Well, this doesn’t bode well for me.
Dying with Dignity Canada had a webinar earlier today that I had submitted some questions to.
Two of my questions were asked to the guests, but they were editied in such a way as to remove most of the meat from the question.
Regardless, I didn’t get the answer that I was looking for.
The sense that I get is that Dying with Dignity is trying to stay very far, far away from the topic of Medical Assistance in Dying for Mental Illness.
And what the two providers had to say wasn’t promising at all.
Basically, I’m functional. I can function on a daily basis. So therefore I will probably be unable to obtain medical assistance in dying.
In basic terms, I’m a fucking industrial robot. As long as I can perform the tasks required of me I’m A.O.K.!
Even if I was “non-functional” I would have had to undergo years and years of counselling and therapy in order to obtain M.A.i.D. for mental illness.
Now, you might be wondering, just like the M.A.i.D. assessors will probably be wondering……. “Bobbie, why didn’t you obtain treatment for your mental illnesses?????”
Well, remember, even though I was diagnosed at age 9 with major depression, severe anxiety, an intense fear of being touched, a fear of men, etc., my social worker at the time, Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke actively and intentionally prevented me from obtaining mental health treatment as it was a risk for the Canadian Armed Forces.
The Canadian Forces conspired to do everything possible to keep the story of Captain Father Angus McRae out of the media. The military even moved the entire courts martial “in-camera” citing the need to “protect the morals of Canadians”.
The last thing that Captain Totzke was going to allow was for me to obtain treatment for me mental health issues. That would involve me going for counselling, or therapy, maybe even time in a psychiatric facility for children.
The risk this posed is that I would open my mouth and start talking. And back then there was still enough interest in the media over the Captain McRae courts martial that the media would have torn into the Canadian Armed Forces.
So, instead I recevied “conversion therapy” at the hands of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke.
For 2-1/2 years I was labelled as a mentally ill homosexual by Captain Terry Totzke.
For 2-1/2 years I was blamed by Captain Totzke for what had happened to me on CFB Namao. I was blamed for what happened to my brother on CFB Namao. I wasn’t allowed to play sports.
Home life at the time and thereafter was a fucking nightmare for two reasons.
First was that my father was a lowly master corporal at the time. Captains greatly outrank master corporals. If a captain says that your son is a pole smoking homo, then your son is a pole smoking homo.
Second was that at the time the Canadian Armed Forces was an extremely homophobic environment. No service member wanted it known that they had a homosexual living in their PMQ.
Even after Alberta Social Services became involved with my family, Captain Totzke interfered with the attempts of Alberta Social Services to remove me from the home and appears to have been instrumental in assisting my father flee the jurisdiction of Alberta for Ontario.
And even though Captain Totzke had declared that I was a mentally ill homosexual, I was still dealing with major depression, severe anxiety, and a plethora of other issues on my own.
My father had his own helpful therapies to help me with these issues. One therapy involved backhands across the face. One therapy involved bare ass spankings with a leather belt. Another therapy was the “get the fuck up to your room and you’re not having supper” therapy. And of course there was the all time favourite “yelling and screaming like a drill instructor” therapy.
So, from my diagnoses in in October of 1980 until the discovery of my social service records in August of 2011 I was left to my own devices dealing with the wars and the shit and the terrors and the memories in my brain.
And as I learnt in 2011, dealing with this shit 30 years after the fact doesn’t do anything.
I did counselling with counsellors from Practitioner Renewal and even the Employee and Family Assistance Program.
I tried therapy with the BC Society for Survivors of Male Sexual Abuse.
I even went to meetings with the local chapter of SNAP.
None of this works.
Absolutely none.
Trying to explain what I’ve been through is a fucking nightmare. Civilians have no fucking idea of what life was like on the bases, especially for sexually abused children.
The fact that it is legally impossible to bring charges against persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline for Service Offences committed prior to 1998 means that absolutely no one has heard of child sexual abuse on the bases.
The fact that the Canadian Forces can be so very secretive with the information that they have means that the truth never gets out.
So when people like me try to get help, we’re literally laughed at.
And then there’s the fact that I don’t have a crack habit, or a heroin habit, or a drinking habit……..
YOU’RE NOT AN ADDICT!!!
YOU DIDN’T SUFFER!!!!
ONLY ADDICTS SUFFER YOU FUCKING WHINY ASSHOLE!!!!
We spend so much on addicts that there is sweet fuck all left over for those suffering from mental illnesses who aren’t addicts.
Chemical therapy and self blame is all that is offered these days.
Back around 1985 the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto said that due to staffing levels, budgetary constraints, and my father’s refusal to participate with the case workers that the CAST wouldn’t be able to get involved with my family unless there were credible reports of abuse from the community. We lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview at the time. There never would be “credible reports from the community”. Military members don’t rat out other members and the military washes its own laundry. This secrecy is how John Ryan Turner was starved to death and beat to death in his father’s PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in 1994 and no one heard a thing.
And now it looks as if Medical Assistance in Dying is going to be beyond my grasp.
There are no therapies to fix my brain or to erase my memories.
I’m not going to subject myself to psychiatrists and psychologists blaming me for my problems.
I don’t want elctrocunvulsive therapy.
And don’t even mention to me sham “therapies” like CBT and mindfulness and other “we don’t really know how to fix the human brain so we’re going to set you up so that we can blame you for not trying”
My practitioner has said that he’s more than willing to help me with my application in March, but after watching the Dying with Dignity webinar today I don’t think that my application will go anywhere.
I guess I’m going to have to start getting serious about “alternative methods”.
I don’t remember asking my parents to fuck in December of 1970.
I don’t remember being asked if I’d like to be born.
I don’t really remember being asked if I’d like an alcoholic residential school survivor as a primary care giver.
I don’t really remember being asked if I’d like a rage prone alcohol fueled piss-tank for a father.
I don’t remember being asked by the babysitter if I’d like to have his penis in my mouth, or in my ass, or to have any of the other sexual acts that the did to me done to me.
I don’t remember being asked by Captain McRae if I would like to get intoxicated off a glass of wine so that he could do whatever he did while I was blacked out.
I don’t really remember being asked if I’d like to have conversion therapy from a military social worker.
But what I don’t want is to go on living with the remnants of untreated depression, untreated anxiety, and all of the other issues gifted to me by the events back then.
I do want to die.
I don’t want to be here any longer.
I am fucking tired.
I am fucking burnt out.
With all of the fucking horseshit that I’ve been through I’d like to be able to go out on my own with some form of dignity.
Dignity that I’ve never had in my entire life.
Surely going by M.A.i.D. or going by suicide will be the same thing, right?
Nope.
Suicide is painful.
Suicide is cruel.
Suicide is not always successful.
Suicide gives the Canadian Armed Forces what they want.
If I am forced to go by suicide then the CAF can point to me and tell everyone that will listen that I was just some “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military” and that I was just a fucking crazy nutbar.
If I am allowed to have Medical Assistance in Dying, I get to die without pain, I get to die with dignity. And the Canadian Armed Forces wouldn’t dare say fuck all.
Beeshive 