What does depression feel like?

Okay, so I can only say this from my perspective, but this is what depression feels like for me.

I don’t feel like I am good at anything. If someone as stupid as I am can figure something out, then everyone else should be able to as well, right?

Yes, I have a very low self esteem. And what makes it worse is when people congratulate me for my accomplishments as they’re obviously just saying nice things to make me shut up, right?

There are a lot of projects that I don’t undertake at work as I know that I am too stupid to get them done. And if they do by some miracle get done, my mind tells me that they won’t be liked, or that they will fail.

Sleeping. I sleep a lot. I always have. I’m sure that constantly waking up with night terrors or in a panic doesn’t help. But even in periods when I am able to sleep without these interruptions I still don’t like waking up or getting out of bed. I get home from work, I sleep. I hate getting out of bed in the morning. It’s not that my bed is nice and warm and I find it too seductive to get out of. I just don’t have any reason to get out of bed. There is no drive.

The most I’ve slept was on a vacation a few years ago. I spent almost 14 days in bed getting out just for food and the bathroom. No movies, mo music, no nothing. Just sleeping and going off to dream land.

I am habitually late for work. I always have been. Being late for work is nothing new. But most employers I’ve worked for have been more than willing to overlook my tardiness as the skills I bring are valuable to them.

Even when I was a kid, getting up and out of bed was a fucking chore.

And that didn’t change at all. into adulthood.

In the early years just after I moved out of the house in 1987, I would often sleep for days.

And just this past weekend I slept through Saturday and Sunday.

Making and keeping friends with untreated depression and untreated anxiety if fucking hopeless. You don’t feel the need to call your friends because you just know that you’re going to bother them or disturb them. And when they call you, they’re often calling in the middle of a depression cycle. And then when no one calls the anxiety kicks in and convinces you that no one likes you and they’re all avoiding you because you’re beyond worthless and they’re only being your “friend” because they’re either using you for a skill that you have, or they just feel sorry for you.

Why didn’t I get help instead of letting my depression progress for so long without treatment?

For starters, I didn’t know that I had been diagnosed with Major Depression in November of 1980 until I received my social service paperwork in August of 2011. When I was having issues with my depression between age 9 and age 16, my father’s way of helping me with my “piss poor fucking attitude” was backhands, slaps, spankings, etc.

I received my first medical card and medical insurance when I started working for the Elashi family in East Richmond in 1994. There was a Carepoint medical clinic in the plaza that the Elashi’s owned. I would go to the clinic to get help with my inability to sleep. Remember, I didn’t know that 14 years prior I had been diagnosed with Major Depression. The doctor and I were certain that I only had a sleep disorder. Looking back, the pills that I had been prescribed could also used for treating depression.

And at that point in time I would never have considered myself to be depressed. My father had drilled into my head that I was just a fucking lazy arsehole that often acted up for fucking attention and who often pretended to be smarter than he actually was.

So no, there was no seeking help for depression. My father, and even “Terry” had suggested that I was just suffering from a mental illness called homosexuality.

And at this time I was nowhere near ready to deal with my implied “homosexuality”. I wasn’t really ready to consider myself a homosexual. It’s just that both Terry and my father insisted that I was one and that why I messed around with the babysitter on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

I couldn’t dare be open with the doctor. What if I said something to him that allowed him to figure out that I was a homosexual that had sex with his babysitter? Or worse ye, what if the doctor discovered that because of my homosexuality I had allowed the babysitter to molest my younger brother.

So no, there was no getting help with my depression, or my anxiety, or my haphephobia. Or my sexual identity / gender confusion.

If both Terry and my father said that I was a homosexual, then surely I must be a homosexual. Yes, my brother swears that he never heard my father refer to me as “gay”, but it’s not like Richard and Terry needed my brother’s permission.

This assignment of my sexual orientation by my father and by Terry as a result of my 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao by Captain Father Angus McRae and his teenaged accomplice probably did nothing to help me deal with my depression.

And being confused about my orientation didn’t help my depression either.

What else didn’t help with my depression? Haphephobia. The fear of being touched. Fuck do I ever hate being touched, especially unexpectedly. I really hate being touched in a sexual manner. One of the guys at work one put his hand on my shoulder from behind. I twisted away from him. He thought that this was funny so he tried it again. I did not think that this was funny. And I’ve had this haphephobia since the days of CFB Namao. How can a person have relationships if they don’t know their orientation, and they don’t like being touched. This in and of itself will feed depression.

My brain is often numb. It’s a weird sensation. It feels like my brain is stuffed with cotton. It’s very hard to concentrate. I often lose my train of thought if someone says something to me when I am not expecting interruptions.

Oh, and did I mention to you that I was diagnosed as having a notable “Auditory Memory” problem? Yeah, I’ve got tricks to work around this. First is don’t fucking call me on the telephone. Text me, email me, don’t call me. Want me to order something for you, fill out one of these handy dandy parts request forms. Auditory memory issues also ensure great fun with depression.

The funny thing about the auditory memory issue is that when Alberta Social Services wanted to remove me from the home and place me into foster care or residential care as a means to force my father to comply with the family counselling program, Richard himself pulled out the paperwork detailing this auditory memory issue as a cause of my problems in school. Yet in 2011 he didn’t tell the CFNIS about this auditory memory issue nor our involvement with Alberta Social Services or the fact that I was in the foster care system. And, he used to get pissed off and physical with me on CFB Griesbach and CFB Downsview if I forgot to do something that he told me to do or if I didn’t understand what he had told me.

So, as you can see, I’ve had my fair share of mental health issues that were diagnosed, but that were left untreated, hidden, and ignored.

I suffered with these matters all of my life.

And these issues are part of the reason I want MAiD.

MAiD is the only way for me to finally be freed from these issues.

My desire for MAiD isn’t a rash decision.

It’s the result of a very slow moving train that’s been gathering speed for the last 40+ years.

I wish I had interesting things to say about my life. But I don’t.

Outside of the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao, my life has been pretty well meaningless and unexceptional.

“But Bobbie, you must feel something being caught up in all of this, right?”

Nope, I feel rather dismayed and annoyed at the thought of this whole mess.

The realization that in 1980 the Canadian Armed Forces viewed my life and the lives of the other military dependents involved with Captain McRae and his teenage accomplice as being worth less than the honour and prestige of the Canadian Forces is pretty damn depressing and demoralizing.

The Canadian Armed Forces ran two outright sham investigations into my allegations against Captain McRae’s accomplice, one in 2011 and the other in 2015. At the end of both investigations the investigators with the CFNIS told me they couldn’t find any evidence that the accomplice had done any of what I accused him of even though the CFNIS, right from the start, had the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the July 1980 Court Martial transcripts, both of which detailed that the accomplice was well known to the military police in 1980 for having sexually assaulted young male children living on the base made me realize that even today my life and the lives of the other base brats is meaningless and worthless in the eyes of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Captain McRae’s accomplice was a teenaged boy who babysat on Canadian Forces Base Namao for numerous families. There’s no doubt a great many children from that base that had P.R.S. as a babysitter and who have never spoken about the abuse because of the physical and verbal abuse that he’d dish out after the sexual abuse.

I was called a scammer and a grifter by Harjit Sajjan in February of 2016 when he was the Minister of National Defence.

My own father either outright lied to the CFNIS in 2011, or willingly went along with the narrative that the Canadian Forces and the CFNIS wanted, and that was that my brother and I were never in the care of Captain McRae’s accomplice. My father completely removed our alcoholic and emotionally disturbed grandmother from our lives even though she raised my brother and I various times from 1971 until 1977, and then full time from 1977 until 1981.

This is the same father that warned me against going to the police in 2006 as if I went “sticking my nose into this” that “I might not like the smell”.

I’ve often wondered what Albert Crown Prosecutor Jon Werbicki and his superior Orest Yereniuk would do if they found out that the CFNIS ran sham investigations in 2011 and 2015 and that in both investigation the CFNIS had full access to the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the court martial transcripts. Would Jon and Orest be man enough to admit that they swallowed the CFNIS codswallop without a second thought?

My life hasn’t been interesting.

It’s been one unmitigated disaster to the next.

It turns out that my family had been involved with social services in every province that my father was stationed in, but social services was usually at a complete loss as to what to do as access to my brother and I was somewhat limited due to our residences being located on military bases.

I had Captain Terry Totzke as my social worker from Oct 1980 until April 1983. Why the fuck should a child ever have a military officer as their social worker? The social worker is a member of the Canadian Armed Force and as per the National Defence Act MUST obey the lawful commands of their superiors. My father was a master corporal at the time. My father would have been bound by the same National Defence Act to obey the lawful commands of his superiors. And in this sense “superior” doesn’t refer to his immediate superior or his immediate chain of command. Superior means any superior rank. So when a Captain tells a Master Corporal that his son is a homosexual, the Master Corporal does not question this wisdom, nor does the Master Corporal object.

Instead the Master Corporal doesn’t let his son participate in sports, because according to the Captain the Master Corporal’s son might get attracted to other boys in the change room. The Master Corporal will remove the door from his “homosexual” son’s bedroom so that he can’t sneak boys into his bedroom. I didn’t have a door on my bedroom on CFB Griesbach from the time we moved there in Oct 1980 until November of 1981 when Alberta Social Services was called in.

My bedroom door was off at Stanley Greene Park until about the time Children’s Aid Society of Toronto started doing house visits. Then when my bedroom got punted into the basement in the summer of 1986 it was built without a door.

Even if my father was still alive, there’s no way that he would ever apologize for what he did. He would have justified his actions and his attitude by saying that he was only following Captain Totzke’s instructions.

I don’t know if Captain Totzke is alive or not. But he would never apologize as he too was only following the orders of his superiors. And besides, he’ll use the existence of CFAO 19-20 to show that at the time it was conventional wisdom within the Canadian Forces that homosexuality was both a choice and a mental illness, so therefore he wasn’t to blame.

The babysitter / accomplice will never apologize as he was already anointed as being the sole victim of Captain Father Angus McRae and any sexual depravity he performed on the children or any sexual depravity he had these children perform was due to his abuse at the hands of Captain McRae.

Me?

According to Harjit Sajjan I’m a conman playing a “game” and having an “angle”.

According to the CFNIS in both 2011 and 2015 I’m a habitual liar making up unsubstantiated tall tales. I also make up events like house fires that didn’t occur* or chapels that didn’t exist*. And according to the CFNIS I’m a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military” who frequently jumps job to job and can’t hold down steady employment. According to the RCMP in 2011 I have an agenda that I am trying to advance.

(* – both were true and the CFNIS actually had the documents)

People tell me that I don’t look depressed, or that I’m too happy to be depressed, or that I’m too smart to be depressed.

I’m just very good at masking my depression.

My father was the first to insist that I didn’t have major depression or severe anxiety but that I was “just acting up to get attention” would would always result in a back hand, a slap, or a beating with the belt. So as a kid you just learn to mask it and hide it all the time wondering why you’re so fucking stupid and why you keep pissing your father off and how you’d be better off dead because your a worthless freak.

Employers don’t employ visibly depressed people, so you learn to mask even more.

At work I don’t answer the phone. You want to get hold of me, send me an email. The problem with depression and the untreated CPTSD that goes along with what I went through in life is that your brain can often get clouded with thoughts and memories. Unplanned interruptions really fuck with my brain. In my position as the chief engineer I interact with machinery and equipment far more that I do with humans.

I’ve been on escitalopram for almost two years now. People at work tell me that I’m far more pleasant to deal with. I still feel like shit on the inside, and it isn’t doing anything for the flashbacks or the memories. But if it keeps the others happy, then I’m more than willing to use pharmaceuticals to blunt my emotions and my depression and my anxiety.

Being on escitalopram makes me wonder what different trajectory my life would have taken had Captain Totzke and my father both allowed me to get treatment for my diagnosed Major Depression, Severe Anxiety, and haphephobia instead of telling me over and over that I was a homosexual that enjoyed the abuse and allowed the babysitter to abuse my younger brother.

And this is where M.A.i.D. comes in.

People still can’t understand why I would like to die.

I didn’t lose my pet goldfish when I was 9. I’m not upset that I lost a hockey game when I was 11.

I grew up in a very dysfunctional household with dysfunctional parents.

My grandmother was an emotionally disturbed alcoholic with a mean streak.

My father was an emotionally disturbed alcoholic with anger issues and an explosive temper.

I grew up in a military environment that considered “male on male” sexual abuse to be “Acts of Homosexuality” and treated some victims of childhood sexual abuse as if they were mentally ill homosexuals.

I grew up in a military environment where everyone knew what was going on behind closed doors but no one ever said anything out of fear of retribution from the offender’s Chain of Command or fellow unit members.

I was diagnosed with severe mental illnesses at age 9 but then denied treatment for what appears to be nothing more than political reasons.

I suffered life long with these issues because I had been told that I was making these issues up and that I was doing this for attention. And besides, as a kid I had been told by both “Terry” and my father that I was acting the way I was because I was a homosexual.

I still haven’t heard much in the news as to whether or not the Government of Canada has officially asked the Senate for permission to delay the implementation of M.A.i.D.

But even if they do, my lawyers have said that there are possibly other avenues through which I could still obtain M.A.i.D.. So we’ll see.

But yeah, there is no escaping this damage. And death is what I want.

Again, it’s not like death doesn’t come to us all at some point. All I’m asking for is to die a little ahead of schedule.

“Just don’t think about it” is not an appropriate answer.

“Have you thought about a hobby” is not an appropriate answer.

“Think of other things” is not an appropriate answer.

“You just need to meet the right person” is not an appropriate answer.

“You could help other victims” is not an appropriate answer. I can’t even help myself, how am I going to help others?

“You’re blowing things out of proportion” is not an appropriate answer.

“You’re scaring me with this talk of death” is not an appropriate answer.

“You don’t really want M.A.i.D.. You’re just doing this for attention” is not an appropriate answer.

I still very much want M.A.i.D.. And this will not change no matter the outcome of any deal reached between my lawyers, Alexander and Clint, and the lawyers at the Department of Justice representing the Department of National Defence.

To say that I only want M.A.i.D. due to some childish ideal is to totally ignore, downplay, and deny what I went through.

A little change in my plans

Okay, still waiting to hear whether or not Parliament will ask the Senate to agree to delaying the implementation of Medical Assistance in Dying for reasons of Mental Health.

So in the meantime I’m still proceeding as if March 17th, 2023 is the date that M.A.i.D. for reasons of Mental Health is allowed to proceed.

To that end I’m still planning out the arrangements for the disposal of my body.

I’ve come to the conclusion that cremation would be the easiest method to plan for. And by opting for cremation I can plan for a “one stop shopping” experience.

I’ve been in contact with a few funeral homes in the lower mainland. These homes have allowed the M.A.i.D. procedure to be carried out on their premises. They typically have a room set-up and nicely furnished where a person can undergo the procedure in the company of their close friends and family.

Once the procedure has been completed and the person is legally pronounced deceased the body is usually then prepared for disposal whether it be by burial or by cremation. And usually the funeral that the M.A.i.D. procedure occurs at will deal with the cremation or the burial.

I had wanted a green burial. Just my body in a shroud in a hole in the ground left to decompose the way bodies have done since time immemorial. The problem that I ran into with this desire is that there aren’t many cemeteries between Vancouver and Hope that allow for bodies to be buried without a casket and without a cement grave liner.

So, cremation it is.

And this really simplifies things.

I arrive at the funeral home. Get into bed. Undergo the procedure. Pass away peacefully. Be officially declared as deceased. Then my corpse is loaded into the cremator. I’m incinerated. My bone fragments and other ash residue are pulverized into a fine powder. The my ashes as put into a little plastic bag and the placed inside a container.

And that’s it.

My funeral arranger will look after filing for the required death certificate and other papers.

Except for my legacy at work and my legacy of being one of 25 children fucked up by Captain McRae and the Canadian Armed Forces, it will be as if I never existed.

The universe will continue on as if I was never here.

Within one generation I will have been forgotten like so many others that have led solitary lives.

And that’s fine.

I will finally be free of my daemons, all of my mental illnesses, all of the horrors and memories that torment me, and all of the issues that were gifted to me by my dysfunctional household, by my molester Captain Father Angus McRae and his teenage accomplice, and the mind fucking I endured at the hands of my military social worker, Captain Terry Totzke.

None of these will plague me anymore once my brain is dead.

And honestly, it’s not like I’m going to be angry or upset about being dead. I’ll be dead. Matters of the living will no longer be of ant concern to me as I will no longer exist.

All I have to do is to make sure that I remember M.A.i.D. first, cremator second. I don’t think going into the cremator alive would be too enjoyable.

January 11th, 2023 thoughts

I wish that I was a better writer. I feel that if I was a better writer that I could get my points and ideas across better. But c’est le vie

I often find myself wondering what I would ever say to Captain Terry Totzke if I were to meet him face to face. Would I be able to say anything? Or would I be so choked up with frustration that I wouldn’t be able to say anything?

Would my anxiety get the best of me? Would I fear him all over again like I did back in 1980 through 1983.

Would I be able to ask him why he blamed me, or would Richard’s yelling and screaming in my head just tell me to shut up and admit that I knew that I was at fault for the events of 1978 to 1980?

In 1978 through 1980 I had no idea who Colonel Daniel Edward Munro was. But if I met him today would I have the courage to ask him if it was his own decision to dismiss the majority of charges against Captain McRae or if he received orders from Western Command or even NDHQ in Ottawa. Was it his decision to not bring in the RCMP to deal with the babysitter, or was he just following the orders issued by someone else?

Or would I even have the courage to say anything? Would I just stare dumbfounded, or would my feelings of worthlessness take over and convince me that asking him anything was wrong.

My father is dead. But even if he was alive I think I would know deep down inside that anything he said was an absolute lie and that it wouldn’t be believable under any circumstance.

So far I haven’t heard any word on the government’s plan to ask the Senate to delay the deadline for the implementation of Medical Assistance in Dying for reasons of Mental Health, so at this point in time I am still proceeding as if March 17th, 2023 is still the implementation date for M.A.i.D. for mental health issues.

I have two tattoo sessions in the meantime.

You might ask “if you want to die, why are you getting tattoos?”

It’s hard to explain, but I like how the tattoos cover my body. I love the way they look. I enjoy how they fill up the otherwise unremarkable and blank spaces. I enjoy the pain of getting the tattoos. Endorphin rush or adrenaline rush, whatever it is enjoyable. Truth be told, most tattoos I sleep or nap through.

Hopefully I can have every part of my body covered before I die.

I’ve done one eye orbit, the next appointment will be for the other eye orbit. After that, I think I have everything on my face covered. I don’t think that I can fit anything else on my face.

After that will be my thighs. And then my biceps. I’ll just go with bands like I have on my forearms and my thighs.

And then my trunk will be the final part. Still working out what to do there.

Anyways, enough for now.

I have a couple of videos to post that I’ll try to get online for tonight.

January 7th, 2023

Here’s my latest video.

January 2nd 2023

One of the hard things about putting these videos together is I’m so fucking numb to what happened, how it was dealt with or more importantly how it wasn’t dealt with that it no longer really means anything to me.

But still I need to talk about it because this was such a major part of my life during my formative years and it had such a profound impact on who I am.

This isn’t a track and field meet that I lost. This isn’t a goal that I didn’t score in an overtime period in junior hockey. This shit destroyed my world.

Anyways, I’ll have a new video by tomorrow, I’ve had a couple of things swimming around inside of my skull.

‘Til next time.

Mediated Settlement

Well, my lawyer has informed me that the Department of Justice and the Department of National Defence wish to initiate mediation in an attempt to reach a settlement.

Hopefully this matter doesn’t come with too onerous of a Non Disclosure Agreement.

And hopefully the DOJ and DND make good on their offer to compensate ALL victims of Captain Father Angus McRae.

Me

The time of settlements

First, a new video.

On November 7th and 8th my first lawyer and I will have a meeting with the lawyers in the matter of Earl Ray Stevens. This meeting is to see if all sides can reach a final agreement on the matter of an “out of court” settlement.

I don’t know what to expect with this meeting. The lawyer for the defendant in this matter has postulated that by the time Earl Ray Stevens abused me at the Denison Armouries when I was in cadets that I was already “damaged” from the abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao. He even seemed to have honed in on items from my foster care records that I wasn’t even aware of.

One such thing that he honed in on came about because my lawyer had requested a fresh copy of my foster care records from the Alberta government at the start of this matter. I had never seen the quoted text that the lawyer for the defendant read during the meeting because this was redacted from the copy of the records I had obtained in 2011.

In this formerly redacted section my father had told the psychologist hired by the Canadian Armed Forces in November of 1980 that he blamed my behaviour and the behaviour of my brother on his mother, specifically stating this “his mother was frequently cruel to his children, especially when she was inebriated”.

This by the way is the same mother that Richard wrote out of our family history when he gave his statement to the CFNIS in 2011.

So I’ll have to see what the future holds so far as this settlement goes.

I received an interesting telephone call from my other lawyer on Friday. It seems that the Department of Justice is curious to whether or not I would entertain the possibility of an out of court settlement. As this matter is a class action this would affect all members of the class. we don’t have anything to lose on this.

The DOJ and DND may insist that if we take the out of court settlement that we’d have to agree to be bound by an NDA. This is something that I would have to discuss with my lawyer.

That said, an out of court settlement in the Captain McRae matter from Canadian Forces Base Namao would resolve the matter in a fairly quick time unlike the 10 to 15 years that the DOJ had warned me they would drag this matter out for.

Questions that I would have are would there be any payments towards the families of the victims of Captain McRae and his 14 year old accomplice who committed suicide over the years as a result of the abuse and the failure of DND and the CF to look after the victims properly?

Would all of the surviving victims receive equal payments?

Would DND and the CF reveal the names of all of the children involved and ensure that these victims are made aware of the cash settlement being offered?

Would I be gagged by a Non-Disclosure Agreement much like the 14 year old accomplice agreed to in December of 2008?

I sure those details will be worked out.

The one thing that settlements in both matters allows be to do is to obtain medical assistance in dying in much my original time frame.

It was always my intention to die either in 2023 or 2024.

By going with settlements in both matters I can now rest assured that I won’t be spending the next 10 to 15 years dealing with this crap.

If I apply for medical assistance in dying on March 20th, 2023, it will probably take about 4 to 6 months for me to undergo the psychiatric review that would be required.

There would be a 90 day “cooling-off period”.

Then I would be given my prescription for medical assistance in dying. From what I understand the prescription would be valid for up to one year.

This would put my death into 2024. I’m okay with that. I’ve suffered 40 years so far, another year or two isn’t going to kill me.

Anyways, enough for now.

It’s bed time.

Saturday October 15th 2022

Why didn’t you tell anyone?

Why didn’t you report the abuse sooner?

The problem is the military police, the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit, and numerous other “adults” such as Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke were well aware of the abuse.