This episode contains frank discussion of PTSD, veteran mental health and loss.
Karina Zuniga was born and raised in Mexico. She met Billy, an American veteran, in Los Cabos. They fell in love over books and conversation. After September 11, Billy re-enlisted. Karina left everything — her country, her career, her family — to follow him to Arizona.
Billy came home from Afghanistan with shrapnel in his head, a destroyed knee and severe PTSD. What followed was years of episodes so intense he thought their backyard was a combat zone. He told Karina: I know I’m here. I just can’t get out. When he went to his chain of command begging for help, they told him to man up.
Karina became his advocate — driving across states to visit him in rehab centers, learning what oxycodone was, watching him cycle through pills that went up, pills that went down and pills that were supposed to keep him in the middle. Eventually she had to make the hardest decision of her life: leave the marriage to save herself.
Billy died in his sleep on September 11, 2017. In this conversation, Karina talks about what it means to love someone through trauma the system won’t treat, what advocacy actually looks like from the inside and how she found herself again after losing the person she fought hardest to save.
Executive Producer: Sara Glassman
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