Battle Buddy

So, my husband has often said to me-everyone needs a battle buddy-and for once, the man is actually correct. In the military, soldiers are required to have one-a person that they watch over and in turn, checks on them as well. It's the Army's way of creating another balance and check system on their soldiers, just in case the higher ups miss signs that someone closer to them might see. Think of when you were a kid on a field trip and you had to hold someone's hand and keep track of them all day. That's what a battle buddy is.
There are no rules for spouses and battle buddies. Recently an article in the New York Times titled, "War, Wives, and a Near Suicide" by Alison Buckholtz that discussed the recent blog by a military spouse in which she had written her readers that she was going to kill herself. Luckily the military spouse had scheduled the blog to be sent out and was in fact in a hospital at the time of its release but that does not detract from its message. What was further disturbing to me was that after finding the blog discussed in the article, finding readers commenting back to her saying they had been in exactly the same place she had. There were many military spouses that had felt this same way that were replying to her, encouraging her to seek help, that life does get better, and I began to wonder just how widespread is this really???
In talking to a friend of mine, I began to think about how easily I could actually see this happening. I think a lot of it stems from a feeling of isolation. In military life, you have constant moves, constant change, and as stated before, your life becomes the military. There are some families that have become accustomed to cutting ties when they move from place to place and even those that stay in contact with friends when they move might find difficulty forming new relationships in new locations. On the opposite side of the coin are the families left behind when all their friends PCS. What happens to these spouses when all their friends are gone and their husband deploys (or wife)?
There are some wonderful FRG systems in the Army, I've known people that rave about theirs. I've also known just as many that had a leader that wasn't effective. I've volunteered and taken an officer position in an FRG and not been informed of meetings and happenings so it isn't always about how involved you are. And, let's face it, the leaders of the FRG, while they take classes are not paid, they are not enlisted members of the Army, they are simply spouses themselves trying to keep it together. A lot of times, they have the difficult task of finding spouses when they move home or talking to parents that are a distance away.
What kept me sane and sometimes I think the only thing that kept me sane was my battle buddy. My husband left me in the capable hands of an Army Wife of 15 years that had been through four deployments while I was on my first one. She had three kids that were in their teenage years and I had a 14 month old and was pregnant with my second child. She didn't drive and I did. We were a perfect match. That's not to say we didn't annoy the poop out of each other and want to tear each other's hair out a million times over during the deployment but without her, I would have fallen on the floor in a heaping mess at least five times a day and given up. She made me go to the doctor and get medicine when I had post-partum depression, she was at the birth of my daughter, she came to the ER when my son needed stitches, she killed roaches in my house from my dirty neighbors, but most importantly she made sure I was alive. Had I not had that relationship or someone checking up on me, I'm not sure what would have happened to me. I don't think I would have gotten to the point that the woman in the article did but you know-who's to say. I'm certainly not judging her and everyone has a breaking point. The moments Tasch and I got out for coffee and bagels even if my kids in the car were stress relief, if I hadn't done that who knows where my breaking point would have been.
Point of my thoughts...find a battle buddy, find your spouse a battle buddy. Makes all the difference in the world. Find one that is positive, that loves their spouse, that loves their kids. They can be annoyed all the time about the things their spouse and kids or job do-but at the base of their annoyance, should be love, otherwise they will drag you down with their negativity and you certainly don't need that. Surround yourself with positive people. Allow yourself that one person that you can be weak in front of because Lord knows you can't be strong all the time.