The 8000-Mile Sniper Shot: I've Lost Friends To Combat, Now I'm Losing Them To Suicide

[douglas9]

When you leave the military, your mind is usually filled with a range of emotions. There’s joy over your newfound freedom, sadness at leaving brothers behind, and anxiety over the unknown. In June 2010, when I picked up my discharge papers from the Marine Corps, I lived through it and felt them all.

Now two years later, I am close to graduation from The University of Tampa, run a successful military satire website, and am lucky to continue working with military veterans. It wasn’t an easy road, and many times I felt alone and helpless.

For a heartbreaking and rising number of veterans, those emotions can lead to a devastating end: suicide.

Navy Cross recipient and former Corporal Jeremiah Workman, who dealt with his own emotional trauma and thoughts of suicide, refers to it as an enemy making an 8000-mile sniper shot.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-8000-mile-sniper-shot-ive-lost-friends-to-combat-now-im-losing-them-to-suicide-2012-9

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. This just isn't in the public eye nearly enough. Suicide, homelessness, a lack of timely

medical and psychiatric care. Shame on you, **! Look what you have wrought!!

[The River]

2. I Understand How They Feel

I'm one of them.

I need to finish my first-person "diary" and get it posted.

[Victor_c3]

3. I get it too

I haven't actually had an attempt, but suicide is on my mind a lot. If I didn't have my two little girls and I'm almost positive I wouldn't be around right now. My 2 year old and 4 year old daughters would be ruined if I weren't in the picture anymore.

Combat, at least for me, really took away my concern for myself. I got to the point that I just didn't care anymore while I was deployed and, to a large degree, it is still there.

(by the way, I'm also actively receiving treatment at the VA)

I would love to see more stuff like the diary you mentioned out there for the public to read. I've been mulling over various ideas for books that I'd like to see written regarding combat and how hard it is for vets to return to normal life after war for years. I've even written a couple of short sections and I have a rough outline of what I'd like it to be. To prevent frivolous wars from being inflicted on our kids, us struggling vets need to get our stories out there.

War, as most of us know, doesn't end when you leave the combat zone.

[pinboy3niner]

4. I get it--and all my respect to the Navy Cross recipient in the OP

And to you, Victor_c3, you hang in there, brother.

The closest I came, when I actually was gonna DO IT, my hands began trembling and shaking--and I discovered, in that moment, that my survival instinct was just too strong to allow me to off myself like that.

We have a lot in common, Victor_c3. Different wars--and mine was long ago, now--but the same shit. The feelings you've expressed in your posts are familiar to vets of any war. I've read accounts written by Vietnamese ("enemy&quot veterans of my war that say pretty much the same thing.

You and I have come to face the same challenges and struggles, but each of our journies are different. My sense of you is that your'e gonna struggle like hell, bro--but you're gonna make it.

In one of the movies about my war, there was an epilogue that struck home:

"Those of us who DID make it have an obligation to build again. To teach to others what we know, and to try, with what's left of our lives, to find a goodness and a meaning to this life."

You're gonna struggle, brother. But you're gonna make it. And along the way, you're gonna do GOOD things.

I love you brother.

Love & Peace,
pinboy3niner

[Victor_c3]

5. Thanks

I've been your post all day. Like I'm sure it is for you, it is a hard topic for me to put to words at times.

Thank you.

Victor