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runjakkrun · 7 years

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"I Don't Care What We Have For Dinner...." : The raw truth about mental illness and addiction.

“I have anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD, ADD, mild aspergers, motor tics, severe insomnia, and an outrageous propensity for addiction. This isn’t something I normally share, because everyone and their mother thinks it’s cool to claim to have mental disorders this day and time. And honestly, it pisses me off…. Get comfortable and buckle up, because shit’s about to get ugly and real…. You think it’s cool and romanticize PTSD, talking with your buddies over a few beers at the bbq. It’s not cool or romantic when you wake up screaming and shaking and sweating so many times a night that you can’t sleep in the same bed with your wife, or that you stay absolutely exhausted, or that you’re legitimately afraid to go to sleep because you know what you’re going to see when you close your eyes. It’s not cool or romantic to do threat assessments every time you walk into a room, or see every stranger you pass on the street as dangerous. To not be able to stand sitting in a restaurant with your back to the room or door, or panic when you find yourself in a crowd. It’s not cool or romantic to be completely relaxed and laughing one minute, then have a full blown PTSD meltdown out of nowhere, leading to a severe flashback, leading to you taking a swing at your best friend or pulling your sidearm on the woman you love because your mind told you they were a threat and you think you’re fighting for your life. It’s not cool or romantic to have no idea where you’re at, or what’s real. When it takes two people who mean the world to you two hours to get you through it. When you keep broken knuckles from outbursts of anger. When you physiologically react to something that happened years ago- sweating, shaking, nausea, headache, fever, heart pounding out of your chest, jumping every time you hear a loud noise. When the one closest to you feels the need to do a quick sweep for the gun they know you carry, disarm you, drop your mag, eject the chambered .40 hollow point, and put it all in a different room because you’ve completely lost touch with reality and they’re afraid of what you might do- to someone else or to yourself. It’s not cool or romantic when you’re having an episode and your first instinct isn’t to reach for your loved ones for comfort, but to get as far away from them as possible because you’re terrified of how badly you could hurt them if you lost it and they got too close. It’s not cool or romantic to have a panic attack and worry about flashbacks or shutting down every time you hear someone scream, or you smell blood or bleach, or someone walks past you wearing a certain cologne. Especially when you work in a high stress, high risk field where screaming and blood and bleach and strangers having the worst days of their lives aren’t only a part of but make up the entirety of your job description. When people’s lives depend on your ability to think clearly and hold it together when everything goes to hell. It’s not cool or romantic to overreact and have a complete breakdown every time your hands get dirty, or something gets screwed up/ doesn’t go exactly as planned, or you hear/ see someone filing their fingernails. It’s not cool to literally physically HURT when you feel certain textures like denim or wool or concrete. It’s not cool or romantic to have to take Adderall and Prozac and Seroquel and benzos like candy just so you can function, so you can focus on one train of thought instead of being mentally exhausted all the time because you’re hyperfocused on every little sight, smell, sound, thought, or detail. When it feels like every nerve is on fire and you can’t make it stop. It’s not cool to be so deeply depressed over absolutely NOTHING that you don’t want to go to work or go kayaking with your best friend or out to a movie you’ve been waiting to see for months, or even make love to your wife. It’s not cool or romantic to spend your days in a haze of amphetamines, opiates, muscle relaxers, and cocaine, and your nights under the heavy sedation of marijuana and benzos, at the bottom of a fifth of whiskey, with no idea how you let it get to that point or how to fix it. To have to choose between going to rehab or losing everything. To go through withdrawals so bad that you spend a week shaking and violently vomiting, with headaches, unbearable muscle aches, no appetite or energy, too weak and exhausted to even get out of bed. To see the pain and the panic and the terror on your wife and your best friend and your partner’s faces, wondering if this is the last time they’ll be able to hug you or kiss you or tell you they love you, the last time they’ll see you alive, when they go to bed every night wondering if this will be the time they wake up to the phone call that changes their lives forever. The one where some strange, apologetic but professional voice is on the other end of the line telling them you’ve overdosed or eaten your gun or wrecked your truck driving drunk and, "I’m sorry, but one of the people you love and rely on most is dead.” It’s NOT cool! These are some of the most miserable experiences in existence. Things that those who suffer from them would do anything to make stop. Who wish like hell they didn’t know what any of it was like. Who, when the pain gets to be too much, often end up taking their own lives because they can’t bare standing another single moment feeling what they feel…..And if people actually understood what they were saying and implying when they tell everyone they have anxiety or PTSD or suffer from addiction because they think it makes them “cool,” they’d stop…. Because anyone who has truly been through it knows that there is absolutely nothing even remotely cool or romantic about it.

Allow me to walk you through a day in my life….

My beautiful, smart, sweet, amazing wife, who I love more than anything, is getting on my last nerve. She’s constantly chattering about everything, happy to have me home and be able to spend time with me. Just babbling about random bullshit like a dog she saw once or what she’s planning to cook for dinner, or what we need to get at the grocery store, and I’m both physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, inserting appropriate one or two word responses- just enough to keep her off my back, from asking me what’s wrong or why I’m so crabby- and all I can think is, “I really don’t fucking care….” It’s even worse when I get off of a rough shift and somebody is wanting to talk about stupid, petty shit, and all I can do is think about how people would have a really hard time being so concerned and preoccupied with celebrity gossip and what’s for dinner if they were out there and had to see and do shit that really matters. If they’d ever tortured or killed someone, or worked a horrific stabbing or shooting, then had to turn around and scrape some innocent, sweet, too young toddler’s brains off the pavement because their shitty parents were too high to put them in a car seat. If they had ever had to look some guy’s wife of 60 years in the face after he kissed her and told her he loved her…. After they’d looked her in the eyes, smiled, and told her they’d take care of him, and he’d be fine, and they’d see her at the hospital….. Only, approximately eight minutes out, he suffered a massive subarachnoid bleed and coded and his wife was in her car right behind their ambulance when they hollered at their partner to light it up. When she stood in the ambulance bay, watching them unload the love of her life who she lay in bed beside not an hour ago, and now he is completely unresponsive with a tube down his throat, unable to breathe on his own, hearing sternum and ribs crack and break as a stranger tried their best to get his heart to beat….. If they’d had to look her in the face and tell her they were wrong, and that he would never wake up…. If they had ever seen pain and grief and brokenness like that…. They’d have a hard time coming home and pretending they still give a fuck about all that shit, too…. Even walking through the grocery store, it’s all I can think about and none of this every day, dulled, muted bullshit matters…. My wife told me on the way home that I seemed like I either wasn’t listening or didn’t care, and it all finally came pouring out. I don’t fucking CARE what brand of ketchup or what color apples we get, I don’t fucking CARE how hot it is outside or whether it’s gonna rain or not, I don’t care that the electric bill is $10 less than last month’s. I just. don’t. fucking. CARE…. I feel horrible for feeling like this, even as it’s coming out of my mouth. Ever since I told her that, she’s been quiet and won’t look at me, and that just makes me feel worse. But I can’t fucking help it. It’s no failure on her part, it’s no dissatisfaction with my marriage or my home life or anything else. It just IS. In an attempt to comfort me and relate, she told me, “I understand…. I’m the same way with my job sometimes. With the adrenaline and tech work.” And I didn’t say anything. I was too tired to explain to her that it’s not even remotely the same and that she has no clue, and that lighting or props or sound quality not being perfect is absolutely nothing compared to pulling out every trick in your bag trying to make a real live person- a full grown, tatted up, tough man- stay that way, while they cry and beg you not to let them die. But you can’t fucking get the bleeding to stop or their pressure to come back up, no matter how much gauze or how much pressure you apply, or how many bags of fluid you dump into them. It’s just not the fucking same. But how can I tell her that? So I just stare out the window and don’t say a word. I’ve found myself having an extraordinarily difficult time even sitting at the dinner table with my wife and my mother, who I barely see any more, finding it in me to give a damn about any of the petty bullshit they’re so concerned over. Their biggest worries are my eight week old PTSD dog in training biting my wife’s ankles and peeing on the comforter, my sister not graduating on time, and how expensive car insurance is. Who fucking cares? I catch myself thinking that it must be nice to have that type of shit be your biggest stressors…. Wondering how anyone can expect me to give two fucks whether we get name brand or store brand cereal, when not twelve hours ago, I was getting my ass kicked trying to help some drunk asshole who didn’t want anything to do with me. When not twelve hours ago, my only concern was whether or not the ungodly amount of someone else’s blood I had all over me was infected with anything. With what I could’ve done differently to have kept my last patient from dying. With just making sure that my partner and I got to go home to our families at the end of our shift….. It’s hard sometimes when what you consider important is so much different than what most other people consider important. For most people, their life is being home, spending time with their spouse and kids, relaxing…. That’s what feels real and important and makes them feel alive. Work is a necessary evil and something that has to be done in between. It’s just a filler. But for us, it’s the other way around. In my case, this is how it has been since I graduated high school and immediately shipped to my unit with the Army. For me, being at work- on the truck- is what makes me feel alive…. That’s what feels real and vivid and important to me. “It’s like it puts lightening in your bones and makes it hard to hold on to anything else….” The adrenaline and split second life and death decisions, bringing a beautiful, healthy, perfect baby boy into the world in some run down ghetto parking lot, then turning around and pronouncing someone dead from two gunshot wounds to the chest twenty minutes later. The feeling like you’re doing something that matters. That’s life to me. It’s all I’ve ever known. Being off duty is the filler. Being home and having down time and worrying about a busted pipe or laundry or date night is what fills the space in between…. It’s like going from a top of the line 70" plasma screen HDTV with 1500 pixels per square inch, voice control, a perfect picture, and surround sound to an old 10" black and white box tv, where the volume doesn’t always work, and if the jerryrigged, tin foil bunny ears aren’t perfect, the picture goes in and out…. That’s the only way I can begin to describe it. It takes so much more to make you feel anything, when you’ve truly seen the world. I was discharged from the Army in 2011. I got home, and it was as if somebody had put everything on mute and the color was dull and I felt like I was on the outside looking in to my own life. The shoes I had traded for combat boots just didn’t quite fit any more…. The worst thing in the world is watching the people you love go on with their lives, expecting you to go back to being the same person you were before. Except, no matter how hard you try, you can’t figure out how to pick back up with the life you left. You have no idea how to talk to or relax around the people who were so easy to be around before. People look at you weird when you don’t laugh at something you would’ve before, or are more quiet and introspective instead of loud and energetic and mischievous like you used to be. Realizing that everyone else’s world kept turning while yours was turned upside down, shaken, completely changed, and you were left spinning…. Eventually, old friends stop calling and texting and wanting to hang out. Family stops inviting you to baseball games and lunch after church and holiday get togethers. People stop popping in to say hi and ask how you’re doing. And it sucks, but it’s hard to care or do anything about it, because by this point, you’re too busy just trying to remember how to breathe…. Even now, five years later, I have a hard time. There are some times when I enjoy being off and feel like I’m in the moment and I’m relaxed. But nearly every friend I’ve got or care to be around is either EMS, FD, or PD, because I can’t stand being around people who don’t get it or look at me weird or think they know what stress is. Who have no idea what TRUE loyalty or bravery or brotherhood is. Who think PTSD is a stylish trend. People who haven’t REALLY lived and died a few times. I have no patience for any of it…. I’m closer to and more trusting of and feel as if I belong better with my public safety family and my partner than I do my own flesh and blood. It’s just a heavy burden…. Sometimes I can’t help but feel like I’m on my knees, screaming at the top of my lungs, and nobody can hear me.

So next time you think mental illness or addiction or PTSD is cool or romantic, know that you have no fucking clue. Don’t look at me or my brothers like we’re weak or there’s something wrong with us when we are a little too jumpy or overreact or do something you think is strange. We’ve walked through hell and back, and we earned these scars. You didn’t.“

-KBW, 2016

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