Rock Meet Bottom
Welcome back for another installment of the shitshow known as life. Last week was a kind of turning point for me in my healing, to put it out there that I had reached a point in my life where I didn't want to live any more. I talked with my Psychologist about it this week and I mentioned that it helped me to feel better by talking about it. Like I was able to break through the boundary of shame that I had built up because of the secret that I was holding. During those times I didn't tell anyone what I was feeling. I didn't tell my wife, I didn't tell my friends, I obviously didn't tell anyone in my office. So it became like everything else that I was refusing to acknowledge or deal with for the years prior. I just kept pushing it down, pushing it away, expecting that it would just go away or that one day I would wake up and things would be okay again in my life. The scary part looking back is that I kept going for as long as I did, just living right on the edge of disaster for as long as humanly possible.
Before I get into the final years of work before things collapsed I will warn again that there are some topics and stories that may be distressing.
I ended off my last post in the New Year of 2021. I started the year in a deep dark place, seriously contemplating ending everything. I could never come up with how I would do it, because no matter how it would be done there would be so much pain for those left behind. My co-workers who would have to deal with the call, my family having to deal with my death, the unanswered questions about how or why. I have a running joke/instruction for my wife that when I die, hopefully at home, she has to take my pants off so that whatever junior member catches the sudden death call has to deal with a naked body, just sweet karma for all the naked bodies I've had to see over the years. Should I choose to commit suicide then that wouldn't happen, there would be no karma, there would only be another death investigation. Instead I trudged on through life. I was the grumpy, tired asshole in the office. "Hey, how are you/how's it going?" The common answer I had for people was the ever so popular "Living the dream" or occasionally I could muster a "Oh you know, I'm here". That was literally how I felt. I was there and the sad part was there wasn't anywhere else for me to be.
I had two "safe" places to go. Home and the office. Home was safe because it was home and I thought I could control it. I made life terrible for my family, I was always on edge, always expecting my kids to listen instantly to my directions, always wanting them to be doing something but do it quietly because I couldn't handle the noise. The office wasn't at all safe but I made it safe. Inside the office nothing could get me. I could control my desk, I could control my space. Of course the down side to that was I was constantly anxious about having to leave my safe space and have to go out and deal with police work, about the potential of more trauma coming down the pipe.
Early in January I was put in an acting role, taking the place of one of the corporals while he was off duty. It was a bit of a welcome break, getting off the radio for the minor calls but then it was more stressful because I was now responsible for everyone. I had to attend the serious calls as a supervisor, to give guidance and direction to members looking up to me, to be the member that was best able to control a situation, when in reality I was barely able to control my own situation.
My anxiety was so bad that my IBS was completely out of control. I was shitting non-stop, no matter if it was a day shift or a night shift. I could barely eat a meal without my dysphagia kicking in so bad that I was going to throw up every time I would try to eat. If I had to leave the office for a call there was no telling if I was going to shit my pants or not on the way there. Once I would get to a call then autopilot took over. I could always count on that, I was ready for anything the job could throw at me, I could investigate the shit out of any file, I was a damn good cop. It was all the time between calls, between those times I left the office that I wasn't okay with. I couldn't function as a member. I would go out and aimlessly drive around, I was too anxious to do traffic stops, to do anything proactive. I would drive around for an hour, taking side roads, back roads, doing whatever I could to make it look like I was working without actually risking doing any work.
As February rolled around I was contacted by staffing to see if I was still interesting in going North. They had done a HRMIS run, for those outside the RCMP its a database check to see what preferred detachments you have on your staffing plan for transfers/career development. I had nearly every detachment in the Northwest Territories on my list and my name was hit on all of them. Of course I was interested, I wanted to get away from Edson as fast as I could. I wanted to go somewhere where it felt like I was doing real police work again. That's what I told myself. In reality I was just trying to run from my problems, I believed that if I moved that it would make a difference, that it would make the shit in my head magically go away, that I would get to a new detachment and everything would be hunky dorey. I spoke with staffing and was offered one spot, Behchoko, formerly known as Rae/Edzo, congenially known as the shithole of the Northwest Territories. Super busy, not overly friendly towards police. But on the bright side it was an hour on paved highway from Yellowknife, rent wasn't too expensive and it was only a 2 year commitment. After some discussions with my wife she went to the spouses boards and I called the detachment. It wasn't exactly the place we were hoping for but the proximity to Yellowknife really sold us. It was a good way to break into the north. So I accepted the transfer, contingent on passing my northern medical.
April rolled around and I felt like I needed to do something to honor the sacrifice that Heidi Stevenson made while trying to end the slaughter that was taking place in Nova Scotia. I organized a small memorial at the detachment, inviting members to put on their serge so that we could have a moment of silence to remember the 22 people that were killed. I put the painstaking effort into making sure that my kit was glossed up to the standard expected of a member attending a funeral. I put everything together and with my family beside me we went to the detachment. It was a small turn out, but a number of members were there. I gave a short talk about the power of remembering and I wasn't able to get through it without breaking down. It was like when my wife and I went for a holiday on the east coast and we stopped at the fallen fathers memorial for Dave, Doug and Fab. I couldn't stop the tears from coming. I felt the weight of their sacrifice in the depths of my soul. It was the same when trying to talk for Heidi. Looking at my girls, the weight of not coming home to them sat heavy on my heart. We had our ceremony, had our moment of silence and went about our lives. I look back and the weight of the serge is something else that wasn't really talked about in training. Not long after there was an incident during which a police dog was shot and killed. We listened in that night, listened to the updates, to the manhunt, to the efforts to catch the person responsible. I went home that night and cried because the pain needed to come out. Members had been shot at that night, people I knew were going to help with the manhunt, would be directly involved in the event. The reality of how small the RCMP actually is sets in every time there is a death because in every detachment there is always a connection some how.
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A small way to say thank you |
I did all the medical testing, the health assessment, the hearing and vision and the psych. I re-did the MMPI, the same one that I did when I applied 9 years prior. The results seemed to be concerning but I was told that the results of the members test were compared to a different group of standards because I was a regular member now and not a civilian. Guess what, you're fucked up compared to normal people, but not as fucked up as your co-workers, so you're good to go. I did the short interview, made mention that I had been in front line policing for almost 8 years and had seen some shit but that I was doing okay with it all and was excited to go north. Clearly I have a good poker face because there was no follow up at all and I was cleared to go on a northern adventure. We listed our house, managed to sell it after a couple weeks and prepared to go off on the grandest adventure yet.
During those months of waiting I was still on edge, still not able to sleep well, eat properly or enjoy life at all. Yet there was some optimism because we were going to be leaving a detachment that I was done working at and I genuinely believed my own bullshit that the move would be what I really needed to get my head right. I want to also touch on other ways that I stopped caring about myself. Hygiene was a big one, I stopped showering during my days off, I stopped shaving or even trying to maintain some semblance of control of my patchy and poorly kept beard. I let my hair get out of control, the parts that weren't starting to fall out. I would snack endlessly trying to make up for being unable to eat normal meals. I didn't really drink much because when I drank I could feel the really dark places start to get stronger and my honest concern was that if I got drunk enough I would lose the self control I was relying on to keep myself alive. Even now I can tell when I'm getting stuck in a funk because I stop doing those little things to take care of myself. It's amazing the mental energy it takes to have a shower when you can't stand yourself or you don't feel like you're worthy of taking care of.
The process of the move was nothing short of a complete and utter fuck fest, for lack of a better term. Anyone who has moved with the RCMP knows that it is a complete shitshow on a good day and we didn't have any good days. The pack team showed up, two hours late of course, then took the better part of 10 hours to pack our house. We don't have that much stuff and my wife had pre-packed a lot of it into totes like she had done for our first move. Then at 4:58 I got a phone call, which went to voicemail and the message was awesome "Hey, for your load date tomorrow we don't have a crew or a truck available, we're trying to figure it out." What the fuck? Call the guy back, its now 5 and the office is closed. No one at relocation is answering phones, as usual. So what does a guy with anxiety do? Spends all night coming up with scenarios and arguments to have then drifts off to a super restless sleep and wakes up at 4 when on call starts. I got my calls started first thing in the morning and wouldn't you know it, things were fucked. No truck, no crew and the company telling me that they might have someone by Friday. Which clearly doesn't work since closing on the sale was noon on Thursday. Which I managed to explain without losing my shit on the guy. It still surprises me now that I was able to make those phone calls and not completely melt down. Fake it til you make it. Finally by mid-afternoon they have scraped together a truck and a crew and would be there Wednesday morning to get the house loaded up. Of course that means having to reschedule the cleaners and still pray that everything works out the way we need it to. So what shows up the next day? A fucking U-haul truck....this from the largest moving company in North America with a standing government contract. They get to work and low and behold the truck is too small for all of our stuff. We pick and choose some things to leave behind, then with the help of a great neighbour get the rest stuffed in his truck to go to the dump.
I stopped in at the office one last time the next morning when leaving town, collected the last of my gear and did a final email check. Mostly because I was waiting for the detachment commander in Behchoko to let me know what house we would be moving into, not like thats a big deal or anything, and also to see if there would be exemptions for work at the border. The NWT was still locked down tight, keeping people in isolation centers prior to them being allowed into the territories smaller communities. Nothing there, so off we went, first to Edmonton to get the girls from their grandparents, then starting the almost 2000km drive to the NWT. On the first day of our drive I got a call from my new boss telling me there were some forms to get filled out then sent in to get work permission. Too late, so instead I would take the 10 day isolation period in Hay River and enjoy a little paid holiday. The drive up was fast but beautiful, getting to see places I had never seen before. We stopped at the North of 60 sign at the border and were immediately greeted by a fucking army of mosquitos. What have we done? Ten days in Hay River was amazing. Nothing to do, no plans to be made, just time to be a family and explore the area. So we went waterfall chasing, swimming in the Great Slave Lake, checked out local parks and had a nice little holiday. A few negative covid tests later and things were arranged to be dropped off at the house in Behchoko.
Lets talk about culture shock. That's what I would describe it as when we drove into Behchoko. The big hand painted picture of Jesus with "Crack takes Money Away from your Kids, Say no to drugs" hung on the side of the garage next to the firehall. Dogs running around, burned out houses visible on the main stretch of road. What in the fuck have we gotten ourselves into. We pulled into the detachment parking lot and looked out over Marion Lake. The view behind the detachment is a million dollar view, perched just above the lake, looking out over the water. We got keys to our assigned house and waited for the moving truck to come. The house we were given was a little on the small side. 3 bed, 1 bath, no basement. Then the mover asked us why we were taking the haunted house. C'est que fuck? I learned from the mover, not from anyone in the detachment, that house was the one in which a prior member had committed suicide. Then I also learned that one of the members in the much bigger duplex was moving out the next day. So why wouldn't they tell me that before I left Hay River and I could have delayed the moving truck one day to get into the bigger, not haunted house? Fuck. Instead they moved all our stuff into the house, left behind a moving dolly and the next day I moved every single box across the street from one house into the other. Of course it had to be the hottest stretch of the summer those couple days. And to top it off the supervisor comes by and asks if I have my gun and uniform handy. There were only 3 members in town, 1 of them being a brand new recruit with less than 2 months service, so if they got busy they might need a helping hand.
We got settled fairly quick and I got to work. The prior information didn't lie, it was busy. But it was easy busy, mostly just wrangling drunks and breaking up fights. The kind of shifts I enjoyed because it didn't give me a chance to sit around and worry about what might happen. Days off weren't too bad because we were able to get into Yellowknife which was the big city. Real grocery stores, real restaurants and plenty of new places to explore and enjoy. I was instantly the senior constable in the detachment, with a minimum of 2 years more service than anyone else so I would be looked to as a guide to help out in any way possible. The crew that was there initially was awesome. Everyone got along really well, I clicked with the guys I worked with. The new recruits that came in were all really good members and weren't afraid of the work. It was a good transition into the detachment. Behchoko has access to some of the worlds best fishing as well. I got a chance to head out to one of the honey holes within the first month and it was the greatest day of fishing I have ever experienced. We were hauling trophy sized northern pike all day. I'm talking 40+ pound, over 4 feet long monsters that guys pay thousands of dollars to come and try to catch and we have access to it a short 30 minute ride from our office. Things actually didn't look too bad.
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Monster Slob Alert |
Unfortunately it didn't last long. August was the 100th anniversary of the signing of treaty 11 so that meant it was party time. The community was set to host a celebration of the event and a hand games tournament. Thousands of people were expected to attend from all over the territory. Day one of the event and rumors start to spread of a Covid outbreak in Fort Good Hope, where a hand games tournament was held the weekend before. Then there's a couple confirmed cases in Behchoko, then a couple more. Then panic sets in. Elders are flown back to their communities, events are cancelled, testing booths are set up. Within a week the community is in lockdown. There are checkstops set up at the entrances of the communities and you can't get back in without negative tests or proof of vaccination. Well my kids aren't vaccinated since there isn't one yet and they aren't doing testing unless you have symptoms. So my oldest starts school online...as a kindergartener. Only my wife or I can leave to Yellowknife for groceries. At one point there were over 1000 confirmed positive cases in a community of 1800. And I still had to go to work. Still had to go deal with the drunks, still had to go deal with the domestics, with the shit. I had people cough at me, I had people spit at me, I had people tell me they hoped I would get Covid and take it to my family and they would get sick. My family was literally trapped. We lived next door to the office so there was no escape for me. There was no down time, there was no relax time, there was only home and work. I continued to try and make home my safe place which was hard to do. I wasn't able to turn it off because I was always next to the office. Every time the cars would rip out of the lot we knew they were off somewhere. Every drunk asshole kicking the cell wall I could hear the banging in my bedroom. Every drunk that walked past the house toward the shelter I worried was going to break a window on my van or yell at my kids if they were outside. Needless to say my mental health was taking a beating again.
A small saving grace of the sun starting to set earlier and earlier each day was that the Aurora Borealis aka the Northern Lights started to come out with some relative frequency and I tell you what. Standing outside watching the sky turn green, purple, white and red, seeing the colours dance, hearing them move and smelling the odd smell of charged atmosphere, during those moments I felt peace. I loved clear night shifts because I would cruise out of town away from the street lights, hell away from the possibility of having to do work, and I would just sit and let the lights bring some peace to my soul. Then I learned the local mythology that if you whistled at the lights they might come down and snatch your soul away from you, so you know that I was out whistling every chance I got. Come and take it!
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They pay me a lot of money to sit and watch nights like this |
Once winter started to set in, we weren't locked down as tightly so at least we could get to Yellowknife more often to get a break from the small community. The issue started to be that I couldn't enjoy the time in Yellowknife. We would start to get within 15 minutes of arriving and my guts would start to drop. I could feel the anxiety building inside me and it was just waiting to explode out. It was an unpleasant trend, as soon as we got to which ever store we were starting at I would bee line straight to the bathroom. Then I'd be okay for one stop then have to do it all over again by the next one. And there was no one in Yellowknife to recognize me. It's not like I was going to have issues with any of the people there, I had never worked there. It was just the anxiety of being out in public. I was so used to my little bubble in Behchoko that having to leave it was so incredibly stressful. I wanted so badly to be able to enjoy the day trips with my family, to be able to have fun at the park with my girls or go swimming, do the things they wanted to do but I just couldn't find myself enjoying them. I was falling back into the hole again, falling deeper into the pit. We were able to go home for a couple weeks at Christmas, not a full two blocks off due to staffing levels, but at least it was something. Being in the city was beyond overwhelming but I did what I could to make the most of it. New Years Eve in Behchoko was insane. The northern lights made a spectacular appearance at about 830 and the night went so far down hill from there it was like going tips down on a black diamond. We fought all night and well into the new year. To the point that I ran calls just because I was curious and to start the new year, over the first three days we took more calls in 'Cho that they did in Yellowknife. It was fucking nuts. After 3 days we were on pace to have over 2000 prisoners, which obviously wouldn't be sustained but it was a clusterfuck and a half.
As I started to get further into the hole, I started finding myself back to being an asshole more and more. Not as much at home, mostly because I could get it all out of my system at work. Someone would mouth off, not listen right away, be a typical drunk, and I would instantly react with anger. I slapped the shit out of people solely because I felt they deserved it or because I needed to establish dominance at a call. I was becoming the kind of member I swore I would never be, just a grumpy pissed off bully. I'm sure the junior members saw it and figured it would be alright since I was the guy they were looking at. I didn't want to be that guy. I was making efforts to be a good community cop, I was having tea with elders and more often then not I could diffuse a situation without having to slap someone because a good number of people in the community got to know me. The other problem was because the winter nights were long and cold with nothing happening that hyper vigilant anxiety kept sticking around. I was always expecting the worst of the worst to happen. I still had IBS all the time, my dysphagia was all over the place. I could go weeks with no issues then all of a sudden I couldn't eat without choking. I was still working out like a mad man, not recovering at all and spending most of my time just physically and mentally drained. I couldn't stop though because I had to always be ready to fight right, had to be able to control the chaos within any call and I couldn't do that if I wasn't in the gym all the time. Then there was the lack of sleep. On call for day shifts started at 6 but I was still waking up at 4 because that's what I was used to. After night shifts I was on call from the end of shift from 4 until 6. So I would get home from work at 4, stay awake until 6 waiting for on call to be done then try to go to bed and sleep normally. On a good day I'd maybe get 6 hours. Days off were no better, I'd constantly be up early waiting for my phone to ring, or taking overtime shifts so that I wouldn't spend the day sitting at home expecting something bad to happen.
My parents came to visit in the early spring for my daughters birthday. What was supposed to be a fun family visit was anything but that. I felt so anxious the whole time because we had company that I didn't really enjoy it. I was sinking into the depression enough that my dad noticed I wasn't the same. I had no energy, I didn't find enjoyment in the little things any more. I just wanted each day to be over so I could lay in bed hiding from the world. I didn't really want to sleep because with sleep came nightmares but there were days where the nightmares became a better option than being awake. The luster of the new place of work was quickly wearing off, who knew that trying to run from my problems wasn't the answer. It was after that visit that I decided that I was going to reach out for help. Not through my employer though, fuck that. The RCMP was notorious for fucking people over when they asked for help and I wasn't about to let that happen. So I went to the Legion instead, asking them for their help. For their contacts to get someone who knew how to navigate the RCMP systems. The Legion worked exceptionally fast and I had a list of names within the week. Step 1 done. Step 2 was actually asking for help. Which I wasn't about to do over the phone. So I would wait until I was alone in the office, sometimes after 4 when the other guys would go home and I would be on call, and send off an email to a service provider asking for help. The first couple didn't work out and then I made contact with the Psychologist that I have been working with since. Step 3 was making contact.
I made it into step 3 no issues. I told a little bit of my story, glazed over a lot of the details because I didn't want to talk about them. Sold myself short on really getting help because that would have meant I needed to admit how bad things actually were. The real truth is I didn't know how bad things actually were because I had gotten so used to living in the dark that what I talked about was what I was living. The IBS, the dysphagia, the anxiety and depression were just a part of my life that I had learned to live with for so many years that I didn't really see them as being issues. They were more just something I had come to expect as a part of my life. So my Dr did what she could with what I gave her. I learned about the power of breathing and grounding. Things I am still doing now, but obviously they were no where near enough to offset or even make a dent in the symptoms I was living with. I was just holding on for dear life.
It took all of one appointment for her to diagnose me with C-PTS and moderate anxiety. In less than an hour she learned enough to know that things were a long way from okay in my head and in my life. Looking back, I wonder how much different things could have been now had I been honest then. What ifs are obviously the anxious persons worst enemy but it's hard not to play that game while I sit here and write about how bad things got. Everyone else in the world could see that I wasn't right, that the past traumas weren't going to break their hold on me, that unless I got some real help I wasn't going to get any better.
I had my first bad anxiety attack late that spring. We were driving back from Yellowknife and a truck pulled out to pass another vehicle while coming toward us. The truck cut the pass close but there was still at least 100 meters difference between us and that was enough for my brain. I had an instant flashback to the scene of the fatal outside Chetwynd, except I was seeing my kids dead bodies from the crash. My wife was right beside me in the truck but behind my eyes she was gone. I could smell the burning antifreeze and air conditioning in the truck felt like the air that night. Joys of highway 3 is there are no shoulders, no place to stop safely or pull off the road. So I'm trying to breath my way through this attack. My heart rate is spiked, my vision is blurry, I'm sweating like crazy. All while trying not to crash and hurt my family. We got home and I had to go stand by the lake to try and get calmed down. That in and of itself should have told me how fucked up things had gotten but I just chalked it up to talking about things in therapy and went about my life.
Things at the detachment kept changing too. Experienced members left and nothing coming in but recruits. At the start of summer you could take all the other constables service, add it up and I still had double the time in. Talk about a learning curve. I was getting my own recruit shortly after and had been helping with training the new bodies, doing everything I could to share my knowledge with them, to try and teach them the safest way to do the job. I felt the stress and anxiety of this a lot, worrying about how the new bodies would react when it was time to scrap, when shit hit the fan, when it was go time. Around this time I put my name forward for a promotion, I was dead set that my future in police work with the RCMP was to stay in general duty and after seeing everything I had seen I was ready to take the next step. I felt like if I promoted, if I got directly off the radio and moved permanently into a supervisor role I would be okay. I had been acting as a supervisor for essentially the entire time in Behchoko and for a good chunk of the time in Edson so I felt like I was well suited for a job. Leave it to the RCMP to have a promotion system as fucked up as it is and I missed sending in some of my paperwork because I misunderstood the requirements of one step in the process, so my name was withdrawn from the process. Not long after that I was contacted by staffing to advise that I could still proceed as a promotion by exception, which wouldn't take much since I had all of the required parts for a promotion. I just had to take a step into the office and my promotion would be complete. There it is, the way out of Behchoko and the way out of my problems. So I accepted and we would be on the move again, this time much farther north to Inuvik.
As summer started to roll in the call volume stayed pretty high. One of the perks of the north I suppose, where the sun sets but doesn't really set, where it stay light for 24 hours a day, where there's no way to distinguish from one day to the next. It's also supposed to be a chance to get out of town for a holiday. Yet somehow for the summer I was given one, that's right, one block off. Which meant I would have a grand total of 13 days off, so with travel on both ends I get 11 days off to try and unwind. And then the subpoena for court shows up, Queens Bench preliminary at the end of my holiday time. So 11 days becomes 8. Fuck me. And August is shaping up to be the fuck show of all fuck shows. The Treaty Celebration was taking place and with it was coming a $200000 prize pot handgames tournament. The richest prize pot ever in the history of the NWT. Which meant that things were going to get out of hand. In typical RCMP fashion, no help was provided to us. So the detachment ended up coming up with the bodies to cover all the shifts from within. Thankfully my wife and girls were going home early so they wouldn't have to be around for the cluster fuck.
Shortly before the events started my new recruit showed up, and wouldn't you know it, he was 19. 19 years old. Thanks to one of the guys in the office, he let me know that my new guy wasn't alive for 9/11. Or for the debut of the Lord of the Rings. Or for the first god damn I-pod. Hell I was almost in high school when he was born. He was in elementary school when I started policing. I'm not all that concerned in my coaching skills but this will be more of a test of trying to figure out how I can connect with a guy that never had to use T-9 to text.
That stretch from the start of the treaty celebrations to the end of the handgames was like nothing I have worked before. Over 300 calls for service, over 100 people put into cells, more liquor through town than you could possibly ever imagine. It was completely insane. If memory serves me correctly I had 1 day off in that stretch, which I spent hiding in the house so I didn't have to risk going out and seeing any more of the disaster that was the community. There was another anxiety attack/heavy flashback during the event. Call came in for a single vehicle rollover with trapped occupants. Off we go, I'm driving and I can feel the panic setting in as we get closer to the location. My garmin had my heartrate at almost 200, which is a level I can barely get to in the gym, I was tunneled right in and all I could do was just get there. Once we got on scene thankfully the person that had called into dispatch was greatly exaggerating the seriousness of the matter. The truck had rolled but no one was trapped, shit they were already gone. I made the new guy take pictures and get close to the truck while I stood on the side of the road and tried to calm myself down. And then it was back to town to keep going with the disaster that was the rest of the celebrations. I was absolutely wrecked by the end of it. Barely any sleep, non-stop adrenaline for so many shifts. The worst part was I couldn't even look forward to my holiday because I had court in less than 2 weeks and it was for the hotel room assault that pushed me over the edge into being suicidal.
I finished a shift, grabbed my bag and headed to the airport. I didn't have to worry about falling asleep since I was so jacked up from work. That holiday was another long warning sign that I wasn't okay and should have stopped pretending I was. We had a big family photoshoot scheduled, down on the south side of Edmonton. I spent an entire day mentally preparing myself to drive across the city in rush hour traffic, then the timing got shifted because it was hot as balls and that threw me for such a loop that I almost had an anxiety attack. We went out with friends and I was so amped up that I felt like I was going to a gun call because I had to go to the mall and be around people. My cousin got married and I wasn't able to enjoy the reception because the noise and the people were so overstimulating that I was on the verge of panic. Once again my symptoms were rearing their head and I was to blind to them to be able to fully grasp what was happening.
I sent my girls home and got myself ready for court. I knew it was going to be tough but hell I'm a rock solid mountie so I can handle it. I steeled myself for a couple days then headed down to the courthouse. Of course it has to be downtown Edmonton so I had to prepare myself for that drive too. I was a wreck leading up to it, couldn't eat properly, couldn't sleep without seeing the hotel room, couldn't stop shitting. Made it to court, started testifying and then it happened. I had to talk about the scene, about what I walked into, and I lost the fight against myself. I broke down in court. Crying, hyperventilating, I was right back there, the taste of blood on my tongue, the smell of blood and vomit in my nose, the sight of the victim right back in my eyes. Thankfully the judge was empathetic to my situation and gave me all the time I needed to finish my testimony. I managed to get through it but it was one of the most draining things I had ever been through.
After finishing my testimony I had a couple days to get more medical stuff done for the upcoming transfer and spent as much time as possible just sitting at my parents house hiding from the world before I had to fly back north. I flew back then a week later had to turn back around and head back down for the actual trial. My testimony was scheduled for up to 3 days, which meant up to 3 days to get keyed up to have to go back over the details of the scene again. Court being court, I got all dressed up, showed up for the first day and was told that I wasn't going to be on the stand at all. Fuck me, so now I had a full day to just sit around and be anxious about getting back on the stand. Once I finally got to testify it was the same thing as the prelim, I got to the room and couldn't keep it together. I had the exact same reaction, the same flashbacks and tastes, the same crying and hyperventilating. I knew that scene had impacted me but I still didn't realize how much. I got out of court that day, walked outside and managed to get inside my rental before I lost it again. I must have cried for a good 15 minutes, just completely overwhelmed by having to relive that scene again. The next few nights I couldn't sleep again, I kept reliving that nightmare of a call over and over. There was no escaping the memories.
I got back to Behchoko and it was prep time for the move. We got very lucky in that relocation put a rush on our file so we could try to beat freeze up and get to Inuvik before the new year. It was an absolute blur of madness to get things ready, to get movers coordinated and figure out our route to the far far north. I was so excited, not only for the drive but for the move. Once again I felt like if I ran from where I wasn't feeling good that it would be okay and things would work out for the better.
It was an absolutely incredible 3000km drive. We saw caribou, wolves, bison, moose, goats, sheep. Saw places that very few people in the world have ever seen. It wasn't without its challenges. Trying to keep two kids from killing each other over 30 hours in a truck. Trying to keep the anxiety in check while doing that much driving. Getting to the first ferry crossing at the Peel River and finding the ferry approach washed out with ice flowing in the river. Learning that one of the couples in line had been there for 12 hours already and that we might not be able to get across that night. Sharing snacks with the stranded truckers. Then it was time to get on the ferry and the very odd feeling of looking out the drivers window and seeing ice floes level with the top of the truck knowing that we were mere inches from the river breaching the walls and washing us out to the arctic ocean. Then the sun dropped and it has to snow for the last 150km but we made it. 15 hours on the road in a day but we made it. I was all excited to start the new gig, to get into the detachment and get settled.
Things started okay, I felt not bad going to work. I was slowly getting integrated into the detachment, but things felt very different. The supervisors had their own office so I wasn't out in the bullpen with the crew. I worked a different schedule than everyone else so there wasn't any consistency with who I was working with. I was still senior to everyone except the other corporal and the detachment commander, so I felt the pressure of being a good example and a good teacher. Things didn't take long to start sliding down. The supervisory role wasn't hard work, I had been reviewing files for a long time. The tasking and expectations weren't new or unexpected. I was doing exactly what I had expected to be doing. Yet things were getting worse. The schedule was gross, 4 day shifts, 4 days off, 4 nights, 2 days off then do it all over again. Except the 2 days off is like a day and a half off. And then there's supervisory on-call requirements, to be on call when no supervisor was on shift or available. So I stopped sleeping almost entirely, just expecting my phone to ring at any hour of the day. And because supervisors were only needed for serious matters it was going to be dead bodies, serious fatals, injured members, issues in cells etc. Stuff that I already had nightmares because of. Within a month I was unable to function at all. I was exhausted all the time, I couldn't do anything with my kids, I couldn't do anything to help around the house. I was spending hours of the day sitting on the couch staring at nothing, coming to learn that I was dissociating to try and avoid further anxiety. I was depressed to the point that nothing could make me smile or even a little bit happy. I bought a snowmobile, figuring that it would get me out of the house. It didn't. It sat in the yard getting covered in snow. I was a complete and utter train wreck.
Then I learned that I wouldn't be getting Christmas holidays with the girls because one of the members booked his trip without it being fully approved before I started. So my wife and daughters were going home 10 days before Christmas and coming back in the New Year and I would be spending the entire holiday season alone, in a place where I wasn't really feeling like a part of the detachment and working a job that was literally killing me. On top of not sleeping, I couldn't eat properly, I was shitting even more than I had been in Behchoko. My hair was falling out in clumps. A few of the guys in the office managed to flip some shifts around enough to get enough coverage for me to go home for a week. So I got to go home and surprise my girls by showing up for Christmas. It was a hectic week but it felt good to be able to be home with them, even if I wasn't really able to enjoy it because as soon as I left I was already anxious to go back.
January was where rock hit bottom. Not even two weeks into the year and our cat, who we had adopted with a couple weeks of getting to Fort St John, had to be flown to Yellowknife to be put down. The stress of the move and her being an old lady took too much of a toll and she couldn't hold out any more. Things at home started falling apart too. My condition was so bad that I wasn't able to function as a husband or a father. I was a shell of a person. I was so far in the dark that I couldn't see any light no matter how hard I looked. My kids tried so hard to get me to play, to read them stories, to do anything and I couldn't. I'd get home from work after a day shift and struggle my way through dinner while they got ready for bed. Then I'd help with bedtime and then sit waiting for my phone to ring while being on call. Restless sleeps lead to rushed mornings where I would struggle to find the energy to get out of bed and help the girls get ready for the day. Between night shifts I would be lucky to sleep for 5 hours so I would spend my hours before nights just sitting on the couch dreading going to work. I wasn't able to function at all. My wife tried her best, she asked me to get help, to talk to someone, to do something to try and get out of the dark. Nothing worked. Not until it got to be to much for her and she told me she didn't know if she could do it any more.
That was the straw that broke the camels back. That finally broke the dam. That took my carefully constructed house of cards and blew it the fuck up. 10 years worth of pain, of trauma, of neglect all came crashing down, pouring out. For the first time in years I took a step back, I took an honest look at myself in the mirror and I didn't recognize myself. That was when I started writing. I took stock of myself, I just wrote everything that I could think to write. I tried to outlet my pain, to make sense of what was happening inside of myself. I couldn't really do any of that but writing felt like a good way to try and help. That and stopping the lies. During my next psych appointment I was honest with my Dr, honest with myself. I laid it all out, everything that I hadn't said for the past year. Everything that I tried to keep buried away, tried to make sense of on my own, tried to forget. I knew that I wasn't going to ever get better if I wasn't honest.
That decision would be the turning point in my story. I really did feel like I was at rock bottom in my life. I honestly felt lower at that point then I did the year before when I was considering suicide.
I'll end this part of my story with some song lyrics. I never would have paid attention to them had the song not been redone recently. I saw an explanation for the feelings expressed in the song, Last Resort by Papa Roach and reimagined by Falling In Reverse, put this way:
When the song was initially released it was a heavy anthem for the time, a song to rock out to and let energy flow with it. The reimagination is that same generation now grown up, seeing the world through different eyes and feeling the lyrics that much deeper.
I won't put the whole song down but there are a few lines that truly struck me as I listened to it recently while working through this healing journey. If you haven't listened to the reimagined version you really need to:
Losing my sight, losing my mind. Wish someone would tell me I'm fine.
I never realized I was spread to thin, til it was too late and I was empty within. Feeding on Chaos.
I can't go on living this way. Cut my life into pieces.
One of the things I'll write about at some point is the power of music. Something that I have come to really embrace as I can use song lyrics and the power of someone elses pain to help tell my own story.
Thank you again for taking the time to read my story and for the words of support. I am humbled that my story resonates with so many people and I truly cannot express how much the support means.
If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you - Friedrich Nietzsche
Chris
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