Bowe Bergdahl's writings reveal signs of inner turmoil

We're getting a fuller picture of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from what appear to be his own writings.

The Washington Post on Wednesday published quotes from journals it received from an Oregon woman who says she's a close friend of Bergdahl.

Bergdahl is still hospitalized after five years as a POW in the Afghan war. He was captured off his post.

CBS News spoke to the woman who said she's a friend of Bergdahl and received these messages days after a disappearance.

In an email to CBS News, she said she is sharing them now in order to defend him.

According to The Washington Post, in a handwritten journal entry the same month he headed to Army basic training, Bergdahl wrote: "I've spent a lot of my life thinking blackness was all I had in front of me... I know this is not right. I know that there is light in this darkness, and that I can actually reach it if I keep walking, keep moving to it."

One he arrived in Afghanistan in 2009, Bergdahl reportedly wrote: "I want to change so much and all the time, but then my mind just locks down, as if there was someone else in my mind shutting the door in my face."

A year later, in an email to a friend, Bergdahl said he was "looking at a map of Afghan" and asked if he could wire money to her "to protect my money in the bank just in case things go bad." 

Then, just three days before unit members said Bergdahl walked off post, he sent an email to friends saying: "This life is too short to serve those who compromise value, and its ethics. i am done compromising."

The Army declined comment.

We learned today that Bergdahl enlisted two years after being discharged from the Coast Guard just 26 days after Boot Camp.

The Army was aware but gave him a waiver. That was during the surge in Afghanistan when it was trying to get more soldiers to serve.