Something happened this morning when I picked up my phone and went to a facebook group for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, it's something that is unfortunately common; a veteran on the verge of suicide. I'm writing this from my perspective, not to brag about anything I did, but to show you how real this issue is within our country. As I went through the post, reading each comment you could tell there was a serious concern for this man's safety and well being. This post was found by me at roughly 5:15 am or so and the last post by the vet who was in a bad spot was 23:55 the previous day.
So throughout the day every vet who had commented kept coming back to check to see if this man had replied, finally around 1:30ish central time as a collective we made a decision to take actions into our own hands. We did what we were trained to do, we came together for the collective, used the resources that we had at our disposal to check on said individual. Some members contacted the police in his area where we suspected him to be living and for myself I contacted two facebook groups who deal with crisis situations with veterans. People who dedicate their time to helping these men and women who in their darkest hour need it. After sending our the information to two separate groups, there finally was traction! Everyone kept posting their updates waiting to see if the guy would respond. It was really emotional honestly for me because back in 2010, a friend of mine who I deployed with to Iraq tried to commit suicide which I found out through facebook. So you see this issue of veteran suicide is very deeply connected to me.
So when it came to time act, I gave any information necessary to the groups who were trying to track down this individual and before they contacted him, he replied to his post. He proceeded to share with us that he had crashed hard and been sleeping for most of the day and by that time on facebook group had gotten in contact. He realized at how bad it had gotten and that he needed to get help. Thanks to the people of Warrior Pointe and thanks to the proactive individuals of OIF/OEF Nation we as a community were able to prevent a suicide at most and saved a life of a solider. He thanked us all for being there and knowing that if he needed help or wanted to talk we were there regardless of the hour of the night.
He now has the tools to fight what a lot of veterans are losing to, he realizes that asking for help isn't weakness and that there are times when we all need to ask for help. This whole process once we started it took only about a hour maybe a hour and a half at tops once we decided to contact the necessary organizations to check on the welfare of one of our battle buddies! Every life is worth saving from suicide regardless of where they are at and with 22 veterans committing suicide daily it's pretty challenging to save them all, but all this took was an hour to help on Veteran.
Knowing this information what will you do now? If you come across a hurting veteran who you are unaware of if they are not mentally stable, what would you do now knowing that all it took was an hour? One hour. That is all. How many of us waste our hours doing mindless tasks? I know I do, don't get me wrong sometimes we need that time alone, but what are you willing to do to help someone who fought for our country? I realize that I am playing with heart strings and that this may come off with feelings of guilt or shame, that is not my intention. My intention is to make you aware of what is going on in our country with our veterans and service-members.
Take care and God Bless!
