Quote From: rayvinfiveMy best friend followed me into the military right after high school. She is the sister I never had, and we have always been very close, until recently. After talker to her this past weekend after hearing nothing for over six months, I don't know what to do. Well,,,Read below.
Date: September 2005
I learned that my best friend of almost 15 years now will be deploying to Iraq in a month. She was stationed in Korea and had some major issues that she was trying to work through, the biggest one being that she was raped while in Korea, and had suppressed the emotions and memories. She wound up in the psych ward for a couple of days for that. She was slowly getting better, then she found out that she was going to go play in the desert.
Date: March 2006
Six months later I had heard nothing from her and was worried. Finally getting tired of waiting for her to get in touch with me I called her post's information line to try and find her. They wouldn't give me her info, but that standard operating procedure. They gave her my info, and all I could do was hope that she'd call. She called, I was glad to hear her voice. Until I found out that she had been home for three months and hadn't called or anything. Her excuse was that she didn't have my number. I was all prepared to yell at her for not getting in touch earlier, until she told me why she was home.
While she was in Iraq she got really depressed and eventually tried to kill herself. That took all the wind out of my sails. I couldn't yell at her, I couldn't be mad at her. I couldn't feel anything but dissapointed in myself for not being there for her when she needed me the most.
Now that I know she's home, and that she needs me I don't really know what to do. I really want to know the details of why, but that seems rather insensitive now when I think about the whole situation. All I really want to do is swoop her up and giver her a bear hug for a year or so until she's "better" or "normal". She is my sister in heart, and I would do anything I could for her. I hate it that I wasn't there for her when she needed me, and I hate it now that I have life responsibilites that prevent me from being with her right now. I hate that there is a two hour drive one way to see her. My heart hurts for her, and I would dearly love to taker her pain away and make her happy again.
How do you deal with a suicide attempt? What do you say? How do you act? What don't you say? What don't you do? Why wasn't I there when she needed me?
Just wanted to write and let you know that I do know what it's like when someone close to you trys to take their life. This happened to my sister quite afew years ago now, but it makes me upset to think that my sister could have been taken away from me forever.
The day that my sister took so many tablets, she did it more to get our attention than to kill herself. She needed help big time and this was the only way she felt that we would sit up and take notice. Well we did sit up thats forsure.
Even though I don't know your dear friend, I feel that maybe your friend was calling out for help rather than she wanted to kill herself. It was a terrible thing that happened to her, being raped and I guess that the American Defence Force is very much like the Australian Defence Force where they are just not there so to speak for their soliders when it comes to this sort of thing. Yes, your friend might have got some help after the rape, but I bet she was more or less made to put the rape out of her mind and just get on with her job, would I be right there?!
And so your friend had to get on with her life and go and play in Iraq!! And while she was over there things would have been going over and over in her mind and she would have being living that rape over and over again, and one day she would have finally had enough and said to herself that she wanted some help but she couldn't get anyone to listen to her, so what she felt she had to do was to make people take notice of her and she did this.
As to what you can do for your dear friend, just let her know that you are there for her and that if she needs you, you will try your best to get to her. Yes, I know it's hard when you are so far away and if you have children well they can make things abit harder, but even if you just get on the phone and talk to her as often as you are able to and let her know that you are just a phone call away so that at anytime she needs to talk you will be there to listen.
As to how to act, just be the loving friend that she knows you to be, don't go changing yourself when you are around her. She knows the real you, so just be you.
As to what not to say or do, well I don't know about that one, other than to just say to you that if she wants to talk about the rape, tell her that she can talk you about it if it will help her in anyway. Just don't go judging her because of what happened to her, re the rape or the suicide attempt.
Lastly don't go being so hard on yourself because you weren't there for her. She needed some time to herself to help herself to get better. She knows that if you could have been there for her you would have, but also know that you couldn't have known how she was really feeling if she didn't want you to know at the time.
Just start from today being there for her, take things one day at a time.
Please TAKE CARE, LOVE KELLY.
