he said. "The second you go to get help, you're pretty much blackballed for a lot of careers. As soon as anyone in criminal justice found out about it, I wouldn't be able to find a job."
So he suffered instead until he could not bear the suffering anymore.
Mallory finally sought out a doctor who had treated him at Avera McKennan. The physician put Mallory in touch with a doctor at Avera Behavioral Health, who quickly determined that they had to try to control his pain. With medications he received, "it took the edge off," Mallory said. "It brought me to where I was not attacking my family and friends as much as I was."
He started feeling well enough to begin thinking ahead. The state Department of Labor referred him to a vocational rehabilitation program. He enrolled at the University of South Dakota and began studying criminal justice.
Though he felt better, he continued to struggle with sleepless nights. He missed classes - a reality that led concerned professors to question him. Once he explained it, they pushed him to seek help through university counseling services.
It was there, Mallory said, that counselors gave his struggles a name - PTSD. He started going to weekly counseling sessions and continues to do so. During the past two months, he said he has seen steady improvement.
DynCorp covers his medical care and medications and provides a disability check that pays the bills and helps to feed his four children - Shania, 10; Cheyenne, 9; Tristin, 7; and Tate Jr., 6 - who all now live with him and his fiancee, Kari Swartos, in Vermillion.
By telling his story now, Mallory hopes he can inspire those struggling with PTSD to seek help.
"I was scared for my career, and I was humiliated for being weak," he said. "I'm not now. I know everyone has a breaking point. And I realize PTSD is not permanent; it's treatable.
"So I know I can get back to the old Tate. If no one wants to hire me because I had a rough spot in life, it's OK. I'll have a better relationship with my kids. I'll have a better relationship with my sister and family."
At the very least, he'll be at peace with himself, Mallory said. He's already sleeping better at night, spending far less time staring into the darkness and reliving the nightmare.
"I'm not just existing," he said. "I'm living again. I finally see the difference."
Vermillion man fought pain, suicidal despair
By Steve Young
syoung@argusleader.com
VERMILLION - In the dark, late at night in his bedroom, Tate Mallory could not bury his head deep enough beneath the pillow to escape the explosions and the death and the excruciating pain.
Three months after he was gravely wounded in Iraq, Mallory would stare into the black night and fight his own personal war against terror.
He kept thinking about dying. He questioned his faith. Mostly, he kept seeing bombs exploding and Iraqi friends being killed and wondered whether death was better than this.
"When you're all alone in a dark house at 3 in the morning, that's where it starts working on you," the 35-year-old White River native says. "So many things that happened were horrible. You just can't forget."
The exact numbers are difficult to pinpoint, but Mallory is among scores of South Dakotans who spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan - as regular military, as National Guardsmen or reservists, or as civilian workers - only to return home psychologically wounded by war.
About one in six of the 750,000 U.S. veterans who have been to the Middle East have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. That rate is expected to climb higher since it can take months, even years, for the condition to manifest.
In fact, experts say the PTSD rate among Iraq veterans could eclipse the 30 percent lifetime rate found in a 1990 national study of Vietnam War vets. That is because soldiers still on active duty are being deployed longer and more often to Iraq. Likewise, more health care providers are aware of the disorder and will properly diagnose it.
In July 2006, Mallory took 14 years of South Dakota law enforcement experience with him to Iraq to work for a Virginia-based company called DynCorp that recruits and trains Iraqis as policemen. A civilian, he spent every day alongside U.S. military personnel, experiencing the same stresses and dangers.
Suicide bombs went off at police stations moments after they left. Mortars and rockets peppered their camps. Each approaching vehicle was scrutinized suspiciously, each building studied for the sniper who might be hiding inside.
"You're very cognizant of what the dangers are wherever you go," Mallory said. "It does wear on you psychologically; there is no real down time over there."
Working in arguably the most dangerous area of Iraq at the time - the cities of Anah and Rawah in the Anbar province of western Iraq - Mallory saw Iraqi policemen he had recruited and trained killed. And if not them, their family members.
"The level of violence was just unbelievable," he said. "You'd see it firsthand."
A person couldn't help but be affected by such exposure, said Dr. Paul Rentz, a clinical psychologist for the Veterans Administration in Sioux Falls.
"If you take a board and bend it for 12 months and then stop bending it after 12 months, the board doesn't spring back to the same condition it was," Rentz said. "Similarly, you can't live in a posture of impending attack and have it happen for a 12-month period and not have it affect you."
Searing pain, problems linger after explosion on convoy
For Mallory, the constant fear of what might happen exploded into reality Oct. 17, 2006, when a convoy in which he was riding in Anah was attacked.
It was evening. His three-Humvee group was on a narrow road, weaving through a residential area, when there was a loud explosion.
Immediately, his vehicle went dark, and Mallory felt a tingling, hot sensation in his lower back. He called out that he thought he'd been hit. Then, seeing flames under his seat, he opened his door and fell head-first to the ground.
A rocket-propelled grenade had hit him in the right side of his lower back, fragmenting but not exploding as it exited his lower abdomen and then went into and out of his right leg. As he lay on the ground, he opened his bullet-proof vest and saw the blood pouring from his body. The femoral artery and nerve in his right leg had been severed.
"I knew I was going to die right there," said Mallory, a single parent with four children who were staying with his ex-wife back in South Dakota. "I said, 'Captain Farris, Ed, I think I'm hit.' He started to pray with me. I told him, 'Make sure you tell my kids I'm sorry.' "
A young Marine, a lance corporal named Ruiz, came quickly to his side, rolled him over and, seeing the wound, poured a powdery substance on it.
"He called it 'Quick Clot,' " Mallory recalled. "It gets hot, and it bubbles and sizzles and cauterizes the artery. Pretty soon, I'm starting to think, 'Yeah, I'm going to live.' "
A fast trip to a combat outpost in Anah got him a needed shot of morphine. Then it was on to operating rooms in Al Asad and Balad in Iraq before he landed in Landstuhl, Germany, for "eight or nine surgeries to clean out the wounds and do repair work," he said.
On Oct. 28, he was flown into Omaha then driven by ambulance to Avera McKennan in Sioux Falls, where he spent the next six weeks recovering and rehabilitating.
The rocket left the top of his right leg "dead, with no feeling," Mallory said. He'll always have a limp. And for now, he always seems to have the pain.
"It's like lightning strikes down my leg," he said. "It hurts so bad, I'll get nauseated. That's been one of the biggest problems."
Haunted by memories, lashing out at family
When he finally left the hospital, Mallory went to stay with his older brother, Brad, in Belle Fourche. The pain continued to torment him as 2006 turned into 2007. And, although his family saw hints at Avera McKennan that Mallory seemed different after his return from Iraq, they didn't realize how wounded he was psychologically until he left the constant care and attention he was receiving at the hospital.
"When he got away from that and had more time to think about it, what he had been through, mentally that's when it started kicking in," Brad Mallory, 46, said. "He had more time to dwell on it. ... the mistakes made, the things that had happened, the things that he had seen."
Mallory couldn't sleep because of the pain. And he couldn't get Iraq out of his mind. It was on television. It was in the newspapers. At times, he would slip out of his brother's house and check into motels to get away from the daily reminders.
Adjusting Tate's medications to find the right combination for the pain was a struggle, Brad Mallory said. If he ran out of pills for any amount of time, "it was a bad day or two just to get him back where he needed to be," his brother said.
Mood swings became increasingly exaggerated, too. He lashed out at family.
"The littlest things didn't anger me, they infuriated me," Mallory said. "My reaction was so disproportional to what it should have been. I basically turned on most of my family and said I wanted nothing to do with them."
Drugs helped take edge off, counseling has brought relief
A year ago, on a day that his pain medications had run out, Mallory decided he had had enough. As his brother tried to coax him into the car to go to the hospital in Spearfish, Tate Mallory begged instead for his life to be ended.
"I said, 'Brad, this isn't living. If you love me as a brother, you'll find a way, basically, to end this,' " Tate Mallory said.
Brad Mallory looked into his brother's eyes and knew that he wasn't kidding.
"That dead look in his eyes that said, 'I've had enough' ... it was like looking at a wounded deer. You look in their eyes, and they're kind of dark and glassed over. They know it's over," Brad said.
His weakness was humiliating, Tate Mallory said. He'd been in law enforcement 14 years - as a sheriff in Mellette County and as a policeman in Murdo, Brookings and Beresford. He'd been to car accidents. He had seen humanity at its worst and never flinched.
Now that fear of looking weak - and believing the stigma of mental illness would cost him a future in law enforcement - kept him from seeking help.
"I'm so scared that I will not be able to find work," he said. "The second you go to get help, you're pretty much blackballed for a lot of careers. As soon as anyone in criminal justice found out about it, I wouldn't be able to find a job."
So he suffered instead until he could not bear the suffering anymore.
Mallory finally sought out a doctor who had treated him at Avera McKennan. The physician put Mallory in touch with a doctor at Avera Behavioral Health, who quickly determined that they had to try to control his pain. With medications he received, "it took the edge off," Mallory said. "It brought me to where I was not attacking my family and friends as much as I was."
He started feeling well enough to begin thinking ahead. The state Department of Labor referred him to a vocational rehabilitation program. He enrolled at the University of South Dakota and began studying criminal justice.
Though he felt better, he continued to struggle with sleepless nights. He missed classes - a reality that led concerned professors to question him. Once he explained it, they pushed him to seek help through university counseling services.
It was there, Mallory said, that counselors gave his struggles a name - PTSD. He started going to weekly counseling sessions and continues to do so. During the past two months, he said he has seen steady improvement.
DynCorp covers his medical care and medications and provides a disability check that pays the bills and helps to feed his four children - Shania, 10; Cheyenne, 9; Tristin, 7; and Tate Jr., 6 - who all now live with him and his fiancee, Kari Swartos, in Vermillion.
By telling his story now, Mallory hopes he can inspire those struggling with PTSD to seek help.
"I was scared for my career, and I was humiliated for being weak," he said. "I'm not now. I know everyone has a breaking point. And I realize PTSD is not permanent; it's treatable.
"So I know I can get back to the old Tate. If no one wants to hire me because I had a rough spot in life, it's OK. I'll have a better relationship with my kids. I'll have a better relationship with my sister and family."
At the very least, he'll be at peace with himself, Mallory said. He's already sleeping better at night, spending far less time staring into the darkness and reliving the nightmare.
"I'm not just existing," he said. "I'm living again. I finally see the difference."
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