Mental Health

People often ask me if I’ve tried to obtain professional help with my issues.

Surely if you only tried Bobbie, you could get help! But remember it’s all on you!

There’s a few problems with this.

First, until relatively recently I didn’t realize that I had any problems as Captain Totzke and my father had both drilled into my head that my issues were just a way for me to seek attention and that the abuse that I endured on Canadian Forces Base Namao was not really abuse but was more than likely due to me being a homosexual, which was obviously a choice.. Even my father said much the same in 2013 in response to my written examination of him for federal court. “His issues could be whatever he wanted them to be”.

Second, after a childhood of being caught in the war between two opposing factions, my father and Captain Totzke on one side and my civilian counsellors and health practitioners on the other side, I really don’t have a lot of trust for these people.

Third, medical science doesn’t understand how the human brain works. Sure, there are a ton of theories. But most monographs that accompany psychiatric pharmaceuticals stress that they don’t understand the exact mechanism that allows the drug to work, but that the drug does seem to have the desired effects.

The Escitalopram that I’m on is interesting, but it’s like using numbing cream on the site of a tattoo. Sure, the numbing cream will keep the pain of the tattoo to a minimum, but the tattoo is still gonna cause trauma to your skin and even after the numbing cream wears off you’ll still feel pain.

Mental health funding in this country often looks like this:

A pretty sign, but nothing more than an out of order shit-house.

Counselling usually consist of being warned not to trauma dump on your counsellor. Just tell them enough that they feel like they know more than you, but don’t tell them so much that they run up on to the roof of the building to jump off.

I actually had one counsellor in a preliminary session tell me that he didn’t want to hear about my past as we live in the here and now.

I swear that most counsellors get into this field with the doe-eyed misconception that everyone’s trauma is the result of their goldfish dying when they were 10 years old, or their puppy got run over by a car when they were 12.

Then there are assholes like me that show up with multifaceted trauma. Sure, kids got sexually abused out in civvy land, and sure, some of this abuse occurred in the Catholic Church which could use its influence to hide things from the public eye. But that influence only went so far. Eventually enough stories became public that the church could no longer use its influence to hide this shit. The gates were opened and all of the crap came bursting through.

The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence OWN the bases and employ just about everyone on the bases. They even have their own law enforcement agency and their own judicial system. This is why you very rarely hear of child sexual abuse from the bases. It’s much easier to control a company town when you own everything and employ everyone in that company town.

My father and Captain Father Angus McRae worked for the same employer. On Canadian Forces Base Namao they had the same base commander who had control over the base military police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigation Unit. Even Captain Terry Totzke, the military social worker whose care I was under from October of 1980 until April of 1983 was under the command of Colonel Dan Munro, the base commander of CFB Namao.

How do I explain to a counsellor that my father’s employer pulled out all of the stops to ensure that the Captain McRae fiasco didn’t blow up beyond Captain McRae being charged with just molesting his teenaged accomplice?

How do I explain to a counsellor that the rejection and derision that I faced from my father came no doubt from his shitty parenting skills and his obedience to the Canadian Forces chain of command?

I learnt a while ago to not even mention my grandmother’s stint in Indian Residential School. Sure, her shitty childhood in a racist country run by the church and corrupt politicians obviously impacted my father’s shitty childhood, which of course impacted my childhood and my brother’s childhood. And sure, it was my grandmother’s frequent intoxication while she was raising my brother and I that no doubt led to my brother and I needing a babysitter, which led to our abuse. But bringing up my grandmother leads to accusations of me trying to be a full blood pretendian.

Basically my brother and I aren’t the end result of intergenerational trauma.

We’re not the victims of 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse on CFB Namao because our primary abuser was the sole victim of Captain McRae*.

I didn’t really have major depression, severe anxiety, or a host of other issues that I was diagnosed as having, because my military social worker said that I didn’t.

I wasn’t a victim of childhood sexual abuse because my military social worker declared that I was a homosexual and therefore I was a willing participant.

On base, child neglect and child abuse were verboten subjects that no one dared speak about. Everyone just minded their own business as you had no idea who the abuser’s chain of command was and how this could impact your own chain of command.

And you can’t go into a counsellor and talk about this shit. They don’t understand what life was like for military dependants and what a hell it could be when your serving parent could use compassionate postings to stay one step ahead of provincial social services.

Due to the over saturation of feel good depictions of the military and military life on television, no one in the civvy world believes that children were in any type of danger living on the bases and that in fact living on a military base was probably the safest place for a child to grow up.

And even if I did luck out and find a counsellor that has first hand military experience and understands that military life was far from perfect and that people in or around the military who found themselves in need of help were often neglected and ridiculed, what would that accomplish?

I have understood for quite some time that I am not at fault for what happened.

I understand what caused the issues that plague me to this day.

I fully understand that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence are far too massive of an opponent for me to ever have any influence over.

Talking isn’t going to fix anything.

I know the things that will forever be broken.

I know the things that will forever be beyond my grasp.

I know the things that were taken from me by others simply because they need to hide things.

Even if my lawyers are able to reach a settlement with the DND and the CAF, that settlement and any accompanying apology (if issued) isn’t going to undo things.

There’s one thing in particular that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces will never be able to get for me. This is partially due to me never being able to believe a single fucking thing that would ever come from their collective mouths, and this is due to the fact that my father is long dead.

Around 1987ish, my brother took our stepmother’s Pontiac Chevette for a joyride. Richard beat the shit out of me for that because it was my fault that I wasn’t keeping an eye on my brother and I wasn’t raising my brother right. During that beating my father kept freely bringing up the babysitter’s name and that it was my fault that my brother was acting up because I let the babysitter touch him.

In 2006, during our infamous phone calls, Richard pleaded with me to understand that he didn’t hire the babysitter. The it was our grandmother’s fault. She kept hiring the babysitter even through he told her that he didn’t like him. He said that he even paid for the babysitter on a couple of times because grandma didn’t have the money to pay the babysitter. He also said that I was partially to blame as I didn’t tell anyone and that I should have done more to protect my brother from the babysitter.

In 2011 he would give a statement to the CFNIS in which he completely forgot to mention to the CFNIS that he wasn’t living at home with us on the base and that his mother was raising my brother and I. He also told the CFNIS that he was certain there was never a babysitter in the house, just some rando woman from across the street that would keep an eye on his kids periodically.

In 2013 when I examined my father for Federal Court in his written response to my examination he now all of a sudden remembers that his mother was raising his children at the time in question, and why yes, there was a male babysitter, but his mother hired the babysitter, not him.

My social service paperwork from the period of time of November 1981 to October 1983 which also includes my paperwork from October 1980 to November 1981 when I was solely in the care of Captain Totzke makes frequent mention of my grandmother as having been brought into the house to raise my brother and I. This paperwork also contains an observation from a psychiatrist hired by Captain Totzke to evaluate my family in which my father was found to take no responsibility for his family, blamed problems with his family on others, and expected other to solve his problems for him. In this same paperwork my father tells Alberta Social Services that the issues being exhibited by my brother and I were due to his mother “who was very cruel to his children, especially when she was inebriated, which was often”. I gave a full copy of my social service paperwork to the CFNIS in August of 2011.

My brother says that I have to forgive my father because maybe the Canadian Forces forced him to give that statement in 2011, or maybe the Canadian Forces edited his statement to be what they wanted it to be.

No.

My father was a liar. Nothing was believable coming out of his mouth when I was a kid.

Birthday parties? Sure you can have a birthday party, I promise.

From 1977 until 1985 not a single birthday party. Apparently kids with depression and suffering from child sexual abuse aren’t allowed to have parties.

Had a birthday cake in 1985. Richard made a promise that he’d never forget my birthday again. Never had any type of birthday acknowledgment after that until 2006. What was behind the birthday cake in 1985? I didn’t realize at the time that my family was under supervision from the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, but we were. And I guess that Richard was buttering my ass up just in case that Children’s Aid found out about the domestic outburst that he had that required 3 military police officer to bring him under control.

He promised and he swore up and down that he’d pay for my driver’s training for my 16th birthday if I stayed in school. Well, birthday time rolled around, and all of a sudden he just realized that he couldn’t let me get my driver’s licence as it would affect his car insurance.

He invited me in June of 1990 to move to Edmonton with him and we could try to be a family again. That lasted for one month before him and my stepmother bought a house in Morinville and my stepmother made it very clear that I wasn’t welcome. What pissed me off the most about the whole move from Toronto to Edmonton was that I paid for most of the meals on the way and I paid for some new office furniture for my father’s work area in the basement of the PMQ. He told me to give him the receipts from the meals and that he’d submit them to the DND and give me the money when he was reimbursed. He also told me that he’d pay me back for the office chair and desk that I bought him. He never did pay me back. Claimed that after all he paid raising my brother and I that I owed him.

He called me up a couple of times in the ’90s when I was living in Vancouver. Said that he’d give me some money if I helped my brother fix his car. Helped my brother. The promised money never came.

I’ll never get an apology from Richard. Did he lie to the CFNIS in 2011 because he was pressured by the CFNIS? Or did he lie to the CFNIS in 2011 because he was ashamed of the fact he participated in a cover up in 1980? And even if it wasn’t a coverup that he participated in, was he ashamed to admit that his children were abused because he left his children in the care of his very dysfunctional mother?

But then again, even if Richard was still alive today, would I be able to believe anything that came out of his mouth?

And this is why I am tired.

And this is why I am burnt out.

And this is why I am disillusioned.

Everyone keeps telling me to move on.

To let the past stay in the past.

Even my father said in 2006 the if I went sticking my nose into this that I might not like the smell.

Everyone makes the depression out as being my fault because I just don’t want to be happy.

My anxiety attacks are nothing more than ploys for getting attention.

If I honestly wanted to get better, all I’d have to do take “x” therapy and all would be great.

My desire for M.A.i.D. is nothing more than melodrama.