Have you ever contemplated suicide while in the service or after and why?

Yep. I have been told that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. That statement could not be more true. But when you get to that point, none of your problems seem temporary. I never got to the "plan of action" stage. I was at what I call the "inertia" stage. I wasn't going to do anything to actively end my life - but I also wouldn't do anything to preserve it either. I wasn't going to go park on the train tracks, but if my car happened to die there, I wouldn't be concerned with getting it started again or fleeing.

What got me there was a slow unraveling. I lost custody of my kid, which was hard, but was even harder because I knew in my heart of hearts that his mom was completely unfit to be a parent. And the fact that a court said he wa better off with her not only atripped me of my kid, it atripped me of my identity, because I thought I was (and still think) a good dad. For a while, my career was stagnating - I kept getting thrown into assignment after assignment working outside my MOS. I was performing well, but had no shot at promotion, because I had only one NCOER in my entire career (8 years in my MOS, 18 years TIS) where I was rated in my MOS. I deployed, working in my MOS, with the understanding from my SGM that I would get a job in my MOS when I got back to try and get my cateer back on track. While deployed, I did some pretty great things, was widely respected, and got a GREAT rating. I was regaining some of my identity, and trying to throw myself into my work to make up for the loss of custody. And then I returned from deployment to a new SGM who was toxic, and determined to derail my career again. It was that brief bit of hope that did me in. I startwd to allow myself to have hopes and dreams, rather than just putting one foot in front of the other and taking it day by day. Then when those hopes and dreams were ripped away, and my identity was again crushed, it was too much.

If I had been able to fully recover from the custody battle, I am sure I would have been fine. Had I never deployed, and just stayed mired in doing good work outside my MOS, I would have been fine. Had I returned to a SGM who honored the commitment the unit had made to me, or who had at least tried to work with me to build a career path, I would have been fine. But the combination just made it so I had no identity, no reason to WANT to live. I didn't necessarily want to die, but I had absolutely no reason to stay alive.

Yes, it was after I was out, but I worked on an Air Force installation. The only thing I remember as my "why" was I felt invisible. Everything that I knew to be a bad thing, people were praising me for or had very little empathy for if I did mention it. I was going through my fourth divorce-yeah shes a pro at this, no big deal. I was working out and running six days a week-you go girl, getting ready for the next one huh. I was losing weight-girl you are lookin good! I was buying new clothes-how fun you went shopping this weekend. I was getting a lot of new tattoos-girl spend that money before you lose it. No one considered that this divorce was hardest on me. When I would mention it, I would hear things like "you cannot be upset about your divorce. You asked for it." No one thought about the fact that I had never been into exercise and that I was ignoring my children for 12+ hours a week. No one considered that I liked being a bit bigger or that I hated shopping. No one thought about how irresponsible it was that I was spending money, instead of saving it. I had just enough fight left in me to fight my thoughts of wanting to die, so they did not turn into thoughts of how I would kill myself. I finally have the courage to tell this story in my safeTALK class-only because magically one of my classes put all of my "invitations" on the board and I noticed it. It almost brought me to tears.