Why do we eat our own?

Good day one and all. Thanks again for stopping by to take a read. It's been a bit of a week, winter has hit the region like a fucking truck. Over 15cm of snow and then some heavy winds right out of the north today to just whip everything around. I opened the front door and well over a foot tall drift waiting to fall in on my feet. Makes me just want to stay in a bake which I did a ton of the other day. Joys of cheap bags of baking bananas at the local grocery, so I went bananas...yes, its a good dad joke. I never would have guessed 8 months ago when I went off work for the first time that baking would make the kitchen a safe and relaxing place for me. I had never baked before and have slowly worked my way into it. I'd like to say that I make mean loaf of banana bread and have taken to learning bannock and my own pie crusts. It's a half way decent way to pass some time and gives a good sense of accomplishment when it works out. Even if its not perfect I can enjoy what I've done and created. 

Onward to this weeks topic. The powers of social media and the anxious mind. I happened to be cruising around on Facebook, against my better judgement I went through some of the job specific pages that I am part of. And of course on one of those pages there was an anonymous post asking if time taken while ODS, off duty sick, was pensionable. The first and most popular comment on the post was "it is but it shouldn't be". Why shouldn't it be? Why should a duty related injury that requires time off not be counted as pensionable time. So if a person gets in a scrap, blows out their knee, gets reconstructive surgery and needs 8-10 months to rehab it properly before going back to work, they shouldn't get credit for that? When a member gets shot, or gets in a serious car wreck and can't physically work, let alone deal with the psychological ramifications of that event, needs as much time as possible to get to be able to heal properly. They shouldn't get pensionable time? What does that say to those of us with the invisible wounds? I can't go to work because of what this job has done to me for 10 years. It's a duty related injury. Why should I lose my pensionable time as I try to heal from these conditions? Does my loss of happiness, my loss of stability, my loss of joy in life not deserve a chance to heal properly? 

Reading that question and the responses activated my system to a point that I was unable to relax for hours. That deep seated sanctuary trauma kicked in, fired my anxiety system into a level of overdrive that I haven't felt in a long time. I paced around my kitchen, I tried writing and in an hour got half a page down. I couldn't get my mind to focus. I couldn't get my hands to stop shaking, my heart was racing, my IBS went full shit your pants mode. Breathing activities didn't do much. Grounding didn't do much. I couldn't work on beading because I was too shaky. I couldn't focus enough to read or journal. I had no idea that my visceral reaction would be so strong. When I was finally able to lie down for bed, a good two hours later than I wanted to, I had to use an old favorite movie playing in the background to drown out the mental noise enough to be able to get to sleep.

When I woke up today, I tried to take stock of why my reaction was so strong, of why it activated my system so the way it did. As I sat with myself, drinking coffee and doing crosswords, I began to think about the entire first responder system as a whole. There is supposed to be this deeply instilled sense of teamwork, of have each others back, of loyalty and care. Honesty, Integrity, Professionalism, Compassion, Accountability, Respect. Core values that are supposed to guide you through your career. Compassion in my personal experience is the first thing to disappear. As your faith in humanity falters compassion dies. With it goes empathy and soon you feel like it's you against the world. Then it spills out in looking at your co-workers going "well, fuck if you aren't at work and I need to do more work because of it then fuck you". You stop caring about the person that has been through all kinds of shit because they aren't there and you might have to do more. Don't get me wrong, I have had those thoughts. I have made the same comments, I have been the asshole that has talked down on people that need time to work on themselves. Had I walked a mile in their boots would I have? Fuck no. Hindsight being 20/20 makes you really stop and think about those moments.

But if you haven't been down the road then how do you know what it takes to drive it? To see members commenting on posts saying that they've taken time off for mental health but don't support the use of the system for others now, because someone might take advantage of it? Get fucked you hypocritical piece of shit. That is where the sanctuary traumas start. And now that I've been off, I know full well that when I go back to work, I'll be treated differently. I'll be ostracized. People will walk on eggshells because they'll be worried if they say the wrong thing I'll just go back off again. Do you really think that I'm enjoying this process? Do you realize how fucking hard healing is? This isn't an extended holiday, this isn't just me sitting around avoiding going back to work. Every day is a fucking challenge. Every day is a struggle to keep going. I am just as exhausted from healing as I ever was from a hard shift. I worry every day about going back to work and the toll it will take on me going back to the places where this shit festered for so long. And do people really wonder why injured members don't ask for help? Or why they don't succeed when they go back to work? Because the fucking trauma never stops. 

When you don't have the support of the people who are supposed to be there for you what do you think that does to a person? I know for myself, my identity got so intertwined in my work, that I'm sure that's a huge part of this reaction that I felt. It feels like a constantly repeated kick in the soul to know that I have given so much and this job has taken so much and now that I'm trying to get better, those people who are supposed to be part of that support network, the "blue family", there are those people who would rather see me fail than get better because I'm not there to do my part in an office somewhere. I see that prevailing attitude and just wonder how much pain that person is actually in to be so full of hatred and vitriol. 

How do we work on that? Not just in policing, but in fire fighting, in paramedicine, in nursing, in corrections, in social work? In these jobs that take everything from people. These jobs that will take your will to be alive and still ask for more. How do we bring the humanity back? How do we bring compassion and empathy to the forefront instead of hatred and anger? These are questions that I know I can't really answer because I really don't know. I personally believe that I can be a lot more compassionate, that I can work harder to be empathetic. I am at a point in my healing journey that I have realized that I can do more now, that I can start to try and be a light for people. And I have come to understand the power of just having someone reach out and let you know that they are actually thinking about you, that when they ask how I'm doing they actually care about the answer. I have started to find it in myself again to be able to ask that question and want an honest answer because I want to show the same compassion to others that has been shown to me.

I also know now that I will be much more careful of my social media usage. I've learned how deeply the sanctuary trauma has hurt me, how deeply the moral injury has wounded me and how far I still have to go on my journey out of the abyss.

As always, thank you for taking the time to stop and read my thoughts. Take care of yourselves as best as you can. Reach out to your friends and family, it's the ones who are hurting the most who aren't going to do it on their own. 

Heavy