Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Hello there and welcome back to the shit show. If you've been coming along for the ride for the last two posts, words cannot express what the support and the words of encouragement have meant to me. If this is your first time stopping in for a read buckle up. To look back at my last post and see the amount of shit that piled on in only a couple years I am amazed that it took as long as it did for the wheels to fall off. I guess that's how it happens though, there wasn't one big event during those first few years that would have blown the doors off. It's a slow accumulation of little traumas that build up over time until the weight becomes too much to bear. So without further adieu, lets get back into it I suppose.

Fair warning again, this one contains some serious and heavy content that may be distressing to read.

I ended off last post right before my first child was born. In typical mountie fashion, my wife went into labour between night shifts and instead of just staying home with her, I went to work for the second night so that no one on the watch would feel like I wasn't pulling my weight. Thankfully there was enough people working that I was able to get home earlier than expected. I took a few months of pat leave when she was born, to be home to help out with the transition to being parents and to have a little bit of a break. Unfortunately I ended up spending two straight weeks in court so I lost half a month of my time at home. 

As my time wound down I found out that as soon as I got back to work I would be right back into training a new recruit. Not an ideal situation but I didn't say no because it wasn't in my nature. About a week before I was due back at work I stopped in at the office to meet my new recruit and make sure all my return to work paperwork was squared away, as anyone with the RCMP knows if the paperwork its done right then there's a good chance you won't get paid for a long while. Which is never ideal, especially when you live in an expensive community. While I was at the office, with my new baby and wife, the Ops NCO and detachment commander were there and were talking to the watch about a wheelchair basketball game that was going to be happening at the school against the kids. The Staff made a comment about how I should be coming to the game since I wasn't doing much else, to which I made a comment back about how if I was to go play I'd probably hurt myself and not be able to go back to work the next week. I finished my paperwork and headed home to enjoy my last few days at home. Once I got back to work, the first day back I got pulled into the Staff's office and got told that my attitude was inappropriate the prior week, that the detachment commander wasn't impressed and that if I wanted to get anywhere in the organization I'd have to give up some of my personal time every now and then. I was literally dumbfounded because I wasn't working, I was on leave and the only reason I was in the office was to make sure I was going to get paid the next week. I said I understood his perspective, I reiterated that I was on leave at the time and went about my day. Little did I know that conversation was the start of the shit going straight down hill. Soon after I was getting Ops NCO reviews on every single file that I did. Files that my corporal reviewed and approved for conclusion were getting reopened and sent back for chicken shit reasons. Court files were getting big long reviews left pointing out every possible issue that he took with my investigations, reviews that were being disclosed to crown and defense and getting a lot of my work thrown out before charges were approved. Fuck me. And then it was my recruits files too, since he didn't think I was doing a good enough job teaching. 

3 fucking years and there had never been a problem with my work. My corporal saw no issues with my work as he was approving everything I had submitted. Thankfully my corporal was a good one and he continually went to bat for me but rank trumps so there was nothing he could really do. I put my name in for a number of positions within the detachment to try and get out of general duty for a bit and since the Staff had final say with the detachment commander, low and behold I was passed over for every opportunity. When I would ask why, it would be blown off, or I would be told that the other members had better credentials than I did. A number of them had significantly less service than I did. I started hating my job, I started hating having to go to work, I didn't want to do anything since no matter what I did I knew it would be coming back to me. It got to the point that I started looking at quitting the RCMP. I was filing out lateral applications to Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon. Shit I looked at getting out of policing entirely because of what was going on in that fucking office. The other thing that had happened was the watches had changed. Members that I had worked with for a few years were moving to different watches or transferring out of the detachment entirely. I lost the comfort that I had knowing how my watchmates would respond to calls, knowing how we would handle high risk situations. The anxiety was starting to build more during those days because I wasn't as confident in my coworkers to respond the same way I would want them too.

Then the policing Gods smiled down on me for a brief moment. The highway patrol office within the detachment needed bodies badly and I saw that as a possible way out of the hell I was trapped in on the watch. I talked to the unit supervisor in traffic and after we spoke I put my name forward for the position. He was offered a number of different members and refused to take anyone but me. Which was a nice ego boost and showed me that the work I had been doing for the previous years wasn't for nothing. I went to traffic at the end of January in 2017 and sure as shit during my first shift, on a Monday night of all nights, I snagged my first impaired. Set a pretty high standard I suppose but it was worth it. I wasn't attached to a radio any more, I didn't have to respond to the stupid bullshit calls. My boss didn't care if I wanted to get involved in the high risk stuff so I cherry picked the fun calls while still going about my business. Truth be told, I fucking hate writing tickets, I think its stupid 99% of the time. I can do more for road safety by cruising around in my Crown Vic and letting people know the cops are around than writing tickets can do. So instead of that work, I went nuts on the impaired drivers. Every chance I got I was hunting and I was loving it. I felt like I had a purpose again and that I was doing some good.

Not that traffic didn't come with challenges. In BC, highway patrol is responsible for all fatal collisions on numbered highways and the highways around Fort St John are nasty. Kid headed to pick up his parents at the airport flips his truck heading onto the Taylor Bridge, no seatbelt on. Guess what...ejected, slides on the cheese grater steel bridge deck then gets his head popped like a fucking watermelon against the raised edge. Guy outside Chetwynd flips his truck down a steep embankment and gets strung up in the barbed wire. Who knows how long he probably screamed for help before he died.

Then there's the calls I helped out with. Gun call at the local McDonalds, bunch of vigilantes with doing the "Creep Catcher" sting get a gun pulled on them and the guy drives off. One of my partners finds his truck and he's about 30 km in front of me. Off I go, well faster than I should be but again the adrenaline kicks in and there's a serious element of danger in this one with a firearm in play. I end up taking lead on the takedown plan and as we all fly to where the guy has stopped things take shape. We do the callout and the guy gets out of the truck without listening, he's not following any direction I'm giving him. I have my carbine out, I'm on the red dot which has settled right on his throat. I remember the outer edges of my vision going dark and just yelling at him to keep his fucking hands up. He keeps walking towards us and I set my line in the sand, which if he crosses it means I'm shooting him. I flipped my safety off on the carbine and got ready to shoot. Then he puts his hand behind his ear to cup it. That movement saved his life. Turns out he was just mostly deaf and couldn't hear what we were saying to him. Then watching the video back after I got the pleasure of seeing that one of the members that ran up after we had engaged the subject to handcuff him had pointed his gun at us. Fuck me. That was the second time ever I had been safety off and ready to shoot some one and this one stuck with me for a long long time. I almost shot an old man solely because he couldn't hear the instructions I was giving him. 

The summer of 2017 was a shit show in BC, fires everywhere and I ended up getting sent to Williams Lake to do fire zone patrols. It was a lot of fun, just out bombing around on logging roads in crown vics from the lower mainland that had never seen dirt before. It was also a trying time at home as my wife was dealing with post partum depression and anxiety quite badly. I made sure that I was able to do what ever she needed me to do in order to ease her symptoms as best as I could. It was hard because I didn't really know what I was doing but I did what I could. Looking back I think that was why I never wanted to really deal with my own stuff because I had to be strong for her, I had to be able to deal with whatever happened at work so that I could be best able to help at home by doing what she needed me to do. She also found out that the place she was working before going on maternity leave was closing so she had no job to return to. I took it upon my self to work every bit of overtime I could so that it would offset any loss of her income, and then I also figured that if I made enough extra she wouldn't have to worry about work at all. The idea made sense to me, I could work more and since it was night shifts mostly it wasn't like I was missing that much time. A slippery slope in terms of recovering from shifts but I saw it as a means to an end.

That fall there was another close call, I was working a night shift and heard a suicidal male call come in. Lady called because her husband said he was going to kill himself, took a rifle with him and left the house. I headed out to help with patrols when the tone alert went off for a person with a gun at the laundromat in Taylor. I flew down there with the watch and the dog handler as well. The other two members in my unit were at work but not in uniform so they didn't bother to come out. The watch commander for the night didn't leave the office either. So it was up to those of us at the scene to try and get things figured. We set containment and had the building locked down. I ended up in a position where I was in contact with the male and the dog handler was adjacent to me on the other side of the doorway. We alternated contact with the male, trying to get him to peacefully surrender his gun so we could get him to the hospital. Suddenly he stood up with gun in hand and started walking to the door. Both myself and the handler challenged him to drop the gun, I believe that he was trying to get us to shoot him. When neither of us shot he turned, walked back into the building, sat down and put the gun in his mouth. I closed my eyes waiting for the bang but one didn't come. About 10 minutes later he walked out in tears and asked us for help. Turns out he hit the trigger but the gun didn't go bang for whatever reason. 

Things stayed steady, I was hammering the impaired drivers and still snagging the occasional barfight to help quell my adrenaline fix. Of course it had to be December, not long before Christmas, I get a call from the reconstructionist telling me that I'm needed for a double fatal on 97 near Chetwynd. Off I go, get to the scene and this one still haunts me to this day. The smell of burned antifreeze was hanging heavy in the air. A one tonne Ford sat off the side of the highway, pretty heavy front end damage, cab compressed back to the box. All the airbags went off and the driver looked like he was simply asleep.  The half tonne in the middle of the highway was fucked. The driver ended up touching the box of the truck because the force of the impact crushed the frame so badly. No seatbelt of course, so he hit the steering wheel before the airbag inflated so his chest was blown open. Both legs were mangled and his knees blew out the tops of the thighs. It took the fire department cutting the entire cab of the truck open and removing the firewall to get him out of the truck. The body looked like a puppet as they tried to hoist him out of the damage. Then I had to drive two hours back home and try to sleep after that? To this day I have a hard time with people passing closely or riding the center line toward me because of that scene. 

Not long into the new year I received notice that I was going to be transferring for the first time. I was the only member in the country to have Edson on my HRMIS and they needed bodies badly after their own tragedy had happened. Both my wife and I saw it as a great opportunity to get much closer to home so we jumped at it. To look back at it now, I probably wouldn't have made the move, I was enjoying my freedom in traffic and with my impaired numbers still going up I was really feeling like I was going some good for the community. It was around this time as well that I started to notice some more changes, namely in my ability to eat. I was having numerous occasions where I would be eating and then suddenly found myself unable to swallow properly, resulting in food getting stuck in my throat and choking me. I blamed it on trying to eat too fast or being dehydrated, never taking time to notice that when it was happening was usually during periods of time where I was stressed or really anxious. It happened a lot at work and a lot usually either before my first day shift or before night shifts. Little did I know that was a sign I should not have ignored.

Once again, Murphy and his fucking law had to make an appearance. Not long before our transfer I happened to be working a night shift when a typical goat rodeo call comes in: Fort St John for a report of shots fired between two residences in Pink Mountain. For those of you who have no idea where this place is, go north on the Alaska Highway for a little over two hours, about as close to the boundary cut off with Fort Nelson as you can go. An area with fuck all for cellphone service and even with digital encrypted radios not much for radio help. The genius watch commander of the day decided that two members responding to an armed and barricaded was appropriate. Especially since one of those members was barely off of field training. I called my boss to let him know what was happening and he made sure that myself and the other two traffic members on shift would be attending to hopefully mitigate the danger to those two members. We requested additional assets, like a dog services member and a call to Critical Incident Command, since its an armed and barricaded situation. We got nothing. I called dispatch on my own to find out if those calls had been made and they had not. I asked about making the calls myself and the watch commander essentially told me that would be insubordination and I would end up with a code of conduct. Which could seriously impact my coming transfer. So 5 of us put containment on a house that we had no idea about, if the guy was still there, if he was still armed, what kind of fire power he had in the house. There was serious pucker power happening, especially as the sun started to come out. The anxiety got strong enough that I had my first real experience with stress related IBS and I ended up taking a tactical shit in the woods next to the house. That's how wound up I was being out there with no back up and no help coming. Then the plan comes down from the watch commander and the detachment commander. We'll go take a look in the windows and then make entry...what in the actual fuck? We're all stuck, we can't leave, we can't refuse the plan because the higher ups have made it quite clear that they will flex their rank and we'll all end up with codes and God knows whatever other fucking punishments they would impose. So three of us make entry, into a single wide shitty trailer. Stuck in the fatal funnel only to hear motion at the end of the hallway and a voice call out "do you want to fucking die?" Here we go, I'm about to get into a shootout in a shitty fucking trailer that I have no real authority to be in. The three of us bum rush the bedroom and find the guy mostly passed out but still really ready to fight. We end up getting in a full on brawl with this guy and once he's in custody we find the rifle that was lying next to the bed. I had a nice two hour drive back to town to try and process what the fuck had just happened. Were the supervisors really that fucking thick? Did they think that the critical incident callout would impact their budget? Do our lives really matter that little to them? That one really fucked me up for a while, not only realizing how close we had come to getting into a gunfight in a trailer, but realizing how little the membership matters to some supervisors.

Not long after that I was working another night shift and thought I had nailed an impaired driver, guy just weaving all over the road. I swing in behind him, get ready to hit the lights when all of a sudden I see this big ball of orange on the patio of an apartment suite. Holy shit that building is on fire. I toned up, requested fire services be called then without any regard for my own safety, ran into the building to ensure it was being evacuated. I ran door to door, yelling a people to get out of the building since it was on fire. I could feel the heat through the roof above me and feel the oxygen getting pulled through the stairwells. I never stopped to think about what would happen if I got stuck in there. I just went full adrenaline mode, something that I really shouldn't have done. It was one of those risks I shouldn't have taken.

Off we go in the early summer. Once we got to Edson it was hotel living for a couple weeks waiting to take possession of our house. It was also a real unproductive time at work since I didn't have PROS access so I could literally do nothing at work. I didn't have a dispatch ID so I couldn't get signed on. I was the new experienced member who was completely useless to the people around me. I did get the joy of working the night of the heavy fatal, a honda civic chewed on the front of a 1 tonne dodge and guess who lost. Once I was able to get to work, it was time to prove myself, to show the team in Edson that I was able to hold my own and do my job. It didn't take long. A couple of suspicious vehicles got called in on a lease site, myself and another member went out. About an hour from the detachment, again with piss poor radio and shittier cellphone service. Turns out both trucks were stolen and when we got close to the trucks we found a number of shitheads inside them. Of course they woke up and then it was game on. I ended up in a full blown scrap with one guy as his buddy tried to run me over before getting stuck in the sand. As I'm throwing down with this guy, the other driver gets out and runs off with the other member just watching him go. He never even bothered to run to where I was brawling. The second truck get started by a person who was sleeping in the back and the guy I'm fighting will manages to jump in it and they take off. So we end up with no one in custody, I've come within a few feet of death again, and now I don't trust at least this co-worker do the right thing in a fight. 

After that, at least a good number of the people working Edson realized that I wasn't a useless new guy and that helped my transition into the office to be a smoother one. There wasn't a whole lot else that seemed to be happening, there was a lot of slow nights, a lot of days where not much happened. These slower shifts should have been a blessing but I found that on those slow days I was keyed up, waiting for the tones to drop or for some real police work to need doing. I was on call for the first time too and after getting a few early wake ups, come 4 AM most mornings I was just awake, or I would toss and turn just expecting the phone to ring. Even days I wasn't on call it started to happen. That fall we learned my wife was pregnant again, which was extremely exciting. We told everyone at Christmas time, New Years wasn't so bad. 

Then January happened and things just completely fell apart. My wife went for the gendering ultrasound and during that examination the ultrasound tech noticed a shadow in the chest area. My wife's doctor decided that the best way to tell an expectant mother there was an issue was to leave her a voicemail saying that our baby might have a heart malformation and that she was going to be sent to Edmonton for a more sensitive ultrasound. That's it...a fucking voicemail. Something inside me broke that day. I felt so incredibly helpless. I couldn't take away my wife's anxiety, I couldn't help her stress, I could just hold her while she cried. I cried a lot too. It was a kind of overwhelming feeling that I didn't know how to deal with. My wife goes to Edmonton with our daughter for the ultrasound and I head to work for a night shift. I almost got run over by a car on my way into work, some asshole cut the crosswalk in front of me so close that I was able to dent his rear quarter panel with a kick. Then I got to the office and noticed that all of the support staff cars were still in the lot, which is never a good sign. I walked in and was met by one of the other members who told me bluntly that there was an accident and Cooper was killed. Cooper was the son of two of our members. All I could think to do was go to work, to be able to spell off the guys at the scene or do whatever else was needed of me. I ended up breaking a lot of policy and dealing with a domestic by myself solely because there was no one else to go with me. I got back to the office for the briefing and the members who had been at the scene had come back. They were all relatively junior, under 3 years, hell the one was brand new, like less than a couple months. I recognized the shock because I had been there before, so I sat the boys down and forced them to eat something, sharing my Subway that I had brought in for the night. I knew that they wouldn't be able to eat once the shock started to subside having been there before myself. The division stepped in quickly and we had members from surrounding detachments come in to cover shifts for a few days, so we had some unfettered time off. I remember calling my wife as I walked home to make sure that I broke the news to her before it was in the spouses group chat. The weight of the death, the weight of her having to be in the city for follow ups alone all crushed down on me. I got home that night and sat on the kitchen floor and just bawled my eyes out. I didn't know what else to do. I had no strength left to offer that day.

The collision lead to my only critical incident debrief that I have had during my entire service time. It wasn't a pleasant experience, the therapist that attended just sat everyone down and expected things to happen. I did a lot of talking because I had a lot of experience to draw on, and I was one of the only members with experience from other detachments outside of Edson. I can't remember if this was before or after the funeral. The funeral itself was another soul crushing experience. Members in serge, a shattered family. It was one of the hardest emotional moments I have ever experienced. 

We learned that we were having a baby girl and that the shadow that was seen in the ultrasound wasn't a heart malformation, it was a lung malformation. A CPAM, a congenital pulmonary airway malformation. A small cluster of cells that formed a mass in the lower lobe of the lung. Could cause problems breathing, could be nothing. So we had to have meetings with surgeons, care teams, birth teams, all done in Edmonton. No offers of support for mental health concerns but at least we knew that our daughter would be born at one of the best childrens hospitals in North America.

A few weeks after the accident I started training a new recruit. Welcome to Edson, a place that never recovered from the trauma in July of 2017 that was now a total loss with the new trauma. We had one functioning supervisor and I was the one of the most senior members in the detachment, so I was responsible not only for training my new member but also doing everything possible to keep the detachment running smoothly. All while trying to balance the stress of still not knowing what was going to happen when my daughter was born.

I started to notice that I was having a pretty short fuse, not just at work but at home too. Little things that wouldn't normally make me mad were really having the opposite affect. I was pissed off all the time. Being on call was still fucking with my sleep. I was starting to have more issues while eating, I was starting to have more issues with my guts. Of course I just chalked it up to the stress of everything going on because I couldn't have anything wrong. Too many people were depending on me. 

During training there were a few good stories to chalk up. One of my favorites was the day a local problem child drove a stolen utility truck through the front door of the court house then proceeded to go on a rampage inside the building, tagging swastikas and other hate materials. We got to lay a public incitement of hate charge, something that I hadn't had to do yet. A couple weeks later I got my first taser deployment, after heading to a man with an axe call. The guy had no axe when we found him but he was ready to fight and since he was bigger than me he got to ride the lightning. Then early May hits. Hot spring weather, not unlike this year. Call comes in for a new out of control wildfire with a possible missing child. Jesus Christ, here we go. I remember calling my wife to tell her I loved her as I started flying out to the fire. Thankfully on the way to the scene we were advised that the child was safe and not missing. We still had to get out there as there was a huge danger to the public. The wind was nuts, the fire exploded in size, quickly cutting off the highway and heading towards a small rural community site. Now we're doing a full scale rapid evacuation while dodging embers and watching the fire blow up. I remember standing on the highway, watching the smoke get darker and the flames grow larger thinking that if the wind was to shift just a little bit we would all probably end up in the middle of the inferno. Hours later I was finally able to head home and try to wind down from that adrenaline dump.

Just me taking my mental health for a walk

As the end of May drew closer it was time to start preparing for my wife to be induced. There was a birth plan laid out, care teams were involved and things were looking good. I took her to the city a week before the planned date so I could finish getting my work done before starting pat leave, get the house in order and let her have a week with our oldest since it would be the last chance for that. Low and behold one day later, she goes for a final ultrasound and the tech sees that her umbilical cord looks off. A few short minutes later and my wife is in a room being induced immediately. There was an umbilical vein varix, which meant the umbilical cord was too wide, which could lead to turbid blood and cause a still born. I could have gone the entire rest of my life without knowing any of that information. I got a call from my wife telling me that I needed to get to Edmonton that night. So I did all my work in a couple hours, rushed through the house prep, got some food and headed into the city. Our daughter was born the next morning with no major complications. The sense of relief that came with that could never be properly explained. I spent the summer on Pat leave doing what I could to adjust to life with two kids. My wife suffered pretty terribly with post partum and her anxiety got really bad as well, so my being home was extra beneficial. Toward the end of my leave, she got a job as a peace officer, the same job she had before we left Alberta the first time. I was really excited for her, for her to have something for her that wasn't just being a mom. During the time she was gone for training and I was starting to prepare to go back to work I found that I was really starting to get short tempered with everything. With my kids, with my pets, with my wife. I had never been like that before and now it was like I had a hair trigger. My eating issues were getting progressively worse and I was starting to get more social anxiety. Going out even to get groceries or do little things with my kids was causing serious distress to my guts. I would have uncontrolled cramps, gas and would nearly shit my pants every time. Again, I just chalked it up to stress. Stress about my wife going to work, stress about my going back to work, stress about two kids and the new one not sleeping well at all still. 

By the time I went back to work I was now the senior constable in the detachment so not only was I just back to work after 6 months off, I was now the go to member for the supervisors for tasks, I was the go to member for the junior guys to answer questions. Now I felt even more responsible for the guys I worked with, like I had to constantly keep watch over them and make sure nothing bad happened to them. This was probably when things started slide. I started to not feel much else other than stress and anxiety at work. I could barely eat without dysphagia kicking in. I had IBS every time the radio would key up. Which some nights was never at all, we had nights in Edson with no calls. Yet somehow I was completely keyed up the entire shift. 10 hours of just running on adrenaline. I stopped sleeping past 4 am since that was when on call started. I had one morning that my phone decided not to ring and I missed a callout and that put me so on edge that every morning at 4 I would roll over and check my phone. Then I would check it every 15 minutes after that until it was time to drag myself up for work. The thing is that nothing in Edson that compared to work in Fort St John. There was nothing that got the adrenaline jacked up, there wasn't gun play, there wasn't reserve policing, there was little property crimes and the occasional domestic. Yet I couldn't calm myself down at work, I was always ramped up, always expecting the absolute worst of the worst to happen. I couldn't enjoy my days off because I was either trying to recover from the prior block of shifts or already starting to get wound up to go back to work. I stopped wanting to do anything, I didn't want to go out with my kids, I didn't want to go out with my family, I just wanted to stay home where I knew it was safe. Yet I didn't really make it safe, I was always on edge at home too, always angry, always pissed off, always too tired to really engage in anything. I was falling further and further into the abyss, losing sight of the light more and more. I was starting to function in pure survival mode.

During all this I was still in the gym 5-6 days a week, but there was no joy in these workouts. I was simply working out for the sake of not being the weak link at a call. I was the senior guy so I had to lead by example. I had to be ready for that inevitable scrap or hard arrest, like the ones I had been a part of for years in Fort St John. Most days I really hated going to the gym. I saw no progress, I wasn't getting stronger, I wasn't gaining muscle, I was so exhausted all the time that I was never able to recover properly from any workout, yet I refused to let myself have any time to recover. I just had to keep going, because I couldn't be the one to let someone else get hurt, even if it was only hurting me. I was so deep in it that I didn't care, I just kept pushing myself further and further, believing that one day it would just get better, that I'd start getting stronger again or that I'd be able to be motivated to be there. 

I started training yet another recruit early in the year, adding more stress on top of my already stressed out system. And then the world really went to hell in a hand basket...Covid. Lockdowns, rules, cancelled school, closed parks and closed pools. I was plenty happy to just stay home the entire time, home was my safe place. I was now being rewarded for my inability to go out in public, I wasn't supposed to do anything so I didn't do anything. Except work. We were obviously essential so I was still expected to go to work. I still had to go to calls. I still had to go interact with people and then risk taking that back home. Then April 18, 2020 happened. Mass shootings in Nova Scotia. 22 innocent people killed by a mad man including a member. Yet the media starts to turn it to being the RCMP's fault. We did everything wrong. The blame was taken away from the evil piece of shit that killed the people and put on us. A little more than a month later George Floyd was killed in the US and that turned the tide even further against the profession. Now we were all racists, we were all murderers, we were all pieces of shit that could do no right. We were government pawns in the Covid lockdowns, we were bootlickers and executioners. The hate that was directed at us was incredibly hard to deal with. Not only was I not really satisfied with work, I didn't feel like I was doing anything worth doing because there was nothing happening, but now we were targets of hate. I couldn't shake the feeling that one day I was going to walk out the door of the detachment and someone would be waiting to shoot at me. I withdrew further into myself during all of this. I was really starting to lose the fight against the voices in my head.

Smile Big Enough so no one 
Can see the pain behind it

As we were getting into the fall, I was aware that I was getting closer to 3 years of time in Edson which would mean we would be eligible to transfer again. I started looking at places that we could go and everything within Alberta was too overwhelming. There were too many people. It was too busy. It wouldn't be good for my family. I was terrified of living at this time, I didn't want to leave my house unless I absolutely had to. My wife and I managed to get to Banff for a few days around our Anniversary and during that time we talked about going north. Going off on a real adventure, which sounded great to me. Smaller places means less people, means less need to interact, hopefully that would reduce the constant stress that I was feeling. Looking back it was just me trying to run from everything. There was zero way that this was a good idea but all I could see was not being where I was, thinking that a change of scenery would be the cure for what was breaking my soul. 

Fucking December...it has to be December. And of course it has to be a call out. A domestic at an apartment building. Off I go, shit 3 times between getting the call and getting to the scene. Get inside and learn the two people are a couple we deal with all the time. The male is a constant problem, he never goes quietly, its always a scrap. It takes a while for things to build up, there's a lot of fuck you flying at me and my partner, a lot of fuck offs, a lot of the usual bullshit. And the whole time I'm just telling both of them we need to talk separately so we can determine if anything actually happened. If there's no issues then we can leave. Buddy suddenly runs up, jumps over the piles of shit on the floor and tries to slam the bedroom door in my face. Well fuck now its on. I get the door kicked open and he's standing about 8 feet away from me, fists up, telling me he wants to fight. So out comes the taser and the warnings are issued. Suddenly he reaches down and grabs something, it looks like a small club, but he pulls it apart and its a fucking machete. It goes straight up over his head and there's a look in his eyes that is just empty. No time to transition I just pulled the trigger. Full hit with both probes and he locks tight up. His partner is trying to pull the wires away from him so she's getting shocked. The cycle ends, he has at least dropped the knife. I quickly transition to my pistol and go straight to being ready to shoot the guy. One warning issued: "if you reach for anything I am going to fucking shoot you". I was ready at that point to end his life the instant he didn't comply with my orders. This time he listened, he got up slowly to walk out of the room. I look over at my partner and he's standing with his hands at his vest, not at already to deal with anything. I remember very clearly looking at him and telling him to get his fucking gun out because I was going to cuff this guy. We get back to the office, he gets processed and the gravity of what happened hits me like a tonne of fucking bricks. I was 8 feet from having a machete stuck in my forehead. I felt like I was having the start of a panic attack, I got short of breath, I got sweaty, I got tunnel vision. I remember walking down the hallway into the garage space and hitting the punching bag as hard as humanly possible. That was all the release I was able to muster. I go back to my desk, get a quick walkby from the sergeant, not even a question but a statement "hey, you're alright" and then back to work. I spent the next 10 hours working my regular shit with no break. I did the court pack, I did the hearing prep, I still responded to other calls. Then I had to go home and get ready to do it again the next day. How do you tell your wife that you almost got chopped with a machete? How do you look at your girls and realize that they almost didn't have a dad any more? How do you look at yourself in the mirror and live with yourself? Every bit of training, everything that has been taught to me and that I've taught my recruits, the junior members under my care, the other members that I've worked with is deadly force is met with deadly force. Why didn't I take a step back and transition? Am I not quick enough to get my gun out? What if the probes didn't connect? What if he stabbed me and my partner shoots me instead of him? What if I go to shoot him and his girlfriend jumps in the way? As someone with anxiety I'd like to think that I can what if any situation into the worst possible case scenario and this one was going to be the death of me.

I didn't sleep more than an hour at a time for the next couple weeks. Every time I would start to fall asleep I would end up back in that apartment, seeing the death look in the guys eyes, seeing the glint of the machete in the light as it went over his head. Sometimes in my nightmares the taser didn't fire. Sometimes I was shooting at him with my pistol and nothing hit him. Then I'd startle awake and find myself in a night sweat. I didn't want to sleep. I had essentially stopped drinking by this time, because when I drank I found myself going to even darker places, so I just withdrew even further. Covid Christmas was coming so there was going to be no escape for a holiday this year.

Low and behold, when you don't think it can get worse, it gets worse. Still unable to process what had happened during the machete incident, I get called out, this time for a fight at a motel potentially involving a knife. Same guy is working with me that responded to the machete call. Drag myself out of bed, shit a few more times once I get to the office, get geared up and off we go. Get to the motel and there's no fight. Talk to the manager and find out the fighting people were in one of the rooms. Getting ready to approach the room and out comes a guy we've dealt with a few times. We direct him away from the room and notice that he is covered in blood. I hear someone calling for help so into the room I go. If there was a scene that just pushes you over the edge this would be the one that threw me right off the cliff. That heavy taste of iron hung in the air. There was blood on the walls, the roof, the beds, the floor. There was broken furniture and then there was the victim. Beaten to a bloody pulp, his face was unrecognizable. All he could do was call for help. And then he died. He went completely vital signs absent. No breathing, no pulse, no signs of life. He was hog tied so when we turned him to cut the ties at least he puked out a large volume of blood then at least started to raggedly breath again. Those haunting agonal breaths. I was on the radio calling for help, calling for ambulances, calling for back up. And then once the ambulance came it was time to get back to work. I spent the day working on the file, writing warrants, doing the investigation, really all without a whole lot of support. And then it was time to go home, try to get some sleep and come back to finish things up the next day. Now how the fuck am I supposed to sleep? I have the machete still playing and on top of that now I have this hotel room to try and process too. Which clearly isn't going to happen.

How am I supposed to enjoy anything now? I close my eyes and just see these horrors from the last couple weeks. I just wanted them to stop. I didn't want to close my eyes and see death, to close my eyes and see what I can't forget. Shortly after the new year was the first time I remember contemplating ending things. I couldn't sleep properly, I couldn't stop being angry at everything, I couldn't stop seeing the things that I had seen the past almost 8 years. I couldn't get the feeling out of my head that the only way to stop these memories was to die. I couldn't shake the feeling that my wife and daughters would really end up better off without me around, that they wouldn't have to walk on egg shells, or worry about my anger or worry about me not wanting to do anything other than hide inside the house. I didn't want to live any more. That was the real turning point in my life, where I had lost the will to live. I was so far in the hole that I didn't even consider asking for help. I had gotten myself in there and it was me who was supposed to get me out right? That's how it works, no one can save you except you. I didn't see any other way to stop the nightmares, to stop the visions, the haunting smells, the triggering sounds. I just wanted to sleep soundly, to feel rested, to feel like I was okay. The thought that kept crossing my mind was the only way to stop the pain was to end the pain.

Why didn't I do it? Why am I still here? The honest answer is my girls. I know that I have been a present yet absent parent for many years. I know that I have been irrationally angry and a parent that hasn't been easy to live with. For as much as I felt the girls would be better off without me, something deeper down told me that they needed me, that they needed their daddy. My wife needed me to be there. That's it because I really didn't see a point to living any more beyond being there for my wife and daughters. Hell there are days now that I have to look hard at those girls and remind myself that they still need me, that drives me forward and makes me take another step toward healing. 

These three are the only reason 
I'm still here

That's all I can muster for this post. Thank you for taking the time to make it this far.

If you are on that edge of giving up, don't. It sure as fuck isn't easy, it sure as fuck doesn't seem worth it most days. There are people in this life that need you.

The Price of Anything is the Amount of Life you Exchange for It - Henry David Thoreau

Chris