anxiety – Page 11

My middle name

Daily writing prompt

What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?

My middle name came courtesy of an office of vital statistics official.

Back in 2008, after the disastrous realization that I was never going to escape the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao and that I was always going to be the “asshole” that fucked with my father’s military career I decided that I wanted to legally change my name.

At the time I had thought that by changing my name that I could sever the past from my future.

Bobbie was always going to be a given. All the nice people from my childhood always called me Robbie or Bobby. The only person who was adamant that my name was Robert was my father. Sue never called me by my nickname either.

And Bobbie was ideal for a few reasons. With my desire to undergo feminization I could switch to the more feminine spelling of Bobby by simply dropping the “e” from the end of Bobbie which would leave me with Bobbi.

I had already found my last name when I was volunteering for the 2008 Vancouver Municipal elections.

When I went in to submit my paperwork with the office of vital statistics I only had my first name and last name. The employee accepting my paperwork asked why I didn’t go with three names to allow me some flexibility in different circumstances.

I had no idea as to what I wanted. I never used my middle birth name. I had no idea of where it came from.

“Why don’t you pick your birthstone?”

Using the primitive “WAP” browser on my cellphone I was able to get a list of birthstones off the internet.

I was born in September.

Sapphire is the birthstone for September.

Bobbie / Bobbi Sapphire is a stripper’s stage name.

I didn’t know what else to do, I didn’t want to leave without filing the paperwork.

It took a lot of courage to go through the criminal record back ground search that would determine if I was eligible to legally change my name or not.

Why did it take courage?

Did I have a criminal record?

Nope.

At that point in my life I was aware of two times that my brother had been arrested and had given the arresting officer my name, my birthdate, and my social insurance number.

I was afraid that if I delayed to pick a middle name that my brother would do something that would have caused the RCMP to revoke my clearance.

I quickly scanned the rest of the birthstones on the list, sounding out the stone with my first name and my last name.

Garnet is what I decided on.

It’s red, and it’s abrasive.

So, Bobbie Garnet Bees is who I became in 2008.

Sadly though, changing my name was not enough to excise the past from my brain.

Every time that I tried to move forward and advance was just met with a chorus of voices from my past.

And at that point in time I wasn’t aware that I had severe and untreated mental illness. Not that the mental illness should have prevented me from changing my name or from seeking feminization. It’s just that the untreated major depression and severe anxiety meant that my daemons are firmly baked into my brain and will be until the day I die.

Do I believe in fate or destiny?

Daily writing prompt

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

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Nope.

That was pretty simple.

Death is the only thing in a person’s life that is preordained. The time and manner of said death are a matter of random chance.

Everything else is pure chance.

Yeah, I understand that the human brain has trouble understanding random chance and coincidence, but nothing is preordained.

Now, that’s not to say that other people can’t fuck with a person’s life and cause said person to endure negative effects.

But that’s not due to a supernatural being.

That’s just people fucking other people over.

And humans have fucked over other humans ever since the first human evolved.

Lights that blink

More lights that blink

These lights blink too

This has lights that blink, but they don’t blink like the ones above.

I wish I was knew what all these blinking lights mean.

It’s like they’re trying to say something.

Sometime I even pretend to know what they’re saying.

50 forever.

Well, Tuesday would have been Scott’s 51st birthday.

But looks like he’ll be 50 forever.

Is he in a better place?

Nope.

Is he in a worse place?

Nope.

We didn’t believe in heaven or hell or the imaginary friend in the sky.

This existence is all we get.

In many ways I’m jealous of Scott.

For Scott, there’s no more pain and there’s no more suffering.

He’s no longer plagued by daemons of what could have been or what should have been.

No more memories of growing up, of the babysitter, of our grandmother, or of our father.

All that shit is gone.

What killed Scott?

Was it the ketamine, his epilepsy, or his heart condition?

Officially the Alberta Coroner will only say that his death was due to a ruptured spleen after a fall.

What caused the fall the medical examiner can’t say because his body was fairly decomposed when he was found.

2 weeks in an apartment in the Edmonton summer will cause a body to break down fairly quickly.

But if I had to speculate as to what the root cause of my brother’s death was, I’d have to say that the Indian Residential School System would probably factor in as a significant contributor. I’d also say that the desire of the Canadian Armed Forces to hide the true extent of Captain McRae’s child sexual abuse exploits on Canadian Forces Base Namao were also a significant contributor.

In life, every action has consequences.

Some consequences are felt immediately.

Some consequences appear as ripples at a later date.

Grandma was a very angry and disturbed woman from her time in Indian Residential school.

She was not a loving or caring woman, except for her alcohol. She loved and cared for her alcohol.

My father was not much better. He was already a heavy drinker at 16 when he joined the Royal Canadian Navy in 1963.

Grandma should never have had children.

But she did.

My father should never have had children.

But he did.

Luckily neither Scott nor I reproduced, so the dysfunction ends with us.

From the time I left the house in 1987 when I was 16 until 2013 I never really had much dealings with Scott.

When I went up to Edmonton for a couple of weeks in the summer of 2013 I mentioned to him that I never thought that I would have ever spoken to him again.

Scott knew from reading my blog back then that I was having some dealings with a constable from the Morinville RCMP detachment and Scott asked me if I could arrange a meeting with this constable as he wanted to know if this constable could read his CPIC file to see if there was some explanation as to why he was frequently being pulled over for traffic stops.

I did arrange for a meeting between the three of us at a Tim Hortons in St. Albert on the St. Albert Trail. Just after my brother started asking about what his CPIC file contained the constable kinda feigned a radio call and said that he had to go.

When I talked to the constable by phone the next day he said that there were issues on Scott’s CPIC file that would have warranted his arrest, and that he didn’t want to do that as this constable was familiar with what we went through on CFB Namao.

When I collected my brother’s belongings and his remains last August, the one thing that I did notice in his passport was that he had tried to enter the United States of America but that he had voluntarily returned to Canada.

Scott had quite the criminal history.

Some people may say that Scott’s criminal history was his own doing.

But it wasn’t.

Scott’s criminal history was 100% Richard’s fault.

When we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in North York, Ontario my brother started running with a bad crowd.

I think that was the difference between Scott and I.

Scott wanted to be popular and to have friends.

I was majorly depressed and just wanted to be left the fuck alone.

Scott wanted to hang out and belong.

I was the type of kid that the popular kids picked on for entertainment.

Richard had absolutely no interest in the either of us.

I had my after school and weekend jobs.

Scott had nothing to do but hang out with the thugs he called friends.

And these guys were literal thugs.

Auto thefts, B&E’s, robberies w/o weapons, credit card fraud, etc…..

And this was all before he was 16.

Richard, our illustrious father, was too busy kissing ass and polishing knobs in the Canadian Forces to climb the ranks to give a shit.

Scott’s troubles and his frequent stays in group homes and detention were solely due to Richard’s inability to give a fuck about anyone other than himself.

But to hear Richard tell it, Scott’s issues were solely due to:

Grandma’s drinking
Grandma’s cruelty
Our mother’s absence
Insanity that ran in out mother’s family tree
Me not raising my brother properly
Me letting the babysitter on CFB Namao molest Scott
The parents of the other boys not raising their kids right.
Schools not teaching Scott properly.
The civilian public schools not using corporal punishment like the schools the Canadian Forces ran for the kids of military families.

Richard was a complete skinflint.

As he told his airforce buddy Jacques Choquette once after Jacques asked my father why he doesn’t just drop Scott and I off with our mother, “As long as I keep these kids under my roof, I control the costs. If I send these kids to their mother, then I’ll have to sign my fucking pay cheque over to that bitch, and that’s sure as fuck not happening”.

So no, there were no hobbies, no activities, no trips, no going to the movies, no going to sports games, no fucking nothing.

Scott’s legal troubles would plague him well into adult life.

It’s too bad that Richard died back in 2017.

It would have been nice to have seen Richard tortured and tormented by Scott’s death.

730 days

Well, in 27 days it will be the start of the 730 countdown until March 17th, 2027.

March 17th, 2027 is the day in which we find out of the government of Canada has the fortitude to stand up to the chicken littles and allow fully competent adults suffering from mental illness to end their lives through Medical Assistance in Dying.

I took vacation time off work in March of 2023 with the hopes that I would have been able to make the application for Medical Assistance in Dying via my nurse practitioner.

But of course parliament caved at the last minute.

Parliament caved to well organized, and no doubt funded by American dark money, “grassroots” campaigns that had convinced enough Canadians that if M.A.i.D. was legalized for mental illness, that the government of Canada was just going to send white vans across the country murdering unsuspecting people who had mental illness.

M.A.i.D. for mental illness was pushed back until March 17th, 2024.

Took time off in March of 2024 as well only to find that Parliament pushed M.A.i.D. for mental illness back to March 17th, 2027. This time the general fear was that the government was going to start starving the disabled and thus forcing them to choose M.A.i.D. instead of living in poverty.

I wish that these concerned citizen groups would get as concerned about how the federal government, the Canadian Armed Forces, and the Department of Justice seem hellbent on keeping the child sexual abuse the children endured on military bases in Canada hidden away from the public eye.

Nope.

These people are so very concerned about grown adults making rational choices.

I’ll never understand what it is that gives people the right to assume that they know what’s the best for me based on their fear of death.

Are people afraid that if I die via M.A.i.D. at a time of my choosing that they’ll have to admit that I got severely fucked over by Captain Father Angus McRae and his accomplice?

Are people afraid of having to admit that I got severely fucked over by my military social worker, Captain Totzke?

Are people afraid of having to admit that life sucks in general and that some people get fucked over from the word go through no fault of their own?

My brain is so fucked beyond belief.

People have asked me why I’m not concerned about how my death would affect those that know me.

Well, my entire family is dead. So I don’t have to worry about that.

I don’t owe anyone at work anything.

???

Daily writing prompt

Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received.

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This is an easy one.

None.

Seriously.

None.

Never received anything that I would consider a “gift” from my father. Any thing that he “gave” to me was always an obligation to keep social services at bay.

My mother was never around. Sure, wasn’t her fault, but that doesn’t change things.

My grandmother gave me the gift of PTSD and alcoholism from the Indian Residential Schools.

Any “gift” that I ever received from anyone else always seemed to come with an extremely high price.

Who do I like to be around

Daily writing prompt

Who are your favorite people to be around?

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I don’t hate people.

I don’t despise people.

I just don’t make it a habit to hang out with people.

I like to be on my own.

I grew up not having anyone to depend on. I had no one in my family that was dependable to rely on.

I can share laughs with people.

But I really really don’t like small talk or talking about personal “feelings” or things.

I hate the idea of having to form political alliances at work, but that’s the way it actually works.

There’s nothing better at triggering “shields-up” than small talk or asking me about my feelings.

I like to be out and about, just walking around or riding around on my scooter. The crowds and the traffic are distracting that keep my mind off things.

I go to concerts, but I keep to myself. I don’t like “meeting” people.

When people get to know me they start to not like me.

So I just avoid all of that drama and I just keep to myself.

This should be a good one……

Daily writing prompt

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

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What advice would I give to my teenage self?

Where oh where to start?

I don’t know.

If I knew in my teenage years what I know now I’d probably just suggest to myself the best and most humane ways in which to end my life.

I would tell my teenage self that justice is what rich people get and that dogs like me just get a rolled up newspaper on the snout if we ask for a little bit of justice.

I really wish that things could run along the lines of sappiness that this prompt is trying elicit. You know like “I’d tell myself to tell my granny I loved her before she died”, or ” I’d tell my daddy that I loved him and that I knew how hard military life was on him”.

But what the fuck could I tell my teenage self that wouldn’t be fucking devastating.

“Hey Bob, your father actually knew the truth about CFB Namao but he sold your mental health for some favours from the chain of command”.

“Hey Bob, you actually weren’t to blame for yourself, your brother, and the other kids being abused. This is just something that Captain Totzke concocted to shame you into silence so that you wouldn’t tell any civilians about what happened”

“Hey Bob, you mother didn’t abandon the family, your father had your mother thrown off the base by the military police because the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations allowed for this to happen”

“Hey Bob, your father knew exactly how damaged your grandmother was and that she was an alcoholic and that she was extremely cruel to you and your brother”

So, what exactly could I tell my teenage self that wouldn’t have led me to having an extreme mental breakdown?

My dream home

Daily writing prompt

Write about your dream home.

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What would my dream home be like?

I don’t know.

I never lived in a place that I would call a “home”.

And I never lived in any place that I would call a “dream home”.

The houses I lived in were all fucking traumatizing nightmares, and I don’t mean that they all had the same fucking paint scheme no matter which base they were located on. Living in an abusive dysfunctional family in military housing on military bases was the traumatizing nightmare.

I grew up living in Private Married Quarters on Canadian Forces Bases.

And with my rage prone alcohol fuelled father, these weren’t homes.

They were houses.

It’s where I kept my shit.

It’s where I slept at night.

It’s where I was absolutely terrified to ask my father for help with school homework as that would launch him into a rage and fury.

From the time my mother left in 1977 until September of 1985, I never had a birthday. In 1985, no doubt due to my father’s rampage in the PMQ during the summer of 1985, I had a “birthday” of sorts. A small cake and a $20 bill. And a promise that he would never forget my birthday again. That was the last birthday of mine that he ever acknowledged. I guess once he realized that the base military police were not going to inform the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto about his massive meltdown in the PMQ in the summer of ’85 he didn’t have to pretend to give a shit about me any longer.

My alcoholic grandmother living in the PMQs and raising my brother and I didn’t make things any easier. If I had to take a wild guess, I think that my father got his mental issues from her. As much as he would claim that she was an alcoholic that was cruel to his children, he was the exact same.

When my father received his final posting in June of 1990 to go back to CFB Edmonton in anticipation of his retirement, he and my stepmother bought a house in Morinville, AB.

I lived in an actual house for the first time in my entire life. Not a military PMQ. Not a rooming house where I rented a room after I moved out of the PMQ on CFB Downsview when I was 16. An actual house, with walls that you could hang pictures on without fear of pissing off the base construction engineers.

Yeah, my stepmother had me booted out within a week of us moving from CFB Griesbach to Morinville.

She apparently did the same with my brother when he finished his sentence at the St. John’s Training School for Boys in Uxbridge, Ontario and moved to AB to stay with our father as Scott was still only 16 when he was released.

So yeah, never really did live in a real home as a kid.

I’m happy with my bachelor apartment.

It’s not too big.

Growing up in my father’s house it was either “go the fuck outside and stay the fuck outside until the lights come on” or ” get the fuck up to your bedroom and stay there” or “get the fuck to school”. There were no weekend nights playing boardgames or watching Disney on TV or any other family style of activities.

And that’s why I like my apartment.

I’m either sleeping all day, or I’m at work, or I’m out and about trying to keep my brain from ruminating over and over about what I could have done differently in life.

My apartment, just like the PMQs, is just a place where I store my shit, and go to sleep.

Did the Canadian Armed Forces really think that I was a fucking patsy?

The one thing that I will never get over is how the Canadian Armed Forces wrote me off as an insignificant patsy of absolutely no consequence.

When Petty Officer Steve Morris of the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service called me on November 4th, 2011 and told me that “the investigation couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that the babysitter was capable of doing what I accused him of”. He did this with a laugh in his voice. A laugh that was meant to convey a not too subtle “fuck you”.

I think that’s the one thing that’s driven me so fucking hard to keep digging and digging.

The other thing that has driven me so fucking hard was the telephone call I had with Master Corporal Christian Cyr on May 3rd and May 4th 2011 when he let slip that the CFNIS knew about the connection between my babysitter and Captain McRae

In the August 1985 Edmonton Journal article about my babysitter, the crown prosecutor mentioned to the judge that my babysitter was already serving 2 years of probation for molesting a young child in Manitoba.

I had dealings with an RCMP constable in 2012. This constable ran a CPIC check on my babysitter based upon the information presented in the Edmonton Journal newspaper article. The constable didn’t give me any details save for that unlike what the Steve Morris told me on November 4th, 2011 the babysitter had a very extensive record of child molestation running from 1982 until beyond 1990 with many charges and convictions with many more charges withdrawn or stayed. The RCMP constable confirmed that the babysitter had been charged and convicted in Manitoba for molesting a young boy.

It was also this constable that laid to waste the lies uttered by Master Corporal Christian Cyr to me on May 3rd, 2011 when he insisted to me that the babysitter was only 12 or 13 years old in the spring of 1980. The babysitter turned 15 in June of 1980.

Anyways, last week I was as sick as a dog. So I spent time at home in bed with my laptop and my Newspapers.com subscription.

One of the many searches that I had done yielded information about the military social worker that I was in the care of from age 9 to age 11, Captain Terry Totzke.

But, I also hit upon a jackpot with the babysitter.

A newspaper article from 1985 centred on a woman who was trying to get stiffer sentences for child molesters in Manitoba. The woman, speaking under a pseudonym, mentioned that her two boys, one 2 years old and the other 4 years old at the time of the abuse, had been molested by their male babysitter who was only 17 years old at the time he abused the two boys.

She also mentioned that a 6 year old girl had been molested by the same babysitter that had molested her children and that this girl had been forced to watch the babysitter abusing other kids and was having all sorts of psychological issues because of that.

A quick bit of math shows that 1985 – 3 =1982. 1982 – 1965 =17.

What the fuck are the odds?

Oh, it gets fucking better.

The sexual abuse happened in St. James, Manitoba.

Wanna guess where St. James, Manitoba is located?

What the fuck are the odds?

It just keeps getting better and better the more time rolls onwards.

I’m doing a little bit of research right now and I’m just waiting for some information gel before being able to 100% link this 17 year old babysitter to my babysitter who would have also been 17 years of age in 1982.

And this really makes me wonder just how many times did the Canadian Armed Force move child molesters from one jurisdiction in Canada to another.

From the bit of research that I’ve done on pedophiles (people with sexual attractions to prepubescent children) and hebephiles (people with sexual attractions to children ages 11 – 14), these people tend to develop their attractions in their teen age years.

So let’s say that someone develops their attractions while they 12 or 13 years old.

A military dependent living with their serving parent could possibly have 2 or 3 moves with their serving parent between their 13th and 19th birthday. How intense this predator’s urges are will determine how many instances of abuse that they could cause.

Let’s say that a 14 year old boy living in the military housing attached to Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt molests a 6 year old girl living in the City of Victoria.

Let’s say that it’s a year before the girl works up the courage to tell her parents.

Let’s say that the boy’s father had been posted to CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.

How would the Victoria PD ever be able to make the connection?

Let’s say that this boy molests a few more kids in the small towns around CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.

Let’s say that this boy’s father is posted out to CFB Borden in Ontario.

How are the New Brunswick police supposed to link this boy to the crimes in Victoria, BC.

Let’s say that the boy molests some children in Barrie, Ontario

Let’s say the boy moves out of the military housing a year after arriving at CFB Borden.

How is this boy ever going to be linked to any of his crimes?

Unlike in the civilian world, the Canadian Armed Forces were using taxpayer money to move this boy’s family due to the serving parent’s transfer.

But don’t worry. It’s not just the Canadian Armed Forces that have problems with military dependents sexually abusing other military dependents in the housing provided to military families on military bases. The US Military also has a substantial issue with this.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-military-fails-to-protect-children-from-sexual-abuse-on-bases-ap-reports

How bad is the problem?

The Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, and even more tragically the Department of (anything but) Justice will circle the wagons, call me a loser, and carry on like nothing ever happened.

The problem comes down to the fact that the CAF, the DND, and the DOJ claim that children living on military bases have no right to expect to be safe and that the CAF and the employees of the CAF, including military police, are under no obligation to protect civilians living on defence establishments.