Well, it’s 570 until the Canadian Government legalizes Medical Assistance in Dying when the sole underlying condition is mental illness.
I’m really hoping that the government does not chicken out this time and fall victim to the hues and cries of the “concerned”. Who are the “concerned”? The “concerned” are those who feign concern but in reality don’t give a shit and instead judge everyone by their own life experience.
“Bobbie, you’re too smart to be crazy……”
Yep, I’ve had this told to me numerous times in one form or another.
“Bobbie, you should consider yourself lucky that you weren’t a child in a war zone.”
Yep, that one has been used by people who should have known better.
“Bobbie, at least your father didn’t abuse you…..”
Huh? Emotional, physical, and psychological abuse don’t count.
And then there’s the counsellors.
I’ve been to counselling over the years. The one most significant issue that has made counselling unsuccessful for me is that no one believes a single thing that I’ve said.
For counselling to have ever been viable, the counsellors I had seen would have had to have been familiar with how the military justice system worked and how the military in general dealt with male victims of sexual abuse.
I even went to meetings for sexually abused men here in Vancouver. Once you start talking about being sexually abused as a child on a military base and then having your mental health sacrificed by the decisions of others nobody believes it.
Advocates?
Nope, have never had an advocate.
“He told me a lot about his dad. He told me his dad was an asshole and didn’t know how to raise kids- he said that he was cruel and an alcoholic. Scott had a vasectomy early in his life because he never wanted to do to kids what his dad had done to him. He did however spend every day at the hospital with him as he died along with sue. I don’t think he forgave him exactly but he understood that growing up with his mom who helped raise you made him understand how cruelly he was raised. Your grandmother, he said, was awful and mean hearted. Scott had nothing positive to say about her except that residential school had broken her. “
Scott had a relationship with sue up until the last few years. She gave him money to purchase the condo- but when he sold it he didn’t pay her back. He felt he should have gotten more of his dad’s estate. “
Scott didn’t really have that type of relationship until near the end. And he sure didn’t have that opinion of Richard until after Richard died in 2017.
I don’t think that Scott ever realized that Richard was playing Scott as a pawn in his masterful chess game. A chess game that was designed to hide the fact that Richard had been a malevolent asshole. Sadly Scott didn’t see through Richard’s game until near the end.
When I went up to Edmonton in July of 2013 to see Scott he told me that until just recently he hadn’t spoken to Richard or Sue since back in 2008 when Richard and Sue wanted Scott to attended the funeral of a childhood friend who had committed suicide.
Scott explained that he didn’t want to go to Erick’s funeral as Erick blamed Scott for Erick getting arrested with stolen credit cards at West Edmonton Mall when Scott had supplied Erick with the stolen credit cards.
I had given Richard a written examination for federal court. Because of this Sue tracked Scott down to figure out what was going on. The relationship between Scott and I immediately went ice cold after Richard started communicating with Scott again. How dare I let the babysitter molest him. Why wasn’t I there to look after him and raise him as a kid. Why did I let him hang out with the wrong kids in Toronto? Why did I let him steal cars? How come I always tried to make grandma mad at him?
It wasn’t until after Richard’s death that Scott’s attacks on me became less and less. The attacks had actually stopped when the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the Courts Martial transcripts were finally released to me in 2020.
Scott for the most part never enjoyed the same relationship that I had with Richard and Sue. And I’m not just talk about Richard and Captain Totzke interfering with my mental health.
Richard pretty well disowned me in the days after CFB Namao.
And that is not an understatement. Money spent on me was wasted money.
Sue, being his girlfriend at the time and then his wife, followed his lead.
There was an observation in my social service records in which during a family counselling session Scott laments to our child case workers that “Sue promised not to hit us, but now she does”. I didn’t dare say anything against Sue as this would only result in Richard issuing another beating.
Prior to our move to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario in April of 1983 Scott and I were spending the weekend with our grandmother. Uncle Doug was in town and was staying at grandma’s place. I asked Uncle Doug why Sue was always so mean. He replied that Richard had told Sue that she was not going to have kids while Scott and I were under his roof.
So through my adolescence and teenage years there was no advocacy for me.
There was just anger directed towards me for letting the babysitter fuck my brother, for me having fucked with Richard’s military career, for me just ‘acting up’ for attention, for me not raising my brother correctly and letting him hang out with thugs.
Even in my adult years, there’s been nothing there. Nothing at all.
Family doctors are hard to obtain, especially in my younger days when couch hopping and moving from city to city was a thing. So I availed myself to walk-in clinics. Not a single one of them wanted to deal with my mental health issues.
I was working, I had stable employment, I wasn’t a drug user, I didn’t drink. Therefore I couldn’t be mentally ill.
“Have any of your family members voiced any concerns”?
I’m the black sheep in the family, no one in the family talks to me.
“Maybe you’ve got insomnia, we’ll try these SSRIs and see if they help you out.”
And the SSRIs did, while I was on them.
“Can’t over prescribe these as only depressed people need these and you’re just having trouble sleeping. If you were depressed your family would have voiced their concerns.”
And as I’ve said in previous posts, getting caught in a tug of war between my father, my military social worker on one side and my civilian child care workers on the other side has pretty well rendered any type of therapy well beyond my reach.
Not only that, but as I’ve said, it wasn’t that no one knew what had happened.
The Canadian Forces knew full well what happened.
My Canadian Forces Military Social Worker knew what happened.
The Canadian Forces Military Police knew what happened.
The base commander of Canadian Forces Base Namao knew what happened
The base security officer of Canadian Forces Base Namao knew what happened.
The Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit knew what happened.
The Canadian Forces Judge Advocate General knew what happened.
The Canadian Forces Courts Martial court knew what happened.
The Vice-Chief and the Chief of Staff knew what happened.
The Minister of National Defence knew what happened.
Lots of members of the Canadian Armed Forces, including my father, knew full well what had happened.
But they all wanted to keep their secrets.
And I’m just supposed to forget, move on, and stop being so dramatic.
I hope that I’m not building myself up for another grand disappointment.
I am so looking forward to receiving my approval to die via Medical Assistance in Dying.
And it’s only 570 days away from when I make my application.
Beeshive 