So maybe this is kind of a flip-side comment, here, but it seems like we have a suicide post like this every week or so, and every time someone tells me to watch my buddies and myself.

I'm suicidal. What this means to me is that, unless I end up dying accidentally or of a freak heart attack, I intend to take my own life when I feel like I'm done with this place. Right now, the first and foremost element that keeps me from killing myself is the fact that it would absolutely destroy my mother. She would never get over it. It would possibly even drive her to kill herself. So no way, no how, would I ever do that to her.

Once mom dies, I don't care how much anybody cries at the funeral, there's no one else around who would be seriously impacted by my death.

The second thing, and the one that I think will keep me going for a few decades longer, is curiosity. I always wonder what tomorrow will be like. I'm not religious, so I'm pretty sure it's just curtains and blackness after the trigger squeeze. With that in mind, just about anything else in life is pretty interesting by comparison.

But sometimes, it sucks like hell to be me. And if enough of those times strung themselves together and seemed to extend for perpetuity, then fuckin' a, I'd call it a day. And if that day came, and I started exhibiting all the symptoms like giving my shit away and no longer being interested in things, there's nothing any of my "battle buddies" could do about it. The worst thing is someone I only barely know coming up to me on a bad day and feigning interest in my life because he or she thinks he's doing a civic duty in preventing me from killing myself.

People often feel powerless in the face of suicide. They wish there was something they could have done, because they feel like death is awful and they don't understand why someone wished it on himself. But it's not about you. It has nothing to do with you.

If you have real friends, be there for your friends. If you genuinely care about your soldiers, then keep up with them and be good to them. But if you just want to flash an ACE card at someone who looks fucked up and throw him off to behavioral health, don't be surprised when your random stranger intervention doesn't do shit to keep him from kicking the bucket.

I hate Army suicide prevention training. I hate it so damn much.