bobbiebees

15 mg

Well, I’m up to 15 mg of Escitalopram now.

After returning back to work I found that the benefits of 10 mg were wearing off around noon. Yes, work is stressful and demanding, so that was probably what started to nullify the effect of the 10 mg.

Being on Escitalopram is different. I’ve honestly never felt like this before in my life.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’ve been given a 2nd chance at life, or have been allowed to start my life over from some arbitrary starting line.

The Escitalopram hasn’t fixed anything. It hasn’t made me “happy”. What it has done is raised the floor to which my depression would drag me down to. I do get somewhat depressed still, but it’s nowhere near as deep as my depressions used to go. I’ve had this untreated depression for far too long. There are also far too many factors that contributed to this depression. I now believe that I was predisposed to depression from my father’s side of the family. Depression can run in families.

The anxiety, which has been a constant companion of mine since the late ’70s had been toned down substantially. I haven’t woken up grinding my teeth once in the last couple of months.

I find that I can concentrate better now and when something disturbs me while I’m in the middle of a thought, it doesn’t completely derail my train of thought.

The dark thoughts are still there, and they always will be. You can’t go through what I’ve gone through and not carry those demons around.

Captain McRae, Captain Totzke, Mcpl Gill, P.S., Earl Ray Stevens. They’re all still up there too. But at least now I can more or less ignore them for the time being.

Even though the Escitalopram has calmed the waves of my emotions the war still rages on behind my eyes. The time for fixing these issues was back in the early ’80s. Not 40+ years later.

But, we’ll have to see how things work out. I’m 50 now. The average life expectancy for a male in Canada now sits at 80 years, so that’s about 30. Most of the men in my family have dropped dead early though, so I’d say that I might have a life expectancy of 70 years. But there are still other factors at play. So let’s just agree that I’m not getting a second chance. I’m just getting a bit of a respite in the final 1/4 of my life.

Computers, Electronics, and Cars.

I grew up dabbling in car, computers, and electronics. I sure wasted a lot of my life doing that.

Richard wasn’t the type of father to do things with his kids. I don’t ever remember going to any type of event with him as a kid.

That’s one thing that social services mentioned in their paperwork when they became involved with my family in November of 1981. “There’s not one single activity these people seem to have in common”.

Never went to a hockey game with him.

Never went to a football game with him.

Never went to a baseball game with him.

He never came to a school performance or recital.

Never came to a cadet night.

Never went to the Ontario Science Centre with us.

Never went to the CN Tower with us.

No matter how many times he dropped us off at Canada’s Wonderland, he’d never come in with us. And no, my brother and I had no choice with Canada’s Wonderland. As my brother said, Canada’s Wonderland was Richard’s “discount babysitting service”. Seasons passes were $29.95 for the ’83 – ’84 season. He’d give us ten bucks each and drop us off at 9 a.m. and pick us up at 10 p.m..

Never went shopping with him at Active Surplus or College Electronics or any of the other electronics shops that we both used to buy supplies from.

I actually went to more football games with my grandmother when she’d score Edmonton Elks tickets (formerly the Edmonton Eskimos) for underprivileged families from the Bissell centre.

And it wasn’t just outside activities that Richard wouldn’t partake in.

Acknowledgement of birthdays was pretty well non-existent. I had one birthday that he acknowledged that I can remember. That was my 14th birthday in Sept of 1985. As I would discover later in life, the only reason for this acknowledgement is my family was under supervision of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto and Richard was obviously buttering me up just in case the Toronto Police Service notified Children’s Aid about the massive domestic fight between my father and step mother in the summer on 1985.

Christmas, as my brother refers to it as, was “socks and underwear day”.

Richard didn’t like Father’s Day cards made at school, Richard didn’t mark his birthday. I didn’t actually learn Richard’s birthday until 2005 when I had to get my birth certificate replaced.

I tried to pick up electronics as a kid. I guess that my way of thinking was that if Richard and I had something in common that he’d love me or something. Didn’t work.

The same thing with computers. I never really had an interest in computers.

Electronics was something that I picked up, especially digital electronics and digital logic. But I had absolutely no interest in it. And I learnt quickly not to ask Richard for help with math related to electronics as this would cause him to blow his lid. Again, I would learn much later in life that his formal education was grade 8 with an upgrade to grade 9 to get into the Royal Canadian Navy. When we moved to Toronto he started taking mathematics upgrading courses at York University and Seneca College. These upgrades were more in keeping with the more “administerial” roles he was taking in the Canadian Forces.

Almost all of the electronics that I learnt as a kid came from magazines like “Popular Electronics”, “Radio Electronics “, “Elektor Electronics”. Even before I started servicing video games, I always had after school or weekend employment.

Computers were much the same thing. Richard would spend literal hours programming his computers. I could pick up programming from the magazines that I’d buy at the magazine store, but not once ever did Richard ever sit down with me and teach me how to program.

Richard had a knack of buying stuff that was on sale or had been discontinued. I could participate in computer lab at school, but the machine I had used a version of BASIC that was just modified enough that it wouldn’t work flawlessly with the lessons in computer lab. Almost all of the kids in computer club at school had Apple IIe or Commodore 64 computers. I had a TRS-80 Color Computer. And no, the other kids didn’t come from rich or affluent families. Elia Junior High and even Pierre Laporte Jr. High were in very working class neighbourhoods. These were families that really didn’t have the money to waste on novelties.

Most parents as I’ve learnt in my life put their kids above anything else. Not Richard. Richard is all that mattered in Richard’s life. My brother and I were Marie’s problem. He kept us because it was cheaper than giving us to our mother. One of Richard’s Air Force buddies once asked Richard why Richard did’t give my brother and I back to our mother if we were causing Richard so much trouble. Richard’s response was that as long and my brother and I lived with Richard, Richard could control the costs but that if Richard gave us back to our mother that he’d have to sign his paycheque over to “that bitch”, and that was not going to happen.

Around the time when I was 14, I started repairing arcade video games. Even though I didn’t have a passion for electronics, none the less I could do it. And I was good at it. I repaired CPU boards that guys with technical diplomas from DeVry couldn’t service. Having employment meant that I had money. And having money meant that I didn’t have to live on the non-existent allowance that Richard never offered.

Around the summer of 1986 I bought a 1978 Volkswagen Rabbit for $175. The car was a rust bucket piece of crap. The floor pans were rotted out. The rocker panels and the rear wheel arches were rotted out. This car would have never passed a safety inspection. But that was fine. I just wanted a car so that I could get a membership at the base auto hobby club. My thinking was that I could get Richard to teach me how to work on cars and we could spend time together. That didn’t work out quite the way I planned for it to. I learnt how to work on cars from Bill Parker, Bob Wrightson, Bob, Stephan, and a couple of the other service members at the club.

It’s obvious now looking back that Richard was far too damaged to be a functional parent.

Was it the fact that his father left him as a young kid?

Was it the fact that his mother was emotionally damaged from Residential School?

Grandma had a fierce temper and she was not above using physical force. Did she beat on Richard when Richard was a kid?

Did Richard’s misogynistic views of women come from his dependence/defiance relationship with his mother?

I barely play around with electronics anymore. I never really had an interest in it.

I stepped away from electronics around 1989 when I asked one of the employers I was servicing video games for if I could have a pay raise. His response was that as good as I was at electronics, and sure I could fix equipment that others had given up on, I didn’t have a degree or a certificate from any college or institution and therefore he couldn’t pay me more than what I was making. It was this that prompted me to quit working and to try going back to school.

The last time I programmed a computer was back in 1989 when I was enrolled in the Alternative and Independent Study Program in North York trying to finish off my grade 9 and 10 in the first year and grade 11 and 12 in the second. I took Fortran, Cobol, and Autocad 10.

I haven’t touched BASIC, Fortran, Cobol or any other computer language since.

Cars? The last time I owned a car was 1998. I don’t mention to anyone that as a kid I used to do brake jobs, clutch jobs, and electrical troubleshooting as I really don’t like cars. I can barely be bothered to do my own oil on my motorcycle.

I just don’t have the interest electronics, computers, or cars.

In 2006 I took up figure skating. That was a blast. Now that’s an activity that I wished I could have done as a kid. But I also have to realize that there was no way on earth that Richard was going to allow his son to skate like a girl.

When I was in Sea Cadets, I loved sailing. I knew of a sailing club on Centre Island in Toronto that specialized in sailing programs for kids from low income families. There were a lot of kids from the different Greater Toronto sea cadet corps in this club. Richard refused to cough up the menial fees that George was charging.

Learning to fly would have been cool. And yes, my father had his private pilot’s licence. Although he only ever took me up in the air once. You don’t have to own a plane to go flying. Most small charter companies will rent small planes to licence pilots. Especially to members of the Canadian Armed Forces with their pilots licence.

After I had left sea cadets at the Dennison Armouries in the spring of 1987, I joined air cadets at the Moss Park Armouries. All Richard had to do was sign the permission slip to allow me to take gliding instruction and pay the minimal fees for glider access, and I could have started on my pilot’s licence. Nope.

I had to wait until I moved out of the house in early 1988 before I could get my driver’s licence. Richard had promised me that he would sign me up for “Young Drivers of Canada”. Nope. Another false promise.

So, I’ll never know what it was with Richard and what it was that made him a defective father. Why he’d promise so many things and yet only deliver on disappointment.

Growing up with Richard, it was to the point that if I really wanted something as a kid, I usually wouldn’t get it. So I took that and turned it around to the point that if I wanted something, I would hope really hard that I wouldn’t get it. So that way, when I didn’t get it I wouldn’t be disappointed. Twisted? Yep. But it was a coping strategy.

Allowances were another constant let down with Richard. He’d promise you $5 or $10 if you did this or that. But when you did this or that, there was always some excuse as to why you didn’t earn the $5 or $10.

All I know is that looking back on things, I sure did waste a significant portion of my life trying to connect with a person who didn’t want any type of connection.

And maybe it’s that rejection of any type of connection that causes me to be isolated from others to this day.

When I went up to Morinville, Alberta in 2003 to see my father, my stepmother said to me that I should try to see my father more often. But the thing is, Richard didn’t want to be seen more often. When I became a 5th class Power Engineer in 2004, he didn’t care. When I became a 4th class Power Engineer in 2005. He still didn’t care. When I landed a power engineering position in the hospital where I currently work, still didn’t care.

Even when I got my grade 12 back in 1991 he just didn’t care.

So, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

He just couldn’t be bothered.

And I was the idiot for having looked up to him as a kid.

So yeah, it was a lonely and isolated childhood. And I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed single to this day. It’s not for a lack of trying. It’s just that being alone is all I’m used to.

What am I?

My life has been one non stop ball of confusion.

Am I gay, straight, bi, gender queer, asexual?

Who knows?

I sure don’t.

I don’t think I’ll ever figure this out because I don’t think this confusion was solely mine to begin with. It was kinda a group thing if you know what I mean.

Going by the number of sexual encounters I’ve had with women, I’ve had maybe 3 female partners, you’d assume that I have very little interest in women.

Going by the number of men I’ve had sex with in my life ( not including the sexual abuse), I’ve probably had about two to three dozen partners in my life, you’d assume that I’m homosexual.

Yet, every time I get intimate with a man, Captain Totzke pops into my head and starts admonishing me about my mental illness called homosexuality and that if I didn’t like the abuse on CFB Namao then I wouldn’t have allowed it to go on for so long. And then there’s my father whom also pops into my head and starts reminding me that I allowed the babysitter abuse my younger brother.

And of course, just growing up on military bases in the ’70s and ’80s would turn any queer child into a self loathing human.

And let’s be honest. I’m 50. I’ve really only had two long term “partners” in my life, and I’ve never really had any interest in a partner. This in itself probably stems from the way my father viewed his relationships and how little joy or pleasure he seemed to get from them. He was forever complaining how much his relationships were costing him in time and money and how much he had to do for the other party, so maybe that had an effect on why I’ve remained single my entire life.

My depression and anxiety couldn’t have helped much either.

Was it the sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao? What I endured and what I saw happen from 1978 until 1980 have more than likely affected me for life.

Was it my involvement with the military social worker Captain Terry Totzke, who for nearly three years had drilled into my head that I was showing “homosexual tendencies” due to what had happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao?

Was it my father’s reactions, which were in no doubt guided by Captain Totzke and the military’s view of “homosexual activities”?

Was it the sexual abuse on CFB Griesbach?

I have no doubt the sexual abuse prior to my 13th birthday probably helped to form my opinion on sex. I didn’t have my first orgasm until after I had turned 13. So sexually pleasuring those abusing me was a one-way street.

Was it the sexual abuse on CFB Downsview at the hands of Earl Ray Stevens? Earl knew that I was a military dependent. As he was a retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces he also would have known that I would have been in a deep trouble if anyone in the Canadian Forces, whether it be the military police or even my father, found out that I was having sex with men.

Was it the sexual encounters I had with the much older teen in the summer of 1985 when I spent the summer with my grandmother?

It’s really hard to say.

But I would say that these events obviously have had some effect.

Looking back I’m pretty sure that being loner and on my own set me up for a lot of the abuse. And with what I’d gone through on CFB Namao, and the counselling that I endured from Captain Totzke meant that I pretty well thought that being abused was something that I was something that I was to be blamed for.

And when you’re not getting any type of love and affection at home, when somebody sexually abuses you, at least they’re paying attention to you, right?

In my life I’ve had boyfriends.

In my life I’ve had girlfriends.

My first boyfriend was on CFB Griesbach of all places. The place where Captain Totzke had warned me about homosexuality being a mental illness. The same place where Captain Totzke said he had the military police watching me.

He was a boy my age. He lived two houses down from mine. His father was a sergeant in the Canadian Airborne Regiment. It was nothing serious, and nothing sexual. We liked to kiss. And hang out together a lot. His father caught us kissing once. My father nearly killed me. Said that he never wanted to hear again, especially not from a sergeant, that I had been kissing their son and that if he did that he’d “break my fucking neck”.

Megan wasn’t really a girlfriend. We did like to talk and hang out a lot. And there was the clothes swapping thing. Definitely nothing romantic.

In the aftermath of Earl Stevens I started to believe that I was gay. Earl had impressed upon me that men will pay for sex and that sex was always supposed to be meaningless except for the person paying.

I frequently got beat up bad in grade 8 for being a “queerboy” and a “faggot”.

I had a boyfriend in the late ’90s. It didn’t really last too long.

I wouldn’t have sex with a woman until 2002 when I had a relationship with a woman. We met at the local motorcycle hangout. Not a biker club or anything like that. It was the local Starbucks where all the weekend motorcyclists would hang out after the rides. We both had our reasons for liking each other. Mine was primarily so that I could get people to stop wondering if I was a fag or a queer. Her’s was that she wanted to have kids.

I have absolutely no interest in having kids or raising kids. She did. And even at the start of the relationship when I wanted separate beds, she wanted the beds together.

I guess my primary reason for getting together with her is that I thought that it would get a bully manager off my back at work. He kept referring to me as “Freddie” or “Liberace”. He kept telling me that if I didn’t do things the way he wanted that he’d out me to the board of directors.

In 2003 I took her up to meet my father. He wasn’t buying it, and neither was my stepmother.

Even when I got mugged in July of 1995, the attending VPD officer was adamant that I was a homosexual and that I had been beat up in a “trick gone bad”. Even when I was able to produce proof that I had been where I said I had been and that the man and woman who mugged me had followed me from where I said they did the responding officer, a VPD Constable, wasn’t listening. I was a male prostitute as far as he was concerned and until I admitted such the investigation was going nowhere.

Another thing that may have hindered my ability to form relationships is I really hate being touched. This was something that was noted in the aftermath of CFB Namao. And it’s something that persists to this day. I don’t like holding hands. I don’t like being touched. The wrong touch in the wrong place can upset me and turn me off like a light switch. Even at work I don’t like being patted on the shoulder.

I guess there’s something about a person’s mannerisms that marks them as “not straight”.

What it is, I’ll never know.

Is it the way I talk?

Is it the way I walk?

And if I am in fact gay / queer / homosexual why don’t I enjoy homosexual relationships?

Did Captain Terry Totzke and his desire to cure me of my apparent homosexuality set me up for life to be a self-loathing homosexual?

Was it the sexual abuse in my youth that taught me that sex in just a base act that one does to pleasure another person otherwise you’d get in trouble?

Did growing up in my father’s household teach me that intimate relationships are not worth the effort?

Another issue that could be at play is the complete lack of the ability to form emotional bonds. In my household, relationships were of a calculated nature.

As I said at the beginning, I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to come up with an answer for this.

Single for life it is I guess.

Tattoos.

As you’ve probably noticed, I have a few tattoos.

Growing up in a military family living on Canadian Armed Forces bases, I had always been exposed to tattoos. And as a kid, I had always wanted tattoos. But one thing I found is that outside of the military, tattoos weren’t really generally accepted. And with my almost nonexistent self esteem I was almost 25 before I got my first tattoo.

Being in a very precarious state with my employment and my finances at that stage in my life meant that I wasn’t going to risk losing my employment due to a disagreement with my employer over the appropriateness of tattoos in the work place. So the tattoos I had prior to working at the hospital were always small and could be covered up with a shirt.

After I started working at the hospital things became easier. Tattoos were not forbidden and some of the doctors and surgeons had some pretty good ink.

When I got my name change completed in 2008 I decided that I was no longer going to worry about what Richard would think. I started to get visible ink.

I’m not an artistic person. Faces and characters really don’t speak to me.

So I stated off with small designs and some small phrases.

Then the CFB Namao matter happened.

That matter literally sucked the life right out of me and it really slowed down what I wanted to do. After all, how can you know what you want to do when everything that you’ve known up to that date had been an absolute lie or bullshit.

Well, now that the entire truth has pretty well been discovered, I’ve made it my goal to have my complete body covered with as much ink as possible. And I’ve decided that I’m going to go with something simple but bold.

Stripes and bands.

Nothing complex. Nothing graphic. Just simple stripes and bands.
To get that one section of my leg done was about 6 hours.
I’m going back in a few weeks to get the other lower leg done.
After that it will be both upper legs.
Then my mid section.

And my arms.
Definitely will be keep the swords on my upper arms, but I’ll either continue with the bands or I will simply black out my forearms.

My face is a different story.
I’ll stay with the lines, but I am going to thicken up most of the lines.
Maybe add some line art.

Tattooing, like piercing, has actually worked out to be a form of pain relief.
It is true, there is an adrenaline rush of sorts when you’re getting tattooed or pierced.
And the thing about the adrenaline rush is it works as a sort of natural antidepressant.

Are there any tattoos that I regret?
Nope.

And no, I do not regret tattooing my face.
I love it.

Facial tattoos are really frowned upon in our society, but as I’m kinda one of society’s misfits, I guess I don’t have to worry.

It took so long to find an artist that was willing to tattoos my face. Not too many artists are willing to tattoo anyone’s face. But I found an artist who was willing. Yes, it was odd sitting there in the chair with the tattoo gun pressing into my face. When the tattooing stopped and it was time to take a look, I was blown away. I had never felt this pleased with myself before.

It took a while at first to get used to people staring. But I guess that comes with the territory. And no, I’m not offended if anyone looks, you can’t tattoo your face and then act all upset when people look.

The vast majority of people either don’t care or they like what they see. I’ve only encountered a very limited number of people who were upset.

No. My neck tattoos and my face tattoos are not Māori. Nor are they intended to be. My neck piece is actually a vector pattern that I bought from Shutterstock. The vector pattern on my head also came from Shutterstock. The lines on my face actually started off as me wanting to fill up the void on my chin. Things just spread out from there.

Cultural appropriation?

I don’t think so. I’ve done some research and I’ve tried to stay far away from any patterns or designs that could be assumed to belong to a tribe or peoples.

But didn’t “white people” steal tattooing from the Polynesians.

Not quite.

Historians and archaeologists are finding evidence that tattooing was actually a common thing amongst the peoples of continental and Northern Europe. And this makes a lot of sense. Everyone in the world has a common ancestor and to say that only specific peoples felt the need and urge to decorate their bodies would be foolhardy.

Recently a 2,500 year old “Siberian Princess” that had been unearthed in the early 2000’s was discovered to have had intricate tattoos. And as more corpses from much earlier days across Europe and North Europe are unearthed, tattoos are being found.

So, what happened?

Religion, or more specifically the Abrahamic religions including Christianity. As Christianity spread throughout Europe it erased customs and traditions. St. Patrick didn’t drive the snakes from Ireland. St. Patrick drove the Pagans from Ireland. And Christianity drove the Picts from Scotland. The Britons suffered the same fate. There are entire write-ups on how Christianity literally erased and replaced cultures and civilizations as it spread.

As the Church had a stranglehold on what parts of history were recorded and what parts of history were discarded, facts that didn’t suit the “man created in the image of god” mindset were pushed aside and forgotten about. So it goes without saying that a lot of European cultures that didn’t fit into the ideals of the new Christian theocracy were simply erased and forgotten about.

In Canada, we had the Government of British North America, and the the Government of Canada work in conjunction with the Catholic Church to erase the cultures of the various First Nations people. And this was in the modern ear. This was still going on into the 1990s. So to say that the Catholic church in previous eras erased peoples and cultures isn’t outlandish at all.

It’s no wonder there aren’t any historical records of alternate genders or alternate sexualities from the start of the Christian period to the modern era. Christianity has always had a weird and unhealthy fixation on sexuality and “earthly pleasures”. Suffering and virtue is the goal. Any sexuality or gender identity that didn’t result in reproduction was seen as “unholy”, and had to go.

When Christianity spread around the world, it did so at the end of a sword.

I’m not religious in any sense of the word. My body was not created in the image of a god. My parents were horny and they had sex without birth control. And therefore I’ll poke as many holes in it and decorate and colour the skin of my corpse as I see fit. If you don’t like tattoos and you don’t like piercings, don’t get them.

Anyways, enough for now.

My Name……

To those of you that have known me prior to May of 2008, you may have known me under a different name.

In August of 2006 I had a very detailed and pointed conversation with my father relating to the events of CFB Namao and his parenting skills and abilities. These conversations continued on for about a month until Richard got bored.

It was then that I realized that there was never going to be a “father – son” relationship between the two of us. His ideals of family norms seem to have been shaped by television and popular media. Not the slightest were his ideas based in reality. This may have been a side effect of his having been in the Canadian Armed Forces since his 17th birthday and not having any idea of what the real world function like. The chain of command told him all he needed to know. His station was not to question.

I decided that seeing as how my past was acting like such an anchor I’d do something that I had always wanted to do.

Change my name.

It’s actually not a hard process to undertake, but there is a process none the less.

First, you have to choose your name and how much of your name you want to change.

I changed my entire name.

First name, middle name, and last name.

The first name was easy. I never really like the name “Robert”. As a kid friends of the family had always called me Robbie or Bobby. Both names had an appeal to me. Bobbie even more so than Robbie. Robbie was still too close to “Robert” for my liking. Bobby I didn’t like as it was too “male”. However, I did like “Bobbie”.

Bobbie is an interesting name. Bobby is the masculine spelling. Bobbi is the feminine spelling. And Bobbie is the unisex spelling. Throughout the last 100 years according to the various censuses, Bobbie has gone between being a dominant male baby name to being a dominant female baby name. The unisex aspect of it appealed to me as I’ve never really identified as either male or female.

It took a while to decide on my last name. It wasn’t until I was working as a canvaser for the 2008 City of Vancouver Municipal Election that I came across my last name. I had decided when I wanted to change my name that I wanted my last name to complement my first name. As I was making my way though a voters list I came across someone with the last name of “Bees”. I did a bit of research on the Internet. Turns out the surname Bees has quite a long history behind it.

I also liked the name “Bobbie Bees” because it actually has a lot of “B’s” in it.

So, please with my new name I decided to head off to the Vital Statistics office to initiate the process. This was basically collecting all of the paperwork required and then filling out the paperwork.

“Bobbie Bees” was almost my new name until I was ready to submit my paperwork. When I took the paperwork in, the worker at the counter asked me if I really only wanted a surname and a family name without a middle name. I hadn’t really planned on having a middle name as I’d never really used my previous middle name. The worker suggested that I should pick a new middle name as this would give me an alternative name that I could use depending on the situation. The worker suggested that I choose my birthstone as my new middle name.

My birthstone is sapphire.

The worker agreed with me that “Bobbie Sapphire” and “Sapphire Bees” both sounded like stripper names.

In the list of birthstones I happened to spy “Garnet”.

I checked the definition of “garnet” in the dictionary. It was a red coloured gemstone known for its abrasive qualities.

And Garnet was also the name of one of my favourite characters from Final Fantasy IX. So Garnet it was.

Now that my new name was chosen, it was time to finalize the paperwork and pay the fees. I also had to attend the fingerprinting section of RCMP “E” division headquarters to get my finger prints checked.

I couple of weeks later I received a letter from the RCMP notifying Vital Statistics in both BC and Nova Scotia that I had passed the records check and that there was no reason to deny me the name change request.

The next letter I received from from Nova Scotia congratulating me on the name change and letting me know how to request new birth certificates and how to properly destroy my old certificates.

All my other ID had to be updated as well.

At this point in time I’m of the opinion that people should have “childhood” names and “adult” names. Childhood names are often picked by people who don’t have any idea of what their child would like to be named and they pick the names based upon reasons that may mean nothing to the child. When a child turns 16, they should be encouraged to pick a new name that suits them, that suits their identity, and fits with their idea of the world that surrounds them.

There were some unintended consequences of my name change.

In 2008, I hadn’t spoken to my mother since February of 1992 when I moved to Vancouver, BC. When I legally changed my name, my “dead name” ceased to exist. The only place my “dead name” exists is within law enforcement. Even today, I am not allowed to use my “dead name” for any legal purpose.

My mother would have turned 65 in 2011. So she would have been eligible to collect her CPP. For some reason she had to be able to prove to CPP how many dependent children she had had. She requested my brothers birth certificate from the Nova Scotia government. But when she tried to obtain mine, the Nova Scotia government told her that my birth certificate was restricted and that she could not have a copy.

When I tracked my mother down in late 2013 to ask her about some of the answers my father had given me in a Federal Court of Canada matter she said that she was surprised to hear from me. She explained that when the Nova Scotia government wouldn’t give her a copy of my birth certificate she had assumed that I was dead.

She didn’t really seem to care that I was still alive. But I think at that point in her life she was just too broken down and defeated to care.

I’ve been Bobbie Bees for over 12 years at this point in my life. I wasn’t able to kill off Robert like I had hoped I would have been to. “Robert” lives on due to the trauma , neglect, and abuse he was subjected to. “Robert” and the people that harmed him will be with me until the day I die.

But at least Bobbie Garnet Bees allows me a respite from “Robert”.

Escitalopram update.

So, I’ve been on escitalopram for about 2-1/2 months now.

It’s been interesting.

It hasn’t fixed anything. And I doubt that it will.

It just seems to have introduced a cease fire in the never ending war behind my eyes.

It’s a weird kind of emotional numbing.

Right now I’m on 10mg, but this might have to increase due to the stress of work.

The main participants in this war war P.S., Captain McRae, Terry (Captain Terry Totzke), Richard Gill, Margret Anderson (my grandmother), the unidentified man from the sauna, Earl Stevens, Allen M. There are others, but they were mostly bit players dragged into this war by others.

The escitalopram can’t erase the memories. What it does seem to do is limit my reaction to the memories. But the memories are still there.

I was set to see a psychologist in November, but they wouldn’t be able to offer anything in the way of a diagnosis. Only advice on thinking happy thoughts.

I’ve tried counselling before. I attended a counsellor that specialized in sexually abused males. However, my issues are far greater than the sexual abuse I endured in my youth. It was suggested that I see a psychiatrist and discover which traumatic event or events it was that did the most damage and work form there. For that I’d need to see a psychiatrist.

Psychiatrists are not easy to get hold of. They’re not cheap. Most provincial medical plans will not cover them. And most private insurance plans will not cover them either.

But a good psychiatrist would be a good place to start from and to figure out where to go from here.

Saturday musings.

Well, another week down, another week just about to begin.

I wish that I had some clear idea of the direction that I want to go with this blog. Might come to me one day. I want to keep this blog separate from the topics that I discuss on by other blog, cfbnamao.ca but there probably will be some overlapping of the two.

I recently hit the 5,000 km mark on my bike.

Been out on a few weekend motorcycle trips this year. Not as many as last year though. The pandemic was nice in the sense that it cut down a massive amount of traffic on the highways and made the trips pleasant. Traffic levels are back to pre-pandemic levels and with that the amount of dangerous drivers on the highways has shot back up again negating the pleasant quietness of the open roads.

It’s raining again, finally.

It’s also cooling off. Now I have to wear my blouse tops with my dresses on most days going to work. I know, “the struggles of the modern man”.

Finally got both doses of Moderna, still no Wi-Fi of 5G reception. I’m beginning to think that a lot of these anti-vaxxers are full-o-shit.

One of the hardest things about writing this blog is that having grown up in a dysfunctional and emotionally stunted household, expressing myself is something that I find hard to do. I can talk technical talk, but anything involving emotions is still hard to do. But we’ll see if I can overcome those blockages or not.

I’m trying tp make use of my MacBook more often so that I can “capture” my thoughts as they come up. My previous style was to try to remember what I wanted to write down and then write when I had the chance. But that didn’t work as I was usually involved with something and so the fleeting thoughts were lost.

My two civil actions are proceeding at the moment. One is related to Earl Ray Stevens, and the other is a class action related to Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae. Paperwork has been filed, documents have been exchanged, but both actions are in their infancy. Neither action is expected to get underway until next spring.

There is an election currently underway. And as much as I am hope that Dr. Hedy Fry and Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan lose their seats, I am greatly worried about the Conservatives winning. I can’t see the Conservatives risking upsetting their base by allowing M.A.i.D. for psychological issues such as depression. The Conservatives are more than likely to pass an amendment making it a legal requirement that depressed people attend bible study camp. Regardless I will be voting for Breen Ouellette, the NDP candidate for Vancouver Centre. There is absolutely no way that I could ever bring myself to vote for the Liberal Party of Canada and especially not Hedy Fry. Not after she made it very clear that child sexual abuse in the Canadian Armed Forces is something that she’s apparently willing to live with.

Anyways, until the next posting.

Riding Bicycles

I’ve ridden bicycles since I was young. I can’t remember exactly when I learnt to ride, but it was on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater.

The nice thing about growing up as a child on military bases is that the living quarters were governed by the Government Property Traffic Regulations. These regulations capped the speed limit in the living quarters to 20km/h. Automobiles also had to yield the right of way to any pedestrian on the streets. So riding bicycles on base was a very safe thing to do.

We also had yearly bicycle rodeos put on by the military police. Every kid that rode a bicycle on base was expected to take part.

And almost every kid on base rode their bicycles to school. Hampton Grey on Shearwater had a large rack. Guthrie School on CFB Namao had a large rack. And Major General Griesbach School had a large rack. CFB Downsview was the only base that I lived on that didn’t have schools on the base for the military children. We had to go to school in the local public schools. This meant crossing some very major streets like Keele St., Sheppard Ave., Wilson Ave.. No parent and no school board in their right mind would allow a child to ride to school in those conditions.

The first time I ever rode a bicycle in the civilian world was when my father was stationed at Canadian Forces Base Summerside in PEI. We didn’t live on the base, we lived in the city in housing that was on long term lease to the Department of National Defence. Military rules applied to the housing, but not to the streets. So things were a lot more dangerous but the City of Summerside was very small. There were still a lot of quiet streets and farm roads to ride on. There was also the cemetery that I could ride around in.

I was hospitalized in my first ever bicycle accident. But that wasn’t due to cars. Someone stuck a stick in my front wheel as I rode by.

When we moved to Canadian Forces Base Namao, it was safe to ride on the streets again as we lived on the base. Even when we moved to Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, we lived on base so it was safe to ride around on base. CFB Griesbach was located within the city of Edmonton, and Edmonton is very much a city in love with the automobile. Being a pedestrian or a bicycle rider in that city is very much having a death wish. It was very seldom that I rode a bicycle in the city of Edmonton.

When we moved to CFB Downsview in Metro Toronto, bicycles were my freedom. I could bicycle downtown whenever I wanted. Yes, Toronto had a good bus service, but bugging Richard for bus fare to go anywhere was like trying to wring blood from a stone. In all of the years that I was eligible for a student bus pass, Richard never got me one. And it was just better not to ask for money as you’d get a lecture of oh just how much money you were costing him and why didn’t I call my mother for money.

I would say that most of my bicycles came from scrap. Posting season on base, which typically lasted from late June to early September meant that old bicycles were often left curb side for trash, or were dumped at the large dumpster usually by the arena or the Canex. On Downsview the dumpster was over by the base auto club. Most of the bikes were in decent condition and required very little in the way of parts or repairs to fix.

I can’t really offer any explanation as to why bicycles were thrown away so frequently on military bases other than parents would promise to buy a new bicycle for their children at the new base as a means of getting the children to be more tolerant of the posting. A bribe if you will.

And no, none of these bicycles were really of any valve. Mainly Supercycle 10 speeds or Sears brand name bikes with only a coaster brake on the rear.

Riding in Toronto traffic really wasn’t bad back in the ’80s. Either that, or I was just plain lucky. There was no such thing as putting you bicycle on the bus, or even taking your bicycle on the subway. Riding to downtown from the living quarters on base which were close to Keele St. and Wilson Ave was about a one hour ride each way.

Every now and again when I had cash, it was a treat to go to Centre Island and ride around from one end of the island to the other.

One of the first lessons that I had to learn when riding downtown was how to cross over the street car tracks. Whatever you do, you don’t want to try to cross the tracks going parallel with them. You need to cross the tracks at a slight angle so that your wheels don’t get sucked into the groove on the rail. Pissed off a couple of street car drivers before I learnt my lesson.

Also, riding a bicycle on a skating rink is doable. I rode my various bikes on the ice at Nathan Philips Square a few times.

After CFB Namao, I was a very lonely child. I didn’t have any friends to speak of. But I had bicycles. And a bicycle could take me away from home and away from Richard and his dysfunctional household.

I briefly stopped riding when I was 16. That’s the year I moved out of the house and on my own. Working full time to pay rent and buy groceries left little time to ride. Bruce and Ed both helped me get my driver’s licence. Ed took me to a notary public so that I could swear that I was living on my own and thus get my learner’s permit without needing Richard’s permission. Bruce and Ed both took turns at teaching me how to drive.

I never liked driving. I never really liked cars. Cars to me always equated with anger and drunk driving. Richard was a menace behind the wheel. Angry. Pissed off. Short temper. Would dump the clutch just to own the slow poke blocking his lane. Brake checking was a hobby of his. And this was when he wasn’t drunk. There was one immature thing that he’d always do if a slow driver “blocked” him. He’d pull around in front of the driver, slow down slightly, and drive slowly to the next intersection with the intention of making the driver behind him get a red light. As soon as the light would turn amber, Richard would then gun it through the intersection.

All told Richard totalled one car in a DUI collision, caused significant damage to another one of his cars in another DUI collision, and drove yet another car into a ditch when he was drunk. The first collision sent me to the base infirmary for stitches. The second collision caused me to get a fat lip the I told the other driver that Richard had just come from the base mess. I was in the car once in Toronto when he rear ended a Jaguar luxury car at a red light. He blamed the collision on me as I had asked him for a ride to work and he was missing an episode of Dr. Who and was in a hurry to drop me off and get back home. In June of 1990, when he took Bill Parker and I to the bar at the Sheraton Inn, he rear ended a civilian police car on Keele street as we were driving towards home on the base.

All told, I’ve only owned cars for 6 years of my 33 year driving life. I had a Plymouth Horizon from the summer of 1990 until the fall of 1992. I had one Volkswagen Rabbit for a few months in 1995. I then bought a better condition Rabbit in late 1995 and owned this until I moved back downtown Vancouver in the summer of 1999.

I’ve owned motorcycles for more years of my life than I’ve owned cars, but not by much, maybe 8 years total.

And all through the years starting when I first moved to Vancouver in February of 1992, I’ve owned bicycles. There’s just something about a bicycle that makes me feel safe. And happy. And content. Maybe because it’s the only vehicle that I don’t associate with Richard.

I can go where I want, when I want. Bicycles are very simple to repair and maintain. They need no gasoline, no oil, no expensive spare parts. It’s not that I’m poor. It’s just that I’d rather eat and travel than blow my money on keeping the oil barons and auto barons swimming in pools of money.

Bicycles don’t get stuck in traffic.

I’m a bicycle rider. I’m not a cyclist. I don’t partake in vehicular cycling.

I try very hard to stay away from the word “cyclist”. The corporate media and the automobile industry have used the word “cyclist” in a very negative sense to portray all bicycle riders of every gender, age, and ability as being “cycling elites” racing around on $10k carbon fibre bicycles. The corporate media and the automobile industry love to rile up car drivers in order to thwart bicycle lanes and bicycle infrastructure in general that would benefit bicycle riders of every age, gender, and ability as there is no way for the corporate media and the automobile industry to profit from something that doesn’t benefit them.

Vehicular cycling is a phrase that I detest with all my being. Vehicular cycling calls for a bicycle rider to pretend that they’re a car and to drive like a car would. Absolute rubbish. In many states in America they have different rules of the road for bicycles. Some states allow bicycles to treat red lights as stop signs if there is no cross traffic. Other states allow bicycles to treat stop signs as yield signs. Some states even have very strict passing laws for bicycles requiring car drivers to either cross the dotted line to pass or at the least pass with 2 to 3 metres of clearance. It’s going to take a lot of effort to change provincial laws here in Canada, but they need to be changed if there’s any hope of increasing the number of bicycle riders in our heavily populated urban centres.

My ride at the moment is an electric upright step through bicycle.

Electric because at my age my knees and hips are starting to show their age. And with electric I can go for longer distances. I can also dress up nicely for special occasions and show up not drenched in sweat.

Upright because much like my knees and hips, my neck is shot. C4-C5-C6 have advanced osteoarthritis, so no more road bikes with drop handlebars for me.

Step through because this works best with my dresses. Riding a standard “Men’s bike” while wearing a dress is awkward. Riding a “woman’s bike” wearing a dress is not much better. A step through allows my dresses or skirts to hang properly.

Shopping isn’t a problem on the bike. It has both front and rear baskets. And with what I don’t pay on insurance, gas, parking, etc. I can pay to have “heavy things” delivered.

And even though it’s electric, I do most of the pedalling. I usually tootle around in power assist 2 or 3. Power assist 5 is something I usually on use on the steep hills. The more you use the power assist, the quicker you kill the battery.

I do have a motorcycle at the moment. It’s a 650cc Suzuki Burgman. It’s a step through motorcycle. Yes, it looks like a scooter, however the engine displacement and the weight of the motorcycle means that ICBC classifies it as a motorcycle. And let’s be honest, scooters don’t do zero to sixty kilometres per hour in under 5 seconds. This motorcycle has no problem keeping up with traffic on the BC highways with the 120 km/h posted speed limits.

As much fun as it is, I still only ride it on occasion. Parking is a hassle. Motorcycles are an easy target for theft. Car drivers just keep getting worse and worse as the years go by. Collisions keep increasing each and every year. It’s just not safe being on a motorcycle on the public street. All it takes is for someone to pull a left hand turn, or a right hand turn into your path and it’s game over. Or some very serious life altering injuries to say the least. Because at 50 to 60 km/h, you might not be at fault, and you might be 100% in the right, but physics and Newton’s laws don’t give a rats ass.

On a bicycle, everything takes time. You can’t race around agitated on a bicycle like a car encourages you to do.

Everything is far more peaceful and serene on a bicycle.

You can smell everything.

You can easily observe everything.

If you see something of interest, you can just pull right on over and check it out.

Cars don’t encourage that, and neither do motorcycles.

So, I’ll more than likely be riding bicycles until the day I die.

Mentally Ill

Yep, I said it.

I’m mentally ill.

Have been for a long time apparently.

The sad thing about my mental illness is that people like my father and Captain Terry Totzke were well aware of the struggles I was having, however it appears that it was more politically expedient to deny me of the treatments and medications that I rightfully deserved in the name of keeping secrets.

How bad were things back then in the early ’80s in Edmonton?

Well, I was supposed to have been placed in a psychiatric facility for children.

I was found to be extremely anxious.

I was found to be well beyond despair.

I was terrified of men, including my own father whom I thought was going to kill me.

I did not like being touched at all by anyone.

I was afraid of my grandmother who had been living with us and raising my brother and I during my father’s absences with the Canadian Forces.

My teacher noted that I did not fit in with the other kids at all. I preferred to be left alone to read books. My teacher did remark that the other kids would often use me as a scape goat.

I remember not having a lot of friends. The kids I hung out with were usually kids from other dysfunctional families living on base.

Alone.

And isolated.

Flailing around in the depths of my despair, my depression, my anxiety.

By myself.

Issues caused by my depression or anxiety would often be straightened out with a backhand or the belt.

I remember as a kid in the aftermath of CFB Namao and up until I was around 15 or 16 I always felt like I wasn’t inside of my brain. I always felt like I was behind myself, watching myself do things, and that I was powerless to do anything. Almost like I was watching a TV show.

Nothing felt real.

I frequently wet the bed right up until I moved out of the house when I was 16. It was only after moving out of the house that I never wet the bed again.

I had no hobbies as a kid, I had no interests.

For 42 years I suffered through severe depression and extreme anxiety.

I knew I was having problems and I knew I was floundering all these years. But you have to work hard and hide it, and pretend it doesn’t exist.

But the depression and anxiety are always there. Ready to flare up when you least expect it. Always trying to sabotage your life because deep down inside you know that your life is worthless and meaningless.

I’ve kinda skimmed along the surface of normalcy from the spring of 1980 until April of 2021.

It took the extreme stress of dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak at my work place to push me over the edge.

I’ve managed to keep employment due to my technical abilities.

Did my depression and anxiety come from the events of CFB Namao?

Not entirely. But I do think genetics played a major part. It would be a very safe bet to say that the paternal side of my family has depression encoded into its genes.

My anxiety is so bad that most of my teeth have been destroyed by grinding. I’ve already had one tooth extracted because I cracked it from grinding and I have a feeling that a few more teeth will need extraction in the short while.

Grinding my teeth was nothing new, I remember my father waking me up when we lived on CFB Downsview due to my grinding.

When COVID struck, the facility that I work at became a hotbed of activity. At first it was easy keeping up with the demands, but as weeks turned into months, the overtime went from being a treat to being a major cause of stress. The facility was designed in the late ’60s / early ’70s and construction was started in the late ’70s. The building HVAC systems meet the ’70s CSA standards. It does not meet 2021 standards. Being caught between parties that wanted todays standards flogged from 1960s technology was also very stress inducing.

So yeah, this was not fun.

Not fun at all.

But it did push me hard enough that I started to suffer constant panic attacks and anxiety attacks. My depression was hitting so hard that I was feeling physically ill and nauseated most of the time. I’d go to work and I couldn’t concentrate and I couldn’t think. My brain felt like it was on fire.

I ended up having to go on sick leave.

And this is how I ended up on Escitalopram.

Escitalopram is a SSRI. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor.

Let’s be very clear, Escitalopram is not going to cure my depression, nor is it going to cure my anxiety. Those two issues have been with me for so long that they’ve more than likely fucked with my brain’s wiring.

The Escitalopram will not stop the war that goes on inside my head.

The Escitalopram will not evict Captain Terry Totzke, Captain Father Angus McRae, P.S., Richard Gill, Earl Stevens, or the many others who reside inside my skull.

The Escitalopram had a very noticeable effect on my depression and my anxiety. It has really turned down my anxiety. The depression is still there. However the Escitalopram has numbed my emotions. I find that for the first time in my life I can actually concentrate on matters and I can hold two thought simultaneously.

The thing about Escitalopram is the more severe the depression and anxiety, the more noticeable the effect it has on the person taking the medication.

And the fact that Escitalopram had such a drastic effect on me shows just how bad the depression and anxiety were.

I’m at 10mg right now. That might have to go up to 20mg due to the stresses of work.

Negative side effects?

Only two that I’ve noticed.

Getting to sleep takes a bit of work.

And I know, TMI, but I can’t orgasm at the time being.

Both of these are well known side effects of SSRIs

Sleep is becoming easier.

Couple of interesting things that I’ve noticed about being on SSRIs.

My dreams are fucking vivid and wild in a good way. My dreams before SSRIs were sporadic and were often nightmares. Now my dreams are different. More colourful. Playful you could say.

And waking up in the morning is far easier now. I’m often up before the alarms go off.

I don’t need naps during the day.

I’ll probably be on these medications for the rest of my life.

As I said, these drugs will not fix my brain. The damage has been done, and the damage is very extensive. I hope that my body doesn’t build up a tolerance to these SSRIs. Apparently the crash back into depression and anxiety can be pretty horrific.

And even though I am emotionally numbed at the moment, I can tolerate this better than drowning in the pits of despair.

But I also don’t want to spend the next 20 to 30 years of my live living with muted emotions while the war rages on in my head.

There is possibility of a solution, but I won’t find out what the rules are until March 2023.

That’s probably enough for now.

It’s time for bed.

Dresses

I wear dresses, got a problem with that?

So, I’ll spend a little time talking about my preference for dresses.

I started “playing around” with dresses at a very young age.

When I lived on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater as a child, I do remember on more than one occasion going out to play with my friends, whom were always more than likely girls than they were boys, and I would come home wearing one of their dresses.

I don’t ever remember my father catching me in a dress, as he was almost always off on exercises. My mother on the other hand was never really upset, but she made it known to me that boys don’t wear girls clothes.

As a child, I could never understand why boys weren’t allowed to wear dresses. As far as I was concerned, they were far more comfortable and functional than pants, or even shorts. And besides, girls were allowed to wear pants, so why shouldn’t boys be allowed to wear dresses.

My family left CFB Shearwater around the the spring of 1977. I didn’t get to wear a dress again until somewhere around the summer of 1981 when I was just shy of my 10th birthday.

There was a girl named Megan who went to Major General Griesbach School on CFB Griesbach. On more than one occasion we swapped clothes and went to the local malls off base.

This was during the time when the fallout from CFB Namao was fresh and I was getting counselling from the military social worker to help deal with my apparent “homosexual tendencies”. The counselling only served to make my dress escapades that much more delicious and dangerous.

Even though my father was at home more often, he never once caught me wearing dresses. He came very close once though. Megan and I had swapped clothing and went over to Lake Beaumaris mall which was just north west of the base. We were walking around on the second level of the mall when I saw my father, my stepmother, and my younger brother heading towards us. Megan and I ducked downstairs to the washroom to change back.

There was a time around the summer of 1982 when Sue, my stepmother, had threatened me that if I didn’t stop crying that she was going to take me to Sears and buy me a dress. I really wanted that dress. Imagine, my own dress. But I also realized that she wasn’t buying me a dress as a gift. She was threatening to dehumanize me and humiliate me by making me wear a dress.

It was then that I realized that there was something really fucked up with who was allowed to wear what clothing.

I was given an IQ test as a child when I was around 9 years of age and I scored 136 +/- 6, which wasn’t too shabby. Maybe, just maybe, this IQ allowed me to see that there was absolutely no logical reason that I shouldn’t have been allowed to wear dresses.

Wearing dresses didn’t make me want to become a girl. It was just comfortable clothing that I loved better than pants. I’ve always despised pants. I don’t like the way they touch me, or bunch up behind my knees, or crush my crotch, or squeeze around my hips. Dresses just hang nicely from my shoulders. They don’t really touch me. They don’t bunch up behind my knees. They cover my body without causing any discomfort.

I never wore dresses again until I was into my 20s.

As much as I loved dresses, and still wanted to wear them, I mostly had precarious employment through my early 20s. I sure as hell didn’t have a family that I could fall back on if I found myself between jobs due to my preference for clothing. I couldn’t risk my employers discovering that I liked to wear skirts and dresses. And let’s be honest, the ’90s were nowhere near as liberal and open as the ’00s.

Still wearing dresses was kinda like a “dirty secret” that I kept behind closed doors.

It wasn’t until in the late ’90s when I gained more secure employment that I would start wearing “woman’s clothing” in public. It would start off as skirts on the odd occasion. Then I worked up to dresses.

By the time I started working for my current employer in 2005 I was wearing dresses or skirts, even kilts, almost exclusively.

I wear pants at work (yech), but the work I do would chew up a dress. I do wear dresses to and from work, so it’s not like anyone at work doesn’t know that I wear dresses and skirts.

I’ve never felt at risk or in danger in the Metro Vancouver area.

What type of dresses do I like?

Nothing fancy, just plain Jane work dresses. A-line and fit-and-flare dresses are my favourite dresses to wear.

Nothing too “femme”. Being a guy who wears dresses has introduced me to women who absolutely hate dresses, and women who wear dresses, but absolutely detest “femme” dresses with buttons and bows and frills.

One thing that I have discovered is that a sizeable portion of women will never wear a dress as an adult as they despise them because they were forced to wear them as children.

I don’t have the lumps, and bumps, and curves that dresses are usually designed to accentuate, so I’m more happy with a loose fit. And as I said, I strive for more of a fit that doesn’t touch me on constrict me.