So I don't post very often, and rarely post much of anything of either a personal or earth shattering nature. Haven't posted much at all lately, come to think of it.
This, traditionally, is not a great time of year for me -- if they ever start making advent calendars in hell mine will start yearly on December 1st and that last big, ain't-no-treat behind the door cut out yawns open at 1:56 AM on January 9th.
To put those dates in context, I should point out that after a long, long time in the US military, I would up being a cop, at least for a little while. Love cops, hate cops, whatever, you're entitled to your opinion and honestly, I've seen enough that I understand either way. I will say that as cops go, I was probably one of the guys you wanted coming through the door whatever your involvement in a situation, since I wasn't in it for the power trip and was so damned professional and fair that even people I arrested thanked me from time to time for being cool and appropriate with them. It wasn't me against them, I was just a consequence of various bad decisions they had made.
It's a great job, and it's a shitty job. Around this time of year I miss it with the crushing intensity we mostly reserve for high school romance gone bad. Around this time of year I also hate it with . . . well, about the same intensity. But I digress from infernal advent calendars.
So like a million years ago (or 2009) after blowing out my knee towards the end of my police academy, I finally got cleared for duty and got sworn in as a police officer (about six months behind the rest of my class). December 1st, 2009. Did a couple days in limbo working yawn-worthy Day Shift and then jumped right into Mids (11 PM - 9AM) when real police work happens. And it fucking rocked -- maybe not TV cop show rocked, but booting doors to stop assaults in progress, high speed chases of wanted felons (on Alaskan streets in mid winter . . . your really haven't lived til you've tried that . . .). A lot of paperwork and the rest of the BS that accompanies the career but a decent number of calls where I made a difference. A few where things I did helped ensure somebody who would have been dead was alive at the end of my shift. Good times. Or course I also got to learn what ripe human corpses smell like and that that smell will work its way into your clothes and hair and everything else. I got to find out what it's like to have a drunk grandma turn on a dime and kick you in the face as you're putting her in the patrol car for a trip to the drunk tank and that you can never, ever wear enough pairs of latex gloves when dealing with the homeless. Lots of interesting life lessons (the last of which required IV antibiotics to treat . . . but, lesson learned.).
Anyway, I digress some more.
So I'm doing my rookie cop thing in the dead of night and dead of winter with an absolute rock solid veteran of a guy as my training officer. Superb cop. Legendary for eyes in the back of his head and being totally switched on about safety, and just a brilliant teacher and trainer. Great guy to work with -- and that is like winning the lottery for law enforcement field training, trust me.
January rolls around and the National Guard requires its monthly quota of my time, so for the first time in my admittedly brief law enforcement career I request a shift off so I can make it to drill at 7 AM instead of working til 9 AM and then spending another hour or two trying to write my damn reports (time management and report writing being an ass kicker for pretty much all rookie cops). Five weeks on the job, I check out for Friday, January 8th, and Saturday, January 9th.
My partner had already scheduled us to work a part of town he normally didn't work. Not a great part of town, but actually better than the usual stretch of urban decay we normally patrolled and he wanted me to get feel for different parts of town. Already scheduled, but I've got drill.
So there he is, and there I am not, at 1:56 AM when he catches about seven rounds in a drive by shooting and barely survives. He was in the drivers seat of our patrol car when the shooting occurred. In my department, rookies in training always drive. Had I been there the bullets which crippled him and nearly ended his life would have had to literally pass through my body before they could have hurt him.
Not my first friend or coworker injured, crippled, or killed in the line of duty. Hell, I had a friend in Iraq who . . . . I don't even know what the fuck they put in the coffin they shipped home after a suicide bomber detonated within yards of him. But Jason getting shot was the first time someone got hurt -- nearly killed, permanently injured -- because I didn't show up. Because I wasn't there.
Something like that will gnaw on you. It whispers to you in the dark when you're not sleeping even with enough Ambien in your system to kill an elephant or fuel a small rave. It's in your head when you look your coworkers in the eye or when you're on a call and have to back someone else's move and every instinct in your head is telling you to go totally overboard. It whispers some pretty strange things in your head. It took a little while for the whispers to really take hold but by April or so I clocked in every day -- after getting up an hour early for work to lay on my bathroom floor and work through the cold sweats -- praying somebody would cross the big line and go for it on some call. Want to fight? Oh fuck please (sadly, as a 6'5" cop who just kind of always looks angry and pissed, it's hard to find takers). You want to go really big and take it to guns? I was utterly simpatico with gun play and someone dying -- and I couldn't have given half a fuck about whether it was me or the bad guy beyond pride in being goddamn fast and goddamn true with a pistol. I got reprimanded once for not bothering to put on my helmet when responding to a possibly barricaded guy with a gun call -- if a guy who is a legend for eyes in the back of his head can get taken on a residential street, what fucking difference is a couple pounds of kevlar going to make? It got bad. I got sloppy, dangerous, and bad.
In short, I was a ticking time bomb for a very negative outcome. My department fucked me over pretty thoroughly in a lot of ways, but they did make the right call pulling me off the street and giving me a civilian job with the department. Zero help (and some harm) with the mental health aspect of what I was going through, but hey -- I kept medical insurance and paid the rent. And I didn't get better. I got worse. A lot worse. And being a red blooded American male I did nothing about it besides telling myself to harden the fuck up and get over it.
That lasted for a long time. It finally came to a head coming up on the one year anniversary of the shooting. At that point, one of two things were going to happen -- I was either going to get help, or I was going to drive to the site of the shooting and blow my brains out at 1:56 in the morning on the day it happened. And I really don't know exactly why I was thinking of doing that, some fucked conception that I'd cheated fate or some cosmic balance had to be put back on the level . . . or maybe it was just wanting to be done with the guilt, the dissociative episodes, the flash back/anxiety attacks when any of various triggers put me zero to 60 into fight or flight, the need to just curl up and not be anymore.
As may be apparent, I manned up -- really manned up, not bullshit rub some dirt on it and walk it off manned up -- and got help. I didn't sue my department (though probably should have), didn't fuck around with work comp, I just found a therapist who specialized in major trauma and went and got help. I got a diagnosis -- PTSD for those who completely lack any ability to do foreshadowing -- and I got a lot of help. Two to three times a week help for a while.
And I got better, or at least better-ish. Better enough to spend some miserable quality time in Afghanistan and find it trite compared to police work.
I had some very serious demons and I spent enough time facing them that rather than literally destroying me, they blinked way before I did. I think I was a strong person before all of the above, but I know after all the above, I am a mother fucking tungsten wrecking ball -- and one who knows how to get tuned back up if things do get off the rails in the future..
But, all that said, this time of year -- I still struggle. It isn't what it was the winter of 2010/11, but it isn't nice all the same. I can't sleep much, I'm not happy, I'm scrappy and short tempered, and not a terribly functional person outside of making it to work on time -- In short, I kind of suck for most of the traditional American holiday season. But it's been most of two weeks since The Day and me and the demon did our yearly stare down and I'm starting to come back out of the dark.
For those who bothered to wade through all the above, apologies if it was just way too much information. Despite anxiolytics and Rx sleep aids I haven't really slept in a few days and am just venting when I wish I could be sleeping. If there's any wisdom up there for people to take away from from it, please take it and run. If anyone reads it thinks to themselves, holy shit I'm not quite/almost/even more fucked up that this guy and needs someone to vent to -- feel free to drop me a PM, if you want.
This, traditionally, is not a great time of year for me -- if they ever start making advent calendars in hell mine will start yearly on December 1st and that last big, ain't-no-treat behind the door cut out yawns open at 1:56 AM on January 9th.
To put those dates in context, I should point out that after a long, long time in the US military, I would up being a cop, at least for a little while. Love cops, hate cops, whatever, you're entitled to your opinion and honestly, I've seen enough that I understand either way. I will say that as cops go, I was probably one of the guys you wanted coming through the door whatever your involvement in a situation, since I wasn't in it for the power trip and was so damned professional and fair that even people I arrested thanked me from time to time for being cool and appropriate with them. It wasn't me against them, I was just a consequence of various bad decisions they had made.
It's a great job, and it's a shitty job. Around this time of year I miss it with the crushing intensity we mostly reserve for high school romance gone bad. Around this time of year I also hate it with . . . well, about the same intensity. But I digress from infernal advent calendars.
So like a million years ago (or 2009) after blowing out my knee towards the end of my police academy, I finally got cleared for duty and got sworn in as a police officer (about six months behind the rest of my class). December 1st, 2009. Did a couple days in limbo working yawn-worthy Day Shift and then jumped right into Mids (11 PM - 9AM) when real police work happens. And it fucking rocked -- maybe not TV cop show rocked, but booting doors to stop assaults in progress, high speed chases of wanted felons (on Alaskan streets in mid winter . . . your really haven't lived til you've tried that . . .). A lot of paperwork and the rest of the BS that accompanies the career but a decent number of calls where I made a difference. A few where things I did helped ensure somebody who would have been dead was alive at the end of my shift. Good times. Or course I also got to learn what ripe human corpses smell like and that that smell will work its way into your clothes and hair and everything else. I got to find out what it's like to have a drunk grandma turn on a dime and kick you in the face as you're putting her in the patrol car for a trip to the drunk tank and that you can never, ever wear enough pairs of latex gloves when dealing with the homeless. Lots of interesting life lessons (the last of which required IV antibiotics to treat . . . but, lesson learned.).
Anyway, I digress some more.
So I'm doing my rookie cop thing in the dead of night and dead of winter with an absolute rock solid veteran of a guy as my training officer. Superb cop. Legendary for eyes in the back of his head and being totally switched on about safety, and just a brilliant teacher and trainer. Great guy to work with -- and that is like winning the lottery for law enforcement field training, trust me.
January rolls around and the National Guard requires its monthly quota of my time, so for the first time in my admittedly brief law enforcement career I request a shift off so I can make it to drill at 7 AM instead of working til 9 AM and then spending another hour or two trying to write my damn reports (time management and report writing being an ass kicker for pretty much all rookie cops). Five weeks on the job, I check out for Friday, January 8th, and Saturday, January 9th.
My partner had already scheduled us to work a part of town he normally didn't work. Not a great part of town, but actually better than the usual stretch of urban decay we normally patrolled and he wanted me to get feel for different parts of town. Already scheduled, but I've got drill.
So there he is, and there I am not, at 1:56 AM when he catches about seven rounds in a drive by shooting and barely survives. He was in the drivers seat of our patrol car when the shooting occurred. In my department, rookies in training always drive. Had I been there the bullets which crippled him and nearly ended his life would have had to literally pass through my body before they could have hurt him.
Not my first friend or coworker injured, crippled, or killed in the line of duty. Hell, I had a friend in Iraq who . . . . I don't even know what the fuck they put in the coffin they shipped home after a suicide bomber detonated within yards of him. But Jason getting shot was the first time someone got hurt -- nearly killed, permanently injured -- because I didn't show up. Because I wasn't there.
Something like that will gnaw on you. It whispers to you in the dark when you're not sleeping even with enough Ambien in your system to kill an elephant or fuel a small rave. It's in your head when you look your coworkers in the eye or when you're on a call and have to back someone else's move and every instinct in your head is telling you to go totally overboard. It whispers some pretty strange things in your head. It took a little while for the whispers to really take hold but by April or so I clocked in every day -- after getting up an hour early for work to lay on my bathroom floor and work through the cold sweats -- praying somebody would cross the big line and go for it on some call. Want to fight? Oh fuck please (sadly, as a 6'5" cop who just kind of always looks angry and pissed, it's hard to find takers). You want to go really big and take it to guns? I was utterly simpatico with gun play and someone dying -- and I couldn't have given half a fuck about whether it was me or the bad guy beyond pride in being goddamn fast and goddamn true with a pistol. I got reprimanded once for not bothering to put on my helmet when responding to a possibly barricaded guy with a gun call -- if a guy who is a legend for eyes in the back of his head can get taken on a residential street, what fucking difference is a couple pounds of kevlar going to make? It got bad. I got sloppy, dangerous, and bad.
In short, I was a ticking time bomb for a very negative outcome. My department fucked me over pretty thoroughly in a lot of ways, but they did make the right call pulling me off the street and giving me a civilian job with the department. Zero help (and some harm) with the mental health aspect of what I was going through, but hey -- I kept medical insurance and paid the rent. And I didn't get better. I got worse. A lot worse. And being a red blooded American male I did nothing about it besides telling myself to harden the fuck up and get over it.
That lasted for a long time. It finally came to a head coming up on the one year anniversary of the shooting. At that point, one of two things were going to happen -- I was either going to get help, or I was going to drive to the site of the shooting and blow my brains out at 1:56 in the morning on the day it happened. And I really don't know exactly why I was thinking of doing that, some fucked conception that I'd cheated fate or some cosmic balance had to be put back on the level . . . or maybe it was just wanting to be done with the guilt, the dissociative episodes, the flash back/anxiety attacks when any of various triggers put me zero to 60 into fight or flight, the need to just curl up and not be anymore.
As may be apparent, I manned up -- really manned up, not bullshit rub some dirt on it and walk it off manned up -- and got help. I didn't sue my department (though probably should have), didn't fuck around with work comp, I just found a therapist who specialized in major trauma and went and got help. I got a diagnosis -- PTSD for those who completely lack any ability to do foreshadowing -- and I got a lot of help. Two to three times a week help for a while.
And I got better, or at least better-ish. Better enough to spend some miserable quality time in Afghanistan and find it trite compared to police work.
I had some very serious demons and I spent enough time facing them that rather than literally destroying me, they blinked way before I did. I think I was a strong person before all of the above, but I know after all the above, I am a mother fucking tungsten wrecking ball -- and one who knows how to get tuned back up if things do get off the rails in the future..
But, all that said, this time of year -- I still struggle. It isn't what it was the winter of 2010/11, but it isn't nice all the same. I can't sleep much, I'm not happy, I'm scrappy and short tempered, and not a terribly functional person outside of making it to work on time -- In short, I kind of suck for most of the traditional American holiday season. But it's been most of two weeks since The Day and me and the demon did our yearly stare down and I'm starting to come back out of the dark.
For those who bothered to wade through all the above, apologies if it was just way too much information. Despite anxiolytics and Rx sleep aids I haven't really slept in a few days and am just venting when I wish I could be sleeping. If there's any wisdom up there for people to take away from from it, please take it and run. If anyone reads it thinks to themselves, holy shit I'm not quite/almost/even more fucked up that this guy and needs someone to vent to -- feel free to drop me a PM, if you want.
bringyouhell:
It's good you decided to get help instead of taking another route. I hope things get easier for you with time.
learningcurve:
Thanks. They do -- I've got some weird brain architecture or something that activates in late November/early Decemeber and that peaks and then ebbs after the 9th. Something about the dark, the snow, the way the air smells, all kinds of things sort of drag me back to that time frame. Every year I start coming out of it a few weeks after The Day comes and goes. It's just some part of me at this point, I guess.