War, Wives and a Near Suicide

Reading this, all I could think about was some friends. The same thing happened to them but we don't want to talk about any of this. We don't want to talk about the fact some of these "Army Wives" spent years in college, got degrees and then discovered none of it does any good when you are tied to military because the person you fell in love with belongs to the government. They go where they are sent for as long as they are told to stay. This means the families go with them. Kids end up in different schools but they are surrounded by other kids with the same stories. For a spouse, jobs are hard to get no matter how much they have to pay back in student loans.

A friend of mine became a lawyer. She was married to a helicopter pilot. She had a couple of kids to take care of but part of her wanted to practice law. Unable to join a firm because they could end up moving with a transfer, she had a lot more to worry about than just his deployments. She had to worry about all of it including her own future.

One of the other things we don't talk about is the other sword hanging over their heads. Like with all marriages, there is always the chance of a spouse falling out of love with them and in love with someone else. When they get divorced they lose all of it. They have to find another place to live and pick up the pieces of their past civilian lives.

My friend ended up divorced and alone to raise her kids. She didn't have many friends outside of military and her family was not close leaving her basically alone wondering what all the years of sacrificing for the military was for.

When you read this story, understand that it happens all the time. It is a serious issue they face all the time.

April 25, 2011, 8:26 AM
War, Wives and a Near Suicide
By ALISON BUCKHOLTZ

“If you are reading this, you should know that I am dead,” began the blog of a 27-year-old Army wife named Jessica Harp. “At least I hope I’m dead,” she added. “It would be awful to fail at your own suicide.”

The entry, posted to the blog “(Mis)Adventures of an Army Wife” on April 11, was titled “A Final Goodbye.” Its broad outlines, though not dramatic conclusion, are recognizable to many in the post-9/11 generation of military spouses. In 4,100 words, Ms. Harp chronicled her husband’s severe depression after his unit’s deployment to Afghanistan in 2009, and her own subsequent depression, for which she sought counseling and medication.

After her husband’s return and their cross-country move to Fort Jackson, S.C., so he could attend an eight-month officers’ course, she was told she could not join the base’s family support group because her husband was only a student there. She tried to put to use her master’s degree in financial counseling, but was told she was unemployable because she would be leaving the area before the year’s end. Her husband’s erratic behavior, coupled with his drinking, convinced her that he was an alcoholic, and she encouraged him to get help.

“The doctor immediately put him on antidepressants and sleeping pills,” she recounts. “And that was it. No counseling. No getting to the root cause of the issue. Just drugs.” She writes that he mixed his prescriptions with alcohol and at times became violent.


As their marriage deteriorated, Ms. Harp realized her husband was involved with another woman. Ms. Harp checked herself into the hospital because of suicidal thoughts, and her husband left her. She felt that the military community, for which she had given up her career and her independence, had abandoned her as well. “I wish he had just died in combat,” she writes. “If he had died, I would have been surrounded with so much support that I wouldn’t have known what to do with it. Instead, he has discarded me on the side of the road like a piece of rubbish, and the Army ‘family’ has shrugged its shoulders and said, ‘Well, he doesn’t want you anymore. There’s nothing we can do about it.’ ”
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War, Wives and a Near Suicide