The Rabbit Hole

Hi there and welcome back. Last post was a bit more of a positive one, something that I'm trying to bring into my life a little more. Some days it works, some days it sure as shit doesn't. Lately its been very much more of the not. Being back the in the north hasn't been at all easy. With both kids heading to school now and my wife working full time that leaves me a lot of time alone by myself, trapped with my thoughts. The overwhelming reality of being alone scares the ever living shit out of me because I am not really at a point where I am okay to be alone that long. Sure, I have ways to pass the time but once those pervasive thoughts start to go to work no amount of grounding, breathing or distraction seems to work. The overwhelming reality of facing what is to come in my marriage, in my career, in my life is making this process even that much more daunting. 

Reader warning: Suicide is a heavy part of this post and is likely distressing to read about. If you need help please ask, it may not seem like it but the world is a better place with you in it.

As I sit here at the start of September, which coincidentally is suicide awareness month, I want to talk about the rabbit hole and tumbling down it. I'm sure many of you who are first responders know exactly what I am talking about. Earlier this week life just fucking smashed me down. I ended up a sobbing, slobbering mess on the couch. I couldn't eat, I couldn't look at my kids without the overwhelming feeling of shame for the pain I have caused them over the past years. I couldn't look at my wife without feeling this giant weight of failing her, the weight of letting her carry the pain that I have caused, the pain that she has for reaching the end of her rope with what she could handle. Looking at my girls and realizing how long I have been sick, how long I have been unable to be a good dad to them. Unable to play, unable to find joy in their smiles, unable to do anything that they deserve out of their days with dad. 

Then things felt okay for a couple hours. I got some outside time with my kids so they could ride bikes, I sent some emails out advocating for myself again, trying to get further help. Referrals have been done to outside agencies but like everywhere else they are backlogged and have their own wait lists. It took a lot of energy to ask for more help but as the past 8 months have shown, the unfortunate reality is that unless you make some noise, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, things don't happen with any kind of speed. 

Then things got even heavier. Talking with my wife about my emails that I sent, my wife saying that she's pissed off because of the lack of help that I've been getting these past months. The heaviness of reality started to hit again, that feeling of being alone in everything these past months. I lost it again. I sat on the stairs and bawled my eyes out. The kind of cry that happens when 10 years of traumas that were buried start to come out. When all the guilt, all the shame, all the self hate and vitriol that has cast a darkness through life for so long starts to come out. Not able to talk because it's impossible to breath through the snot and breathes are short and nearly hyper-ventilating. The tears flowing out in a way that I can't remember crying before. And through all that, my kids come to check and make sure I'm okay. My wife sat and offered nothing more than company, which is more than I honestly feel like I could possibly deserve after everything I have put her through during these past years.

One of the things that I thought about during those moments, while feeling all of that pain trying to come out at once, was how many more people have gone through the same thing I just did. How many of my friends who are police officers, paramedics, nurses, social workers have sat and not been able to fully process what they do on a day to day basis. I recently talked with a good friend who is a nurse and she talked about the moral injury that she faces at work because she is routinely responsible for ending a patients life. How does a person deal with that? I have watched people die, I have seen people take their last breaths or helped load them into an ambulance knowing full well that they weren't going to survive. But I haven't been responsible for that end of life moment. How does someone handle that happening over and over again while getting no support from their employer for those moments?

I have a cousin who is a social worker and we spoke about the impacts that job has on a person. She watched one of her co-workers break down after learning a client of hers had passed away from a completely preventable medical condition. She and her co-worker were then reprimanded for not being professional in the office setting because they had a human moment and needed to cry because of what had transpired. So now no one is allowed to be human?

I have spent so long in the darkness and hiding from these feelings that yes, it scares the ever living fuck out of me to feel pain like I felt. I have spent many years not being able to process what I had experienced as a police officer, just stuffing the pain and the trauma deeper and deeper into the crevices of my soul until there was nothing left to hold things together. My soul is literally broken into thousands of pieces, shattered by the weight of what I haven't been able to forget for all these years. Crushed by years of neglect enforced by the culture of my ass backwards work environment.

As part of my self guiding healing over these past 8 months, one of the things I have realized is that even if something hurts it needs to be given space to hurt otherwise it will just keep eating away at the pieces of a broken soul. One of the hardest things to admit has been how far down the rabbit hole I ended up when it came to suicidal ideations. I've touched on this a bit previously but I want to really try and delve into it a bit more. I've come to realize how detrimental the passive thoughts can be compared to the active ones. I wouldn't say I've actually been actively in the planning stages of suicide. I didn't write out letters, I didn't start giving away prized possessions. I never had a legitimate plan. So when I was asked about being suicidal during doctors appointments or during psych sessions I never said that I was. The thoughts of my own demise, the thoughts of not living any more had just become another part of every day.

It was more than just the usual first responder joking about how if you get another shitty domestic or have to shoot narcan up the same nose again you're going to jump in front of a passing bus. It was more of the everyone will be better off without me so I should just crash doing 190 to the next call or running headlong into a dangerous situation because at least if I eat it on the the job my family will be properly taken care of. It was thoughts of wandering off into the woods ill equipped to survive, it was wondering what would happen if you just drove into the side of the passing train. Its the desire to shut off the noise that plays in your head day after day. The sirens, the screams of the kids who have seen their parents beat the shit out of each other again, the screams of the family member who finds out their loved ones are dead. One of the methods that I've used to try and quell my anxiety has been crafting of fantasies, usually while I'm trying to fall asleep. But what happens when that doesn't work any more? What happens when the fantasies always end up turning negative or just lead to conscious nightmares? I can close my eyes and see the nightmares while I'm still awake, so then why would I want to go to sleep? How do you cope with that without thinking about taking the eternal sleep?

When those thoughts just become a normal part of every day, when the thought of getting out of bed is so daunting that you rather wouldn't. When you see life passing you by every day and you feel no joy in anything then what is the point of being alive any more. I have thought that more than once, I have sat through Christmas mornings and not been able to feel happy about watching my kids open presents. I have celebrated birthdays and not had any kind of spark during the events. I have had dinners with friends and family that cause more dread than joy because I know that I am just going to be overwhelmed by it all and won't be able to enjoy the quality time with those people that really matter to me. To have my wife tell me that she hasn't recognized me for a long time because I am such a shell of my past self, to have friends say that I have been unrecognizable because of the changes I've gone through really speaks to how much of a toll these years of being unsupported in mental wellbeing have taken on me. 

It's that feeling of aloneness that scares me more than anything now. It's that feeling of not having any real supports from my employer, its having to continually advocate for myself when I shouldn't have to do that. It's the weight of not knowing what the future holds, which in and of itself is scary as shit on a given day for most people, but add in trying to heal years of pain and trauma and that weight starts to feel like it is going to finally crush the life out of you. You try and stick to one day at a time, one meal at a time, fuck one hour at a time because sometimes getting to that next hour doesn't seem possible. For someone who is so used to the worst of the worst happening all the time, someone who suffers from anxiety, someone who doesn't know how to process the pain that keeps hovering overhead it seems impossible to not get sucked down the rabbit hole of feeling like things are never going to get better. To try and avoid the negative self talk, the guilt, the shame, the thoughts that have dominated the waking conscious hours of life for so long is exhausting. 

I am still perpetually exhausted these days. I still struggle to find the energy to play with my kids, to find the desire to try and help them have happy moments when I know that I still struggle to find those moments now. I don't dissociate like I used to so the conscious nightmares are still very prevalent. The nightmares and sleep disturbances are still a frequent occurrence. I carry an immense amount of guilt and shame for what has happened these past years, for what I have put my wife and kids through. I struggle greatly to allow myself to feel self compassion or any kind of self love. When I do the moment is fleeting because it scares me that I've felt something good about myself. I want to feel warmth in life, I want to feel moments of peace and moments of happiness but the honest to God truth is I don't know how to any more. So does it really shock me that I was so focused on not living any more? Not one bit. When surviving every day starts to feel like a chore, when there's no life to be lived then why would I want to continue? I talked previously about how my kids were what kept me alive. That isn't fair to them at all, that puts all kind of pressure on them, pressure that they aren't even aware of because I am relying on them to keep me going. I know that it isn't fair. I know that it isn't fair to tie so much of my worth and wellbeing to my wife because then I continue to drown her with the weight of my own struggles. 

I found this on Pintrest the other day while I was searching for memes and recepies:

To Anyone going through healing right now;

I wish I could explain what healing feels like, I wish I could tell you that it feels like coming home, that it feels like every soft and tender thing you have ever held within your hands. I wish I could tell you that healing is the simplest artform, that it is the act of doing this or that, that it is an equation you could master if you just focused on forgiveness, if you just flayed the hurt from your bone. But healing will never be artistic, it will never be delicate, because healing is the messiest thing you will ever know. Healing feels like digging the dirt out of your soul, like making room for yourself within your own body. Healing feels like the shining of a flickering light into the caverns life has managed to create within you; it feels like picking out the broken pieces one by one. Healing will never be linear, it will never make sense. One day you will have the answers clenched between your palms and the next you will melt into the kitchen floor, you will ask the world to be quieter for a while. Healing will start in the morning and it will end at night and no day will ever be the same. There will never be a formula. You will simply begin the process again when the sun rises. You will embark on daily journeys. You will take your steps forward. You will take your steps back. But you will always be moving and that is what you need to celebrate.

This is something that I have really struggled with during these months since I stopped working and I know it is something that I consciously need to make an effort to do more of. Yes, life is overwhelming a lot of the time. Yes, healing fucking hurts more than it seems to heal. The truth is there are a lot of pieces of my soul that I need to find and try to bring back from the rabbit hole. There are lots of pieces that I will need to discard because they don't have a place any more and there are pieces that I will find that I have to make room for because they are a more integral part than I realized. The truth of the matter is I don't know what the future holds and yes that scares me. But I shouldn't let that fear dominate my life any more.

If you are struggling, you are not alone in those struggles. I know the weight is heavy, I know the darkness seems insurmountable, I know that the guilt and the shame and the hurt are real. I know that the prospect of another day seems like too much. There are people who care, there are people who want to help and no matter how scary it is asking for help, it is worth it. 

Thank you for taking the time to read today.

Chris