In recognition of PTSD Awareness Month, our Exhibitions Team shares a closer look at Depicting The Invisible: A Portrait Series of Veterans Suffering from PTSD. Each week, hear from a featured Veteran in their own words about their experiences with Post Traumatic Stress.

We close out this four-part series with words from Rusty, who enlisted in the U.S. Army and was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds he sustained in Afghanistan in June, 2010. Months later in January of 2011, the truck he was traveling in went off a bridge and fell fifty feet down a ravine. Rusty spent 16 months at a VA hospital and is paralyzed from the neck down. Rusty says that he, “…would rather have physical injuries than mental injuries any day.”