Jay – Page 6 – Cracked Badge

You’re a Dumbass! – not really you, more me.

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Well, not really but kinda. And by kinda I mean most of the time. But it’s not really anger that I am talking about. It s more of a damn insatiable irritability. Always there and just one little step away from full-blown anger. Picture the times that Dr. Bruce Banner was starting to enter the morph into th Hulk but was fighting against it. That moment….. That’s the moment that I am constantly in.

Now let that sink in for a second. Can you imagine spending your entire day on the verge of getting angry? Coupled with always trying to mask just how crappy you feel so that you don’t have people worrying about you all the time. I will say that it is a huge drain on your energy and taxes everything. It is a constant power struggle within your head trying to suppress the irritability. And for the record, I would say that I am about 75% successful in controlling it. That means that at least 25% of the time, I struggle to keep things under wraps.

I am not proud of that little self calculated stat but it is my reality. And no, it doesn’t mean I go around kicking animals, stealing candy from little kids and picking random fights with strangers 25% of my day. In fact, I can honestly say that I have never kicked and animal nor have I stolen candy from a kid. But I have to plea stupid on the latter but will put a caveat that it is never a good idea to cut off a guy with PTSD and proceed to give him the finger as he passes you in line at the intersection. The fake bully facade tends to push a shit load of triggers that could potential cause said PTSD person to stop the car, open the door and express their opinion in a very graphic and profanity laced language. (On a side note, I believe that the fake bully had to change his underwear after his behaviour was called out by a simple guy at an interscetion – nothing physical occurred.)

I am proud of what happened? Nope. To tell you the truth, I was utterly ashamed of myself for allowing myself to get so swept up in the moment. It was the expression on an elder female on the sidewalk that snapped me back to reality as the guy quickly drove away. Dr Banner wasn’t able to keep the Hulk from showing up on that one and it scared me. It was like I was watching it unfold from afar and I couldn’t hit pause. But I am happy to report that this was the only time and I promise it will be the only time that things got this extreme. It made me take stock of my situation and the handling of it.

Usually, red my irritability comes out in snapping at those around me, having a low tolerance for “stupid” and just plain being a grumpy old man. It is one of my bigger battles that I need to get a handle on and gain a greater control over. I have sought out an example or a role model to try to work towards. Yep, that’s right – Red Foreman is my new role model. Think about for a second. The guy never lost his cool but was sure to express himself and let people know where they stood with him. What / who could be a better role model for someone struggling to maintain their cool and express themselves when things aren’t going good? Not to mention that my hair line is eerily familiar and I applauded his choice in shirts.

In all seriousness though, my challenge is to keep my cool even when things aren’t going good. Part of that continues to be my mindfulness exercises I do everyday, which I definitely notice a difference with. The other challenge is to openly express myself instead of suppressing and keeping things in. That approached apparently didn’t work for me so maybe if I start to voice, in an appropriate manner, that I am bothered by something, I’ll start gaining more control. Because in the end, I would much rather go around calling people Dumbass then spending my time trying to keep the Hulk at bay.

Sometimes it is just hard…

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Yep, that’s the one thing that I have learned about PTSD. Even if you think things are good, they can turn hard in a blink of an eye. And when you think there is no way in hell that things can get harder you find out that unfortunately, it can and will get harder. Yesterday was one of those days.

My kryptonite is newborn babies as a baby is at the very heart of my PTSD and resultant moral injury. A baby or even an image of one can derail the most positive day in a snap of the fingers. I am reduced to tears, strickened by panic, steamrolled by emotions. It is terrifying and causes waves of guilt and shame. To Coles note it, I become a mess.

So, recognizing this evil control that babies have over me, my psychologist and I have begun to do exposure therapy to help deal with the reactions I have. What is exposure therapy you ask and how do you do it for babies? Well, let me tell you, its not as complicated as you might think. Basically, for the bulk of my session, I sat there with a picture of an under 3 month old displayed on the laptop. I could look at it for as long or as short as I would like and give as much attention to it as I felt I could handle. Let’s just say that I was glad that the laptop would time out every once and awhile because despite having the ability to look away, it was tough knowing that the image would still be there when I looked.

I was spent by the end of the session and just wanted to bury my head in the sand and avoid everything and everyone. I got home and napped. I tapped out and needed to escape for a while. And that is the norm after a heavy session. I need to turtle and protect myself for anymore triggers while I recharge. So, I did the self-care needed and got ready for the evening and family time. Things seemed okay until I was relaxing and watching TV. Mid sentence while talking with my wife about something, I happened to look up at the TV and there is a commercial playing for an upcoming episode of a show and there is a new-born baby being held by a doctor. That right there did it.

All the self care, the rebuilding myself up to get ready for the rest of the day was gone in an instant. My hard day that became an okay day collapsed into a heap of destructive rubble that seemed like an impossible task to overcome. My hard day was now a fucking hard day with all its splendor and might. That really is how fast things happen fr a person with PTSD. I survived it, pushed it down, boxed it up and tried to forget about it so that the rest of the evening wouldn’t be ruined. It didn’t really work but it got me to bedtime and a chance to escape into dreamland.

The funny thing about it though is that today, I woke up and the hard day is gone. The images and the memories they bring are not front and centre. I feel “normal” or as close to it as I think normal would feel like. But I know to accept the moment as it happens and not to dwell on it because in the blink of an eye, the hard knocks could show up without warning.

What The?????

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So, I have made it through the holidays and have entered the New Year ready for the coming year. In fact, there is a plan in place for me to return to work shortly on a very gradual return to work with the key word being GRADUAL…. I’m not going to lie, i am nervous as all hell about the prospect of returning to work but as I told the psychologist the other day, I have to try to see if I can do it.

But that’s not what this post is all about but it is related.

On New Years Eve, my son wanted to be up for the dropping of the ball so we agreed that if he went to sleep we would wake him up. So, at 11:50 pm, we woke him up and brought him downstairs so that he could watch the ball drop and experience the changing of the year. During the celebration, I took a picture of the three of us sitting on the couch and the result was quite scary.

It was in that simply picture that I saw for the first time the toll that PTSD has taken on me. My hair is whiter, the eyes are sunken, my face ruddy and there was a lack of life in me. I looked extremely tired and weathered. The pain, anxiety and turmoil was clear for anyone to see. It shocked me and I became scared to see the physical toll so clearly. I had a restless sleep that night as my mind raced. I wondered how this happen and when did it become so noticeable?

Regardless, it hurt to see the impact. It hurt to hurt. It made me look at my family and I began to see the toll that my PTSD also took on them. It is much subtler then my transformation but there have been changes. The stress that it has placed on my wife shows in her tired eyes and there is a certain edge that my son has now that he didn’t have before. Seeing the hurt causes that much more pain that wasn’t there before. I know that neither of them signed up for this but both are being troopers about it. But, they shouldn’t have to be troopers.

What does this all mean? Well, it made me take stock of what was going on for me and my family. I realize that in order to lessen the impact on them, I have to deal with the impact on me first. It is time to own the fact that I was slowly letting PTSD control too much about my life. I was drinking more than I should, I was eating too much crap and I was not being healthy. So, the first step was easy – recognize that there is a problem. The second step is where the work starts – begin dealing with it by changing the things you can change.

So, I guess what I am trying to say is, the adage, “Short term pain for long-term gain” is oh so cruelly true when dealing with PTSD. But, I am committed to the fact that my family and I will come out of this journey for the better, even if it gets harder first.

Giving Up?

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So to end the year, I figured it might be appropriate to do a bit of a personal post on a topic that is very near and dear to me. Giving up or to put a better spin to it, Never Giving Up.

This came to a head almost a month ago and since then it has become a bit of a mantra for myself. But it has a strange genesis that needs to be explained first. To help motivate my son to change gears from sloth speed to that of a normal 8-year-old, I threw out a challenge to him. I told him he had 15 minutes to finish his night-time routine and get to bed. I even padded the time a bit and give him a few minutes grace so the deadline was 8:05. I went to give him the five-minute warning and the look o his face said it all. He was giving up and not having anything to do with the challenge.

I pointed out that he still had five minutes and could easily finish off the routine (only had to brush his teeth and tidy the washroom) and get into bed. He half heartily said okay and continued to move along. with two minutes left, he was coming to a full fledge stop and had clearly thrown in the towel, Mickey style from Rocky 3. That’s when the competitive dad came out mixed with PTSD dad and caring/nurturing dad. I pushed him to keep going, to continue moving forward, to forget giving up because that is something that you can not afford to do in life.

He finished and got into bed with some time to spare. We then talked about giving up and how this is never an option. You can never give up. Period. End of story. I explained that there will be lots of times that he wants to give up but he has to keep going til he finished the task before him. We talked about “stopping” to get yourself together to continue to fight on but you always go back to the task at hand to finish it. I pointed out that in life, there are going to be numerous times when quitting feels like the best thing to do and it is at those times that he will need to dig down deeper to keep going.

Over the next few weeks, I would show him videos and point out the “never give up” mentality that we were talking about. The first example that I thought of was the |Wendy Ingraham”s 1997 Ironman finish where she crawled the last portion to finish. (Here’s the link – https://youtu.be/MTn1v5TGK_w ) This then progressed to watching a video of Stephen Hawking giving a lecture while sitting in his wheelchair. All the time the message of never giving up echoed from me as we talked about the videos and of others that chose to fight on. I would mention that they all had a choice to make and decided to keep on keeping on despite the challenges that they faces. Heck, I even used my finish at Ironman Canada as an example of not giving up. I think he got the message.

But, more importantly, I think I got the message too. I will not sit here and try to hide the harsh reality of PTSD and paint a happy Bob Ross picture of a country side for you. Being brutally honest about PTSD, Christmas and more specifically, the lead up to the big day was rough. I was an emotional wreak and struggled to go out and do the things that needed to get done. My workout schedule and diet went completely to shit, I drank too much / often, fought to get myself out in public and worked extremely hard at covering up the pain and upset that was oh so present.

It was a struggle and pushed me into some very dark spots that I did not want to be nor do I ever want to return too. It was shitty and I told my psychologist that in those lowly, dark spaces, I could understand why people made a choice to kill themselves. (By the way, I should mention that there is no fear of any suicidal ideation on my part, read on and you will understand.) It is relentless and bombastic in those spaces and if you are not prepared for them or aware of the options out there, it can get ugly, and fast. I explained that even though things were bad, suicide was never an option that I entertained. Instead, the option that came to mind was “Never Give Up”.

My psychologist understood what I was getting at and pointed out that the empathy I was talking about is something that would serve me well on this PTSD journey. I think in many ways knowing the darkness and the pain associated with it is hard to comprehend, even now after the fact. It is aggressive and relentless and if you don’t recognize it, it can take over your thoughts and actions faster than you can imagine. But to me, even at the lowest and darkest, the only option for me was to Never Give Up. Nothing more, nothing less.

I have been affected with PTSD as a result of my career but it is not the end of my career. To be more accurate, PTSD is now part of my career. When I retire, many years down the road from now, I will look back and see it just like any other memory I have of policing. Yes, it will shape my career from this point forward just as it will my life with my family and friends but regardless of where my journey goes, I know that I will Never Give Up! I’ve got too much to do and people than depend on me getting it done.

It’s Christmas Time

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Yep it’s that time of the year, in fact, it is midday on Christmas Eve as I type this out.

I haven’t really mentioned the holidays too much on purposes, as I have been trying to focus on just enjoying it and not dwelling on my PTSD. And, I will be brutally honest and say that it has not been easy. There have been more times than not that out of the blue I have been overcome with emotion. I have broken down in tears as Christmas music plays in the background and I have had a few times that I had to walk out of stores, leaving a cart with items in it. Christmas is hard at times even when things are good for a person but with PTSD, Christmas gets harder.

Despite this, I continue to focus on enjoying the season. I have pushed myself to go out to the stores, to buy gifts, and to get the house ready for the big day. If I had to identify the one thing that has kept me going, I would be able to say, without hesitation that it is my son. His excitement for the arrival of Santa has had the ability to push the dark away and make me see the joy and happiness that has been alluding me. This morning was the icing on the cake because he was up early and searching the Santa Tracker to see where the big guy is. He is excited, pumped, thrilled and down right spilling over with happiness. And the best part is that is infectious.

So, with that I will keep it short today and say Merry Christmas but ask that everyone take the time to reach out to that one member of your family or maybe a friend who is withdrawn or down. Call them or visit them to say hi and wish them a Merry Christmas. That one act could potentially save someone.