Sitting on my rack, I unholstered my 9 mm, racked the slide, thumbed the safety and pressed the barrel against my forehead. I could feel the heft of the loaded weapon, the resistance of the trigger against my finger. I knew I needed help but could see no other way out. Tonight was the anniversary of the incident that left me beaten and bloodied, battered and broken.Fifteen years before, as a senior in college, I walked back to my apartment from a college party. Intoxicated, tired and cold, I took a shortcut behind a Food Lion, where an acquaintance who had followed me raped me, beat me and left me lying there, an unconscious heap of broken bones and torn skin. An assistant manager from the Food Lion found me behind the loading dock and called the police.After a brief hospitalization, I returned to classes to finish my senior year. I declined counseling at the hospital, worried it might interfere with the security clearance I needed to obtain my commission. The fifth and final time I declined to speak with a counselor, the social worker said, “If you bury this alive, it will haunt you.”How right she was.I couldn’t make the memories stop. I would rub my hands and feel invisible pieces of glass and asphalt embedded in my palm. I would touch my mouth to assure myself that my teeth were no longer broken. I felt physically ill every time I had to lie on the ground for PT, but I forced myself to do it. I wanted to be the same person I was before.Just before graduation, my professor of military science called me into his office. He expressed sympathy over what had happened and offered to release me from my enlistment contract: “a compassionate discharge in light of this unfortunate incident.” He didn’t know my one burning desire was to get far away from the scene of the crime as quickly as possible—to my first assignment in Korea. He didn’t know the one thing getting me to class in the morning was 0630 PT formation. He didn’t know joining the Army was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, and the thought of losing one more thing to my rapist was devastating. He didn’t know, because he didn’t ask.This was the first of many well-intentioned but counterproductive Army missteps in responding to the effects of my assault, missteps that convinced me that while the Army desperately wants to help survivors, it assumes too much and asks too little.I argued, pleaded and was allowed to complete ROTC and take my commission. I vowed that I would never again allow the assault to interfere with my performance.Leading a platoon of 44 soldiers, mostly male, was therapeutic. Watching them train, grow and perform helped me rediscover parts of me I thought I had left behind that Food Lion. No one knew about the violent nightmares, the triple-checked locks or the KA-BAR knife under my pillow when I slept.As I moved back and forth between staff and leadership assignments, the attitudes of my senior officers often appalled me. When the agent from Criminal Investigation Command briefed my general about a 20-year-old private first class who had been intoxicated when she was sexually assaulted, the executive officer scoffed, “We all know she wasn’t on her way home from church.” Other commanders described soldiers receiving mental health treatment as burdens to their units, taking up slots on the books while their cases slowly worked their way through the medical review board discharge system. One battalion commander told his grieving formation a fellow soldier who shot himself alone in a hotel room was “selfish.”Some commanders briefed the list of “at-risk” soldiers at staff call with disdain. “Spc. Smith” was in the Army Substance Abuse Program. “Pfc. Jones” was seeing Social Work Services because of problems with his wife. The intimate lives of these soldiers, most of whom were being processed for administrative discharge, were laid bare for the scrutiny of strangers. I never saw an officer on that list.I served in one unit where the battalion commander’s policy required the company commander to report on the status of at-risk soldiers by 0900 on weekends and holidays. The squad leader would call his soldier by 0700 so he could let the platoon sergeant know by 0730, who would let the first sergeant know by 0800, who would then contact the commanding officer by 0830. Soldiers in therapy were going to get a 0700 wake-up call every Saturday and Sunday whether or not they needed it.As suicide and sexual assault numbers climbed and scrutiny mounted, I saw commanders increase their determination not to let anything happen on their watch. Commanders scheduled weekly meetings with “at-risk” soldiers, inadvertently making these soldiers feel singled out and stigmatized. Soldiers learned to give doctors who asked if they had been feeling down or depressed the “right” answers; the “wrong” answers meant a side trip to Behavioral Health. Commanders harmed cases and alienated rape survivors with well-meaning but ineffective amateur detective work. At times, victims were involuntarily transferred to other units, away from friends and the squad, because (as in my case) the commander assumed that was what they wanted.My post-traumatic stress disorder, which probably would have improved with earlier treatment, calcified from acute to chronic. I slept four hours a night; often, I would feel my assailant’s fingers on my throat and hear the hateful things he whispered into my ear. “Mandatory fun” such as a dining-in was torture for me when I couldn’t choose a seat with my back against the wall. The struggle to maintain my composure and keep PTSD from affecting my performance left me exhausted and emotionally drained.When I felt alone and sad and small, I longed to reach out and talk to someone about the assault. Only the unit chaplain guaranteed absolute privacy—as long as I posed no threat to myself or to others. While every chaplain I met was kind and devoted to his work, without exception they were men. The thought of discussing the assault alone in a closed space with a male made me physically ill. If I went to Behavioral Health, I would be counted among the defective; I was still afraid of losing my clearance. Worst of all, my leaders would see me as a victim instead of an officer or a soldier.Slowly, the Army began to change its policies on mental health counseling for soldiers who had been in combat. Posters for the “Real Warriors” campaign conveyed the message that seeking help is acceptable—as long as the problem was related to combat.I deployed twice: first to Iraq and then to Afghanistan. For the first two months of my deployment, memories of my assault came back to me like an unwelcome guest. Sleep offered no respite; nightmares haunted me. I constantly dreamed that my attacker was following me around the forward operating base or raping me in my hooch. Intrusive thoughts made it difficult to concentrate on any one task.If I had a safe place to discuss the assault and its effects, I might not have cleaned my weapon so often hoping for an “accidental discharge” that would solve all my problems. After holding the pistol to my forehead that day in Afghanistan, I reholstered it. I didn’t want my leadership to be second-guessed for failing to identify me as a problem soldier even though I had never told my secret. The Army, in its organizational compulsion to assign blame, would fault everyone from the armorer who issued me the weapon to the staff sergeant who trained me to shoot it to my brigade commander, who did not know my name and was only vaguely aware of my existence.Nor did I want a trip to Landstuhl and then back to the U.S., and then possibly all the way back to Fort Livingroom. The only thing worse in my mind than being raped again was losing my military family.So I sucked it up. I held it together for two deployments, terrified of losing my job, my reputation, my health benefits and the only family I had ever loved. I soldiered on until the thread of my life that had gotten caught so long ago completely unraveled. I couldn’t take another step. I couldn’t breathe another breath. I wanted to be mission-capable and keep going forward, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. Finally deciding that my life mattered more than my career, I requested and received treatment for PTSD.My experience confirms that Army leadership wants to improve its prevention of and response to sexual assault. Program after program has been promulgated, but desired results remain elusive. I can’t speak for all survivors but can share three things I desired on my long journey of healing that would have lessened my suffering and might have prevented my suicidal ideation.First, I wanted to ensure that my counseling stayed completely private. I needed time and space to heal without worrying whether my commander would find out and how he would react, and without the threat of losing my security clearance. In April 2013, the Director of National Intelligence added an exemption on the security clearance questionnaire for counseling “strictly in relation to the sexual assault” in addition to those already present for grief, family and combat counseling. Counseling between therapists and soldiers should be given the same privacy protections as those granted to chaplains.Second, I wanted my life to get back to normal as quickly as possible so I could move on. This would have been easier if my commanders had been better trained in dealing with soldiers in crisis: how to avoid the errors of underattention (such as scorn for personal problems and punitive responses) and overattention (micromanaging the treatment plan, assuming the commander knows what’s best for the soldier without bothering to ask). Commanders need a more comprehensive delineation of their responsibilities to soldiers undergoing mental health treatment and of the limits to those responsibilities. The emphasis should be on supporting the soldier to improve mission capability, not on assigning blame for mental health problems—to neither the soldier nor the command.Third, I didn’t want to be labeled either a “victim” or a “survivor.” My trauma does not define me. I just wanted to be counted as another soldier. In addition, I needed confidence that my chain of command would support my efforts to heal, both openly and behind closed doors. Soldiers must believe they will be supported by their brothers and sisters in arms, regardless of what drives them to seek counseling. Only then can we say we’ve made our formation “Army Strong.