depression – Page 39

Psychiatric Help

I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.

So, I often get asked “Bobbie, if you’re having such problems, why don’t you get help?”

Well, truth be told I have tried to get help in the past. I honestly have.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been turned down, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this won’t be the last time that I am turned down.

My current nurse practitioner had arranged for me to see someone on the north shore. But once this counsellor found out about my history and my issues, they suddenly weren’t taking bookings until next year.

My nurse practitioner has actually been the only one so far who has shown an interest in my issues. When I started having severe problems back in May of this year he had no reservations about getting me on escitalopram.

I’ve had counsellors over the years. Some were good, a few were bad, but most were indifferent.

The problem that we run into is not a single counsellor has ever run into a high functioning person with so many issues.

Dysfunctional household – check
Intergenerational issues – check
Abandonment issues – check
Sexual abuse – check
Prolonged sexual abuse – check
Multiple perpetrators of the sexual abuse – check
Graphic and depraved sexual abuse – check
Blaming the victim for their own abuse – check
Blaming the victim for someone else’s abuse – check
Receiving unwarranted “conversion therapy” – check
Parent threatening the victim with physical harm or death – check
Untreated major depression – check
Untreated severe anxiety – check
Untreated CPTSD – check
Inability to form relationships- check

So, it’s obvious that I’m not going to be a case that any counsellor is going to want to engage with. Counsellors, just like everyone else, want the cases that will end in success. Nobody wants to take on cases that are almost certain to end in failure.

People like me are not supposed to hold down employment or keep our noses clean. We’re supposed to be barely functional wrecks.

People like me are supposed to be dead from suicide. I know of three from the CFB Namao matter who meet that criteria. I know others who have had a very rough run at life as well.

And if we’re not dead from suicide we’re supposed to be alcoholics, or heroin junkies, or on crack, self medicating ourselves into an early grave. I’m still amazed in all honesty that I’m not pushing a shopping cart down the alleys collecting bottles and junk to trade for money.

I would guess that another issue that prevented me from receiving counselling is that I’ve never had anyone advocating for me.

My father should have advocated for me back in 80 – 83, but he couldn’t take responsibility for his family and would often insist to me that I was only acting up in order to get out of what I had allowed the babysitter to do to my younger brother. In other words I was faking “major depression”, “severe anxiety” and a host of other issues as a way to shed the blame I deserved for what had happened to my younger brother.

My mother couldn’t advocate as I don’t think she knew bugger sweet all about CFB Namao or my life thereafter.

My stepmother? I don’t think she honestly knew what was going on as I don’t think that Richard had ever been truthful with her about the events of CFB Namao, or why Marie left in 1977, or just about anything else.

So as I stumbled and bumbled through life from one breakdown to another, there was never anyone there for me ensuring that I was getting the help that I needed.

And I’ll bet you that most of these counsellors, upon hearing my issues, can’t help but wonder what it is I expect to accomplish at the age of 50.

It’s not like I’m 15, or 20, or even 30. I’m 50.

I’m not suddenly going to find a boyfriend and get married and live happily ever after.

I’m not suddenly going to find a girlfriend and get married and live happily ever after.

I’m not going to become less disgusted by sex and sexual intercourse and start having sex.

I’m not all of a sudden going to become everyone’s best friend and start drinking and hanging out in bars with them.

I’m not suddenly going to stop having recurring nightmares about the abuse on CFB Namao or my father’s own anger outbursts.

These counsellors must be thinking to themselves “WTF? Why Me? I’m not a fucking miracle worker”.

So, my journey for a counsellor continues.

And please no, I don’t need healing crystals, or magical chants.

Lawyers and Coppers

I received a telephone call from one of my lawyers today.

This one is for my case involving Earl Ray Stevens.

My lawyer informed me that the Ontario Crown is taking a little longer than promised to release their records to my lawyer. The Crown is telling my lawyer that the police are taking longer than they should in handing their investigation file over to the Ontario Crown.

My lawyer has said that the counsel for the defendants have agreed to proceed to discovery without the Crown documents.

I really don’t know at this point how this case will work out.

Sure, Earl wasn’t found guilty in a court of law. But both the Toronto Police Service and the Ontario Crown thought that the case was strong enough to proceed to trial. Even the justice presiding over the preliminary hearing thought that this case was strong enough to go to trial.

Earl died of bladder cancer before the trial could commence.

Earl was a retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Earl was very smooth and Earl knew what he was doing. One can only wonder how many children Earl molested on the various Canadian Forces Bases while he was enlisted.

Earl’s career in the Canadian Forces more than likely explains why he knew that I would be terrified if either my father or the military police found out what I was doing with Earl and why Earl was able to use this as leverage to get me to keep my mouth shut about what he was doing. He knew from his time in the Canadian Forces that no military dependent would want anyone to know that they were “gay” or “homosexual”.

I wonder how many other military dependent children Earl was able to abuse in silence by threatening them with the revelation of their “secret”.

On another note I also received an email from the victim services coordinator with the CFNIS Western Region. They inform me that the investigation into the “man in the sauna” is still ongoing.

It’ll be interesting to see how this one works out.

The military police are taking such a trashing in the public eye these days. The military police and the CFNIS just don’t seem to be able to get convictions on anything.

The primary witness in this investigation is P.S., the babysitter from CFNIS investigation 2011-5754. The investigation which the CFNIS actually determined was “Founded – Not Cleared”.

The Military Police Complaints Commission in their final report that was released in 2020 stated that the CFNIS knew in 2011 that the charges against P.S. were founded.

Why the CFNIS told me in 2011 that they couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that P.S. was capable of the crimes I had accused him of will forever be a mystery. I have some plausible ideas.

How willing P.S. will be to talk to the CFNIS in this matter is anyone’s guess. And how willing the CFNIS will be to push P.S. to talk is again anyone’s guess. P.S. provided me to the man in the sauna. P.S. was the only witness to what had happened. And P.S. obviously knew what the man in the sauna was going to want from me.

At this time I only have a guess as to who the man in the sauna was. I know it wasn’t Captain McRae. There was an officer of the Canadian Forces who had been sent out from Ottawa to assist Captain McRae with McRae’s affairs during the lead up to his court martial. This officer, who was a major at the time, had been charged in the 2010s with molesting a young boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden in 1974. This is the same man, who after he retired from the Canadian Forces, had made a cash settlement with a family in Ontario for having improper sexual relations with a 16 year old boy.

Again, the major flaw with this whole investigation is that if it turns out that the man in the sauna was an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces and if this officer was responsible for directing P.S. to bring me to the sauna, a sauna that was owned by the Canadian Forces and was located on a secure Defence Establishment, to perform oral sex on this man, this would expose the Minister of National Defence to civil actions for the actions and behaviours of their officer.

Two problems exist with this scenario though.

First is that the 3-year-time-bar which existed in the National Defence Act prior to 1998 would prevent the Canadian Forces from being able to charge this man with Gross Indecency or Indecent Assault.

Second, the Minister of National Defence is in fact the “Chief of Police” as the minister via the Vice Chief of Defence Staff can direct any CFNIS investigation. The Supreme Court of Canada and the Military Police Complaints Commission have both said that this is improper. The Supreme Court of Canada has specifically ruled that it is improper for a police agency to conduct police investigations that could subject its parent agency to civil actions based on the outcome of the police investigation. This is why almost every police agency in Canada will always call in an outside police agency to conduct investigations when it suspects its own officers of serious wrongdoing.

Anyways, enough for now.

A lonely existence.

Yeah, my childhood after CFB Namao was a very lonely existence.

I guess the trauma and the shock of what I had been through on Canadian Forces Base Namao at the hands of P.S, along with the dysfunctional household that I was growing up in really fucked with my emotional well-being.

Being involved with Captain Totzke couldn’t have really helped with my self worth very much.

My father had convinced anyone that would listen that I was how I was because it was all an act so that I could shirk the responsibility of allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother.

The fact that most of the kids on CFB Griesbach knew who I was and what I had done didn’t help the situation very much.

The nice thing is that most people who got to know me saw that there were problems and they weren’t all mine.

And at age 50 I can see why people like Captain Totzke and my father did what they did.

As a child you simply can’t understand the biases, the prejudices, or the politics at play.

Even still, I find myself at age 50 completely unable to make friends. Sure, I’ve got co-workers and superiors and subordinates at work. I also deal with contractors, trades, and suppliers at work. But these are professional relationships.

I’ve met many people on my journey to receive justice and acknowledgment for what happened on CFB Namao. But other than the fact that we were all sexually abused on Canadian Forces Base Namao by the same two people, I can’t relate to anyone.

It’s not that I’m a loner by any definition. I like being out and about. I like going to coffee shops, and malls, and events.

I still can’t properly read or express emotions properly. When people appear to be upset or angry I get scared and afraid. That’s probably one of the reasons I hate any type of conflict at work. Maybe that makes me too accommodating, I don’t know.

I take no pride in my work. And by this I don’t mean that I don’t take care with my work. It’s just that no matter what I do all I can hear is my father yelling and screaming that I have to stop showing off, that I’m a stupid worthless piece of shit, and that anyone could do what I do, that I’m not special in any sense of the word.

So yeah, at age 50, what is going to be fixed?

The time for fixing these issues was 30 to 40 years ago.

The time for banishing Captain McRae, P.S., Captain Totzke, Colonel Munro, Richard Gill from my skull was years ago. Trying to evict these fuckers at the age of 50 is almost pointless.

And that’s the thing, my whole life has been nothing but enduring the self doubt and self hatred caused by these people.

If I didn’t listen to Richard’s negativity for the majority of my adult life, could things have been better. Probably not as there would have still been lots of issues given to me by the others.

If I didn’t listen to Captain Totzke’s thoughts on the apparent homosexuality I had exhibited when I had been molested by P.S. and Captain McRae, would my gender identity and sexual orientation been less fucked up? Possibly, but there were still a shit load of other issues fucking me up.

And that’s one of the problems. There wasn’t just one thing fucking with my psyche. There were numerous issues fucking me up and robbing me of a future that could have or should have been mine.

Dealing with these issues in the here and now may unleash fresh new self doubt, self hatred, and regret.

In other words I think I just have to make peace with these issues.

I’ve got my dresses, my tattoos, and my bicycle to keep me company.

Speaking of tattoos, I finally got my right ankle finished.

My goal is to have all parts of my body covered with ink by the time 2023 / 2024 rolls around.

The gender bias of sexual assault

I’ve often wondered if the fact that I am male has a had an impact on how my abuse at the hands of P.S. and Captain McRae has been viewed by the authorities.

Society expects girls and women to be the victims of sexual assault.

Society also expects that boys and men will be the perpetrators of sexual assault.

Things get really turned upside down when boys or men are the victims of sexual assault.

And things really get turned upside down when males are the victims of other males.

When I was receiving my counselling from Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke the area of concern wasn’t so much that I had been sexually abused but was that I had been caught having sex with another boy.

In the aftermath of being caught in P.S.’s bedroom I had often wondered if I would have gotten in trouble if I had been a girl instead of a boy. Even at age 8 I understood the gender bias that existed.

When I used to swap clothes with Megan on CFB Griesbach, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a girl. It’s just that I couldn’t understand why boys couldn’t wear dresses. I’d like to think that I was ahead of the curve with understanding that artificial society enforced gender roles were harmful and toxic. But more than likely it was just that I couldn’t understand why it was wrong for boys to wear dresses. And still no one has been able to explain this to me.

I remember girls on base who got touched by same age boys during episodes of “doctor”. The father of the girl would often unleash a can of whoop-ass on the boy who touched his daughter. The father of the boy would often give his son an “understanding wink” as if to say “good job son!”. The daughter never received any type of admonishment for the game of doctor as there was no way possible that the girl could have instigated it. But again, that’s just one of society’s biases, “girls are weak and can only be victims, boys are strong and can only be perpetrators”.

While living on CFB Griesbach I had developed feelings for a boy my age. He lived two doors down from me in PMQ #68. Nothing sexual at all. But we did kiss one day. His father was furious. Mine was even more so telling me that if he ever heard reports from another parent on base that I had kissed their son that he would “break my fucking neck” and that I would never have to worry about kissing another boy again.

Now, I realize that male-on-male child sexual abuse also existed out in the civilian world and that in the civilian world the victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse weren’t treated all that fairly. I still have a copy of an actual educational film from the ’60s called “Boys Beware” in which a teenage boy is groomed by a hebephile and coerced into sex. The hebephile is arrested and the boy is sentenced to juvenile detention. But there was possibly something else at play in the Canadian Armed Forces.

In 2014 when the French magazine L’actualité published its bombshell stories about sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces, one of the stories it ran was about male-on-male sexual assault. The writer of the article was told that male-on-male sexual assault in the military was all about control, humiliation, and punishment, and not about sexual gratification.

Is this why male-on-male sexual abuse was not taken all that serious in the Canadian Armed Forces? Obviously the victim must have done something wrong and deserved to be sexually abused, right? Don’t forget, the men sexually abusing other members of the Canadian Forces often had children at home. If these men participated in the sexual humiliation of other male members, how likely were they to take the sexual abuse of their sons as a serious offence. If these men participated in the sexual humiliation of other members, how likely were they to abuse their own children as a form of punishment or to exert control over an out of control child?

Let’s say that a soldier of the Canadian Forces had an out of control teenage boy at home, and if this member of the Canadian Forces had been involved with episodes of male-on-male sexual abuse in the military as a form of humiliation or punishment, would it be feasible that this member might also make use of male-on-male sexual abuse in an attempt to reign his son in and bring his son under control?

Oddly, when Maclean’s ran the English versions of the L’Actulaite stories they dropped the entire article about male-on-male sexual assault. Is French society that much more advanced that it can handle topics like male-on-male sexual abuse? Are the Anglophones of such delicate sensibilities that Maclean’s was worried about causing their English readers to faint, and swoon, and need PTSD counselling?

How cold is it…….

So, I spent some time today verifying the Dixell temperature monitors that I’m installing in the Pharmacy department .

This project came about after I had upgraded all of the walk-in coolers and freezers in the dietary kitchens. The old system was mechanical thermostats, time clocks for defrost cycles, and simple mechanic thermostats for monitoring for high temperatures. Needless to say there were a lot of false alarms and evaporator freeze ups.

When I saw how easy it was to install the Dixell controllers, network them, and program them I knew that I had a viable solution for the clinical and pharmacy departments to upgrade their monitoring.

Guess I’ll have to see where this goes.

I have a sneaking suspicion that other health authorities and other hospitals may have questions that I may need to answer.

My dentist

So, today I was in to see my dentist for some filling / bonding work on my canine teeth.

My teeth are in bad shape from years of grinding. And recently my canine teeth started to get sensitive which meant that they were not far away from getting cavities or worse.

My dentist bugged me again about getting root canals and caps, both of which my insurance would cover 100%.

I told her again that I wasn’t interested, that I only wanted to do the work that was required to keep my teeth from getting worse, but that I wasn’t interested in spending $20k to $30k to fix all of my teeth.

“But why not?”

So I said to her that if everything goes as planned, I won’t be around in two to three years.

“You’re moving somewhere?”

No, I’m applying for medical assistance in dying for psychiatric reasons.

“But I thought that your escitalopram was working, I thought you were feeling better”.

Escitalopram is like a pain killer, it numbs the pain, but it doesn’t fix it.

“What about therapy?”

Won’t fix the issues, and I don’t want to continue living with the damage in my head. If I was younger, maybe, but not at this stage in my life.

She just looked at me for a bit. Then she said “Do you want to get started?”.

I said sure, and she reclined the chair, and we started on my fillings / bondings.

Money isn’t the issue. I’m not poor. And I have good medical / dental coverage at work. I just don’t see the point.

I had my first dentist when I worked for the Elashi family in East Richmond.

Prior to that I had never had a real dentist. My dentists were usually from public health programs for disadvantaged children. I remember going to the dentist in a trailer that would pull up outside the school I was attending in Summerside, PEI. I think those were my first fillings.

The next time I went to a dentist was when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach in Edmonton. This was a program for low income families run out of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology “N.A.I.T.”. Kids that went to this program had their teeth worked on by dental students.

I don’t remember going to a dentist once while we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario.

Richard had promised me that he’d enroll me into the Young Driver’s program on my 16th birthday. Of course he lied. He had no intention. He gave me some excuse about his insurance going up if anyone under 18 had their driver’s licence in his house. When he saw that I wasn’t buying this he started justifying his lying by saying that his Mustang was too powerful for me to learn in. Young drivers had their own cars. I told him that he was a liar, that he had absolutely no plan of letting me take driver’s training, that this was more of his bullshit. I didn’t duck fast enough and I caught his wedding ring in the front of my mouth. He chipped my front tooth.

I didn’t start working for the Elashis until 1994. I don’t think my insurance kicked in until late ’94, so it was around 1995 when I finally got the chipped tooth fixed. So yeah, about 8 years.

I had all of my wisdom teeth yanked around 1995 as well.

So, it’s not that I’m afraid of the dentist, or dental work.

I just don’t see the point of it.

Not now.

Maybe 30 years ago.

Maybe even 20 years ago.

Even if I had been on anti-depressants / anti-anxiety medications 20 or 30 years ago my teeth would be in far better condition than they are today.

But 30 years ago was just 12 years removed from the CFB Namao fiasco and my father’s anger at how I had fucked with his military career and how I had allowed the babysitter to molest my younger brother was still very fresh in my mind. Captain Totzke’s lectures at how I exhibited homosexual tendencies because the abuse went on for so long was still rattling around in my skull.

20 years ago was 22 years removed from CFB Namao. And again all of the horseshit from CFB Namao and the subsequent fallout was still fresh in my mind.

It really wasn’t until I started learning the truth about CFB Namao 10 years ago in 2011 that I begun to realize that the issues I was living with were not of my own creation. These issues had been gifted to me. The Canadian Forces anointed my abuser as the “sole” victim of Captain McRae and chucked about 25 children under the bus.

Maybe if I had known the truth 20 or 30 years ago I would have wasted my time fixing my teeth.

Not now.

Just not worth it at this point in my life.

Death

Everybody does it, and it’s only natural, so why are we so afraid of it?

I have no fear of death.

Dying? Sure.

Death? No.

For obvious reasons I’ve had a lot of opportunities in my life to contemplate death. When I was about 5 years old on CFB Summerside, one of my friends was killed in a tobogganing incident. When I asked Richard if everyone dies he looked at me and said yes, everyone including me would die one day.

In my dysfunctional household the thought of dying and death was always seen as viable escape from Richard or his mother.

Death is one of the phases of life. Rich, poor, young, old, there is no escaping death. Death IS the great leveller.

From the time a human being is born until the time a human being dies the body is experiencing the physical world. Even when we sleep the brain is processing information from our environment. Once we die though, the brain no longer exists. There is nothing left to process information. A dead brain cannot sense. A dead brain cannot feel. A dead brain cannot fear.

I think the main reason that humans are afraid of death is that death is something that the human brain simply cannot comprehend.

Just as the human brain cannot comprehend the existence of time before its birth, the human brain cannot comprehend no longer existing. Ask yourself this, what do you envision happening after you die?

Can you comprehend the size of the universe? Can you comprehend the universe continuously expanding in all directions? Here’s one to ponder, what’s at the edge of the universe and what’s on the other side? If the universe has no edge, does the universe just go on forever? Nothing lasts forever, including nothing. Everything has an end, including nothing.

Can you comprehend that the universe is over 14,000,000,000 years old and that for the vast majority of that time life as we know it did not exist. Or how about the fact that in 5,000,000,000 years the Sun will become a red giant and will have become so large that it will have engulfed the Earth and destroyed it. Can you comprehend that in 10, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years the universe is expected to undergo heat death meaning that there will no longer be any detectable energy in the universe.

The human brain is happy dealing with topics that it can reason with and experience. Music? The human brain is great with rhythm and melody and pitch and scale.

Language? The human brain can learn multiple languages as it can experience the use of language in everyday use.

Combining materials mined from the Earth into computer chips and high capacity batteries? The human brain has the ability to learn and to apply knowledge learnt from previous experiments towards new creations.

How are these advances possible? It is the passing of knowledge from one human to another. The only knowledge that the human brain isn’t able to pass to another human is what happens after death.

I believe that the inability of our brain to understand death is one of the driving reasons behind the existence of religion. The human brain needs to know that it came from somewhere and that it has some place to go after the body dies.

The human brain is extremely curious and inquisitive. The human brain doesn’t like it when it can’t figure something out. It has to have answers. So it creates gods and nymphs and fairies and prophets and witches and warlocks and other mythical creatures. Does the Earth reside on the back of a giant tortoise that swims through the universe? Is the Earth flat? Did Noah create an ark that housed all of the animals in the world including the Kangaroos that hopped on over from Australia or the penguins that swam up from the Antarctic?

Religion and gods served a purpose. They explained things that early humans couldn’t have explained. The drought that caused a massive crop failure? You didn’t pray hard enough, or you prayed to the wrong god. The flood that wiped out a village? Again, you must have done something to upset the appropriate god. Need to justify you war and subjugation of a neighbouring village? God wanted you to do that, the others were heathens worshipping the wrong god.

I realized quite a while ago that human knowledge doesn’t die. The body dies. The brain dies. But the knowledge contained within the brain lives on by passing from one human to the next. Human beings didn’t just learn to speak one day. This feat took hundreds of thousands of years for us to develop. Humans didn’t just start building ships out of steel. The ability for forge steel and make alloys took thousands of years. Same thing for any piece of technology in use these days.

The human brain is programmed to view death in a negative manner. Death is attributed with diseases, and illnesses, and violence. Even when a person passes away peacefully in their sleep, those who find the corpse tend to respond to the corpse with fear.

It’s no doubt that our general fear of death and dead bodies has been somewhat beneficial over the years. Exposure to a rotting corpse exposes the living to all sorts of unpleasant possibilities. Humans know that it is generally a good idea to get rid of a corpse as soon as possible to avoid any diseases that the corpse may harbour. Burying corpses also seems to be a great idea that also prevents the spreading of diseases. Don’t forget, refrigeration wasn’t a thing until rather recently.

When a body dies it goes through various stages before decomposition renders the body to a skeleton.

Pallor Mortis is the first stage after death. This is where the blood recedes from the skin. Lips turn blue and the skin loses its pinkish hue. The resulting change in colour is especially noticeable in people with white skin.
Algor Mortis is the second stage of death. This is where the body, due to the lack of oxygen required to power the cells, starts to cool down as the cells in the body start to die.
Rigor Mortis is the next stage of death. As the body is no longer able to manufacture ATP the muscles in the body are no longer able to relax. They start to become rigid and inflexible. Further, as ADP is release into the muscle fibres, the muscle fibres contract and are unable to relax as the body no longer has the ability to reabsorb the ADP and cannot create new ATP. The muscles only relax after the muscle tissue has started to decompose.
Livor mortis comes next. That’s where the blood and other body fluids are drawn by gravity to the lowest parts of the body. If you die lying down your back will take a on very deep purple bruised complexion. If you were to die sitting up, your legs would become dark purple and swollen.
Finally, putrefaction sets in. This is where the internal organs, the muscles, fat, and skin start to break down and liquify. Bacteria will start to consume the corpse from the inside while insects and small animals will start to consume the corpse from the outside.

At the completion of the five stages you’re typically left with a skeleton.

I find it really sad that I can’t really give my skeleton away. Not even just parts of it. There’s a few people I know of that would love to have my skull. And I have no doubt that they would enjoy it.

Thankfully a person is dead by the time rigour mortis sets in. Can you imagine what a full-body Charlie Horse would feel like. Rigour mortis is a very power force. It can break bones. I’ve seen pictures from early 20th century medical text books that demonstrated the strength of rigour mortis. One picture had a corpse with a saw horse under the neck and a saw horse under the ankles and the body only had a slight bow in the midsection. Another picture had the head of the corpse resting on a chair and the ankles resting on another chair and again the body was so stiff that it barely flexed in the middle.

What do I intend to do with my body?

I’d actually love to have my body placed on a body farm. That’s probably the closets to a natural decomposition one can have these days. Body farms are basically training grounds for law enforcement, pathologists, and coroners to observe and learn how a body decomposes under various circumstances when exposed to the elements. They can dress the corpse up, or leave the corpse naked and exposed, or wrap the corpse up in plastic bags. All to simulate the various conditions that a deceased could expect to be found in. This is to allow police and pathologists and coroners to hone their skills and to learn how to read a corpse in order to figure out how the corpse died and how long the corpse was dead before it was discovered.

There’s actually only one body farm in Canada, and that’s in Quebec.

The next option for my corpse would be to have it go to a medical school. I’ve watched numerous autopsy videos and it always amazes me how much can be learnt from the body be examining the viscera of a body. The human body is often called “The Soft Machine” and what an intricate and intriguing machine the human body is. If medical students can learn something from my corpse, all the better. I honestly believe that everyone should have the opportunity to view at least one autopsy I their life.

In either scenario I’d love for my brain to be sent to one of the various research facilities in Canada that deal with neurological disorders. Even though I’d be dead, and my brain would be completely non-functional, researchers can still tell a lot about a brain and the mental illnesses it suffered from while it was alive. Even though I’d be dead at that point and I wouldn’t benefit from any research carried out on my brain, if researching my brain provided clues to treatments for others suffering from what I’ve suffered from, then it would be worth it.

I really don’t want my corpse to be pumped full of chemicals. I’ve never understood the present day need for embalming. We have modern refrigeration that will slow down the decomposition rate of a corpse while funeral arrangements are being made, so no, no embalming for me. Fancy satin lined coffins, talking headstones, and cement vaults? For what? I don’t get it.

Cremation? What a waste. All that fuel being consumed and all of that pollution being released. Not good.

Alkaline hydrolysis looks fairly interesting. Not sure if it’s legal in BC yet. It is legal in Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec. The process is fairly simple. Water is heated to 177 Celsius. Lye is added to the water. The water is circulated in a stainless steel chamber in which the body has been placed. It takes about 6 hours for the body to completely break down to the point that the only thing left is a bleached and brittle skeleton.

Anyways……. enough about death……

I the next post I will talk about why I’m scared of dying, but not of death.

Or maybe I’ll talk about hobbies or my lack thereof.

Why do I want to die?

I don’t actually want to die. I need to die. There is a difference.

My brain is hopelessly damaged beyond salvage. You may agree with this or you may not agree with this. But it’s only my opinion that matters on this. I’m the one who has lived with this. And I’m the one more than willing to die to end it.

I’ve had no one advocating for my mental health over the years. So it is quite perplexing the number of people that want to suggest ways that I can take care of my mental health.

It wasn’t like my mental health hadn’t been flagged in the aftermath of the CFB Namao fiasco.

It was.

My mental health had deteriorated to the point that I was supposed to have been institutionalized. When you’re nine-years-old and psychiatrists are recommending that you be institutionalized you know that there is something seriously wrong. The fact that I wasn’t institutionalized doesn’t mean that I got better on my own. It just means that my deteriorating mental health was ignored.

Who kept me from receiving the help I required to treat my mental health issues? Was it my father? Was it Captain Terry Totzke? Was it someone else up the chain of command in the Canadian Armed Forces? I don’t know. And due to the loosey-goosey record retention policy of the Canadian Forces I don’t think that we’ll ever know.

And you know damn well that someone in the Canadian Armed Forces hierarchy interfered. On January 26th, 1983 Captain Totzke was told that Alberta Social Services was getting ready to place me into foster care or residential care. On January 28th, 1983 Captain Totzke told Alberta Social Services that my father was withdrawing me from the program and that my father had just receive a posting to Ontario.

And at this point in my life does it really matter?

For just over 42 years I’ve been left to cope with the following:

CPTSD;
Major depression;
Severe anxiety;
Gender identity issues;
Sexual Orientation issues;
Inability to form relationships;
Inability to trust;
Feelings of hopelessness;
Feelings of helplessness;
Feelings of worthlessness;
Vividly reliving the sexual abuse of me, my brother, and all of the other kids I witnessed P.S. molesting;
Grappling with being blamed by my father for allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother;
Grappling with being called a homosexual apparently because I participated in the abuse for as long as I did;
The endless replaying of the man in the sauna;
The abuse at the hands of Earl Ray Stevens;
Existing in a dysfunctional household.

I’ve managed to fall through the cracks for a majority of my life. That’s the double edged sword of being intelligent. The people that I worked for were more than willing to overlook my issues because I brought so much benefit to their organizations. So what if I broke down and cried at random times, or so what if I blew up when I’d get frustrated because my depressed brain wasn’t capable of handling stress, or what if I didn’t come in for days at a time. When I could do electronic repairs, electrical repairs, mechanical repairs, HVAC repairs, the meltdowns and breakdowns were tolerable.

Being highly functional with mental illness is not fair. People just write off your mental illness as being “melodrama”, or “just being an asshole”.

And the sad thing about mental illness is that it doesn’t show up on a blood test, it really doesn’t show up on an MRI.

Mental illness can only be diagnosed by a psychiatrist. But psychiatrists have their own options and biases. So the fact that I’ve never been unemployed or locked-up in psychiatric care, or in trouble with the law means that I can’t really be that ill.

Throw into that the “Just Society” bias that many people have which results in doctors and psychiatrists being of the opinion that if something did happen to me then surely someone would have done something about it, right?

The other side of the “Just Society” bias means that many other people are of the opinion that if the military police didn’t lay charges in 1980 or 2018 that obviously nothing occurred. Because if something did occur, surely somebody would have done something, right?

The only problem is that as the years went by and I learnt to “cope” and “hide” my issues. And as the years went by I could feel the desire to die building inside.

It is so very tiring keeping my “happy” face on while my brain turns into a cancerous tumour full of rot.

There’s no fixing my brain. The damage is done. The damage has had time to set and solidify.

I’m not suddenly going to find a magical counsellor or magical pharmaceuticals that will erase the past, and erase the memories from CFB Namao, and erase all of the other shit that I went through before I turned 16.

My brain is not your “fix-it” project. My emotional well-being is not your hobby.

When I was first interviewed by master corporal Robert Jon Hancock back in 2011, I told him during the interview that I understood that there was not going to be a magical time machine that would send me back and undo all of the things that happened to me.

Life honestly has no joy and offers me no pleasure. It never has.

And this is where things get interesting.

I have had people tell me that my desires to die make them feel uncomfortable. That maybe if I stopped thinking negative thoughts and just thought happy thoughts that everything would be okay.

But that’s not how this works.

Bobbie, you’re such a “warrior”.

No.

You’re a “champion”.

No.

You’re so “brave”.

No.

“You can’t be serious”.

Yes I am.

“You’re just doing this for attention”.

No I am not.

I’m somebody who got caught up in some very bad situations that were far beyond their control.

I came from a dysfunctional home.

I was exposed to adults that were suffering from their own intergenerational traumas.

I was sexually abused for a prolonged period.

The blame for this abuse was placed upon my shoulders like some sort of mantle of shame to wear.

I was then brain fucked by an organization that should have known better than to fuck with a child’s brain.

I didn’t receive the psychological help that I should have received.

In fact, my father’s methods of dealing with my issues were the exact opposite of what I required.

Do I really want to live for another 20 to 30 years?

No.

Sure the escitalopram is doing a great job with my anxiety and my depression. But it hasn’t fixed them. They’re still there. They always will be there. Just like the memories of CFB Namao, of P.S., the visits to the chapel, of the abuse, of Captain Totzke, of Alberta social services, of my father’s anger and temper. Those will be with me until the day I die.

I’m single. I’ve never really been attached to anyone. I have no family to speak of. I have no one dependent on me.

Death, I am not afraid of. It’s the dying that I’m afraid of.

When you’re dead, that’s it. You’re dead. There is no happiness. There is no sadness. There are no memories. There is no regret. There is nothing. You don’t exist anymore. You don’t feel anymore. You don’t think. You don’t contemplate. You sure won’t be aware that you’re dead. And no, you won’t feel your corpse decompose.

Everything that you felt, saw, heard, touched, tasted, learnt, dreamt about, longed for, or cherished dies along with you.

Existing longer than you need to in the hopes that you’ll eventually find some supposed meaning in life is pointless, especially if existing brings pain and not joy.

You don’t get extra bonus points for enduring life longer than you needed to.

I am an atheist. I do not believe in a supreme being, an afterlife, a heaven, a hell, or a purgatory. I do not believe in reincarnation.

Dying is the hard part of death. Transposing from living to dead is often quite painful and traumatic. I’ve seen the end result of vehicle collisions. I’ve been aware of failed suicide attempts. I’ve seen people slowly die from brain injuries and strokes. I’ve known people who have died from incurable disease.

Life itself is not special. There are over 7.5 billion humans on the planet right now.

The value of human life varies depending on the situation. If a car driver makes a right hand turn on a red light and strikes a pedestrian, ooopsie.

If I’m out riding my bicycle and a car driver runs a stop sign and kills me but didn’t have the intention of killing me, ooopsie.

Society seems more than willing to tolerate deaths from motor vehicle collisions as a small price to pay for the convenience of fast travel.

How many lives have been lost in civilian aviation due to bad designs (737MAX) or a cutback in maintenance (Alaska Airlines)?

How many innocent civilian lives were lost in wars since the year 2000 due to bad intelligence and questionable motives?

How many people have died due to simple preventable diseases?

How many people have died from starvation?

Even when it comes to drug users, society seems to have little concern.

There seem to be only two times when a human life is lost that society loses its collective marbles. Murder or Suicide.

When it comes to murder, murder is almost universally reviled. The amount of revulsion shown is a sliding scale that seems to vary depending on who is being murdered and who is doing the murdering.

Suicide on the other hand is often seen as a selfish act perpetrated by someone just acting out for attention. Suicide is often seen as an overreaction to a silly issue. Suicide is rarely seen as the end result of events for which the person committing suicide felt that they had little control over.

My death will not be a suicide. Unlike a suicide, which is often random and unpredicted, my death will be scheduled. My death will be sanctioned by medical professionals, and my death will be overseen by medical professionals even though technically it will be me starting the dosing pumps.

Unlike a suicide, even a suicide with a note, there will be no unanswered questions about my death and why I’ve chosen death as opposed to living.

Everything will be explained along the way. There will be no chance for misinterpretations.

When I go, there will be no loose strings. Everything that needs to be closed off and addressed will be closed off and addressed.

You’re all more than welcome to come along with me on this journey.

Not all of the posts on my blog will be about my death. But I will warn you that a majority of my posts will be. I was hushed up about the child sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao. I will not hush up about my death.

Remember this, all of our journeys end with our own death. Mine will only be different in the sense that I am going to hopefully be able to schedule mine and choose the location.

The ignorance is strong.

How ignorance amongst the general population allows crimes to go unpunished.

I don’t often go to f-book. I don’t know what it is about that site, but there sure are a lot of ignorant people on there.

The Criminal Code of Canada has no statute of limitations on indictable offences. The only statute of limitations is on Summary Offences.

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/page-210.html?txthl=786#s-786

If someone committed rape, or murder, or indecent assault in 1970, they could still be charged in the modern day as those are indictable offences, not summary offences.

So here’s this guy claiming that there is a two year statute of limitations on indictable offences in Canada.

I don’t get it.

Why do people like this open their mouths?

What do they get out of flapping their traps?

“Military’s” not “militaries”.

Obviously not dealing with a full deck here.

“If the military say we knew nothing of his conduct then there is not culpability”.

Yeah, so much to unpack here. The military did know of his actions. The military knew what Captain McRae and P.S. were up to. The abuse occurred on a secure defence establishment. The military provided Captain McRae with his living quarters on base.

But yeah, this is why it gets so frustrating dealing with the base brat groups and why I generally stay off of Facebook.

The Jewish Cowboy

Bob Becker

I worked for a Jewish Cowboy when I lived in Toronto.

All of Bob’s customers called him the Jewish Cowboy because he always wore cowboy boots, khakis, long sleeved button up shirts, and a Stetson. Oh, and he was Jewish.

I don’t know too much about Bob’s origins other than he was Jewish and he was born in Poland sometime in the late 1920s early 1930s.

When I lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview I was a loner. Actually for most of my life after CFB Namao I was a loner. One of the things I loved to do was to jump onto the railway tracks that ran through the base. I’d walk up the railway tracks as far north as the rail yards north of Steeles Avenue.

I was always fascinated by the dead animals that I’d find on the tracks. How could they not hear a train coming. Even without sounding their horns trains were loud. Was it a quick death. Did the animal even know what had hit it. Was it painful. A million questions.

Usually I’d bring a book with me and I’d climb the signal platforms and read my book on top of the signals while the trains passed underneath.

On one of my journeys up the railways I saw a warehouse with video games in it. I was curious. I hopped the fence and went over to take a look.

I can’t remember how things went down, but I told Bob that I was handy with electronics and that I could solder. So as a test he asked me to solder some wires to a joystick. So I stripped the wires, fluxed the wires, tinned the wires, fluxed the switch tabs, applied a small bit of solder to the switch tab and then I applied the tinned wire into the molten solder blob, removed the soldering iron and let the solder cool. It was nice, and shiny, and perfect.

Bob then asked me to look at some video game logic boards that had some problems. I fixed them.

So I had a job. Bob paid good, just a little bit above minimum wage, which for a 13 year old wasn’t bad. And on days that I worked, Bob paid for my meals. Bob refused to buy me smokes or to let me smoke in the workshop, but he wouldn’t say anything if I stepped out for a smoke.

Bob owned two companies. Trans American Construction and Trans American Video Amusements. I don’t think he had operated Trans American Construction much by the time I started working for him. His main business was Trans American Video Amusements.

When I started working for Bob his shop was in a warehouse on Finch. A little while later he moved to a new warehouse on Steeles Ave.

Bob’s customers spanned all the way from Oshawa, Ontario to Niagara Falls, Ontario. He had agreements to put video games in all of the Holiday Inns in Southern Ontario as well as all of the Hasty Markets. Bob also had various other locations such as small convenience stores. I’d usually go in and work with Bob on Saturdays.

Bob had a Dodge Kary Van that was modified with a lift gate on the rear for lifting and lowering the video games in and out of the box.

Bob’s was red, not white and didn’t have the hazard light bar on top.

We drove in this van pretty well all over southern Ontario.

Bob wasn’t the least bit hesitant to drive on base and stop in front of our PMQ and toot the air-horns to let me know that he was waiting.

Bob didn’t like my father very much. Bob would often tell me that what concerned him the most about my father is that my father just didn’t seem to care that I was never home. What type of man lets a stranger take his son on the highway and out of the city?

By the time Bob moved up to Steeles Avenue I would come to work after school and I would stay there until 9 or 10 at night. Bob could always tell I was leaving late because Gerry, the guy who owned that auto shop next-door, would tell Bob what time I was leaving, and Bob could see what time I armed the alarms.

And this blew Bob away. He said that he’d never seen anything like this. He said if his daughter started disappearing for hours that he’d ground her.

And my smoking. Bob had never seen anything like it. The fact that my father didn’t care about my smoking shocked Bob. Bob couldn’t comprehend this.

I never could understand why Bob cared so much about my father or my home life. I guess at the time I didn’t realize just how off the rails and dysfunctional my household actually was and how apparent the dysfunction was to people outside of my family.

Bob was a good natured guy. He never really got angry or upset. I dropped a video game out of the back of the truck in the shop one day. I thought that Bob was going to be pissed off, or worse. Nope. Shit happens, just try harder next time. My father would have killed me or at least humiliated me.

One time we were driving to Niagara Falls. Antonio was with us. Antonio was another helper that Bob often employed. Bob was driving, Antonio was in the passenger seat, I was sitting between Bob and Antonio. Bob asked Antonio to clean the sideview mirror. Antonio reached into the glove box and grabbed a small “rag”, rolled down the window, and started rubbing the dirt off the mirror using the “rag”.

“Antonio! After all I have done for you, this is how you repay me!” Bob bellowed.

Antonio starts looking at Bob and then looks at the mirror thinking maybe he didn’t clean the mirror good enough.

I forget exactly how the exchange went but I clued in really quick once I saw the decorative embroidery around the edge of the “rag”. Antonio still hadn’t figured out why Bob was upset so I pointed at the “rag” and then I pointed at the back of my head. Antonio didn’t get it right away, but then the realization started to dawn on Antonio’s face. Antonio unfolded the “rag” and realized that he had just used Bob’s yarmulke to clean the mirror. When Bob saw the look of horror on Antonio’s face he couldn’t stop laughing. Antonio spent the rest of the day apologizing to Bob.

Bob got a flat tire once in the truck. I got underneath to put the jack in place under the axle. Bob didn’t realize that my legs were under the lift gate and he was in the process of unloading games off the truck to make it lighter. Bob treated me like royalty for the next couple of weeks after that.

Bob bought me a jukebox at one of the video game auctions at Starburst Distributors for my 15th birthday. Wasn’t an expensive machine, but it was more that what Richard had bought me, which was nothing.

I’m pretty sure that the summer of 1987 was the last summer that I worked for Bob. That was the year I dropped out of grade 9. And it was also the year that I started working for Ed Blah and Bruce Beveridge of Rainbow Games. But the summer of 1987 was when I learnt a little bit about Bob’s history.

We were moving games down to the CNE from Bob’s warehouse. As the CNE happened in August this was typically the most humid time of the year in Southern Ontario. Bob was sweating, and I mean really sweating. Sweating so much that I was certain that he was going to pass out from heat stroke. I kept insisting to Bob that he should take his long sleeve shirt off and wear a short sleeve shirt or a tee-shirt.

Bob was becoming visibly annoyed with my pestering. He looked over at me and asked me if he showed me something would I promise never to bother him again about short sleeved shirts. He also asked me to promise to never tell anyone about what he was about to show me.

Remember when I said that Bob had been born in Poland in the late 1920s? Remember the fact that he was Jewish.

Bob rolled up his left sleeve and there was his concentration camp number.

The Nazis had rounded him and his family up and they were sent to a concentration camp.

Bob was the only one who survived the camps. The rest of his family was gone.

After the war Bob first landed in America before settling in Canada.

And I think this is what bugged Bob the most about my father.

Bob’s family had been destroyed by hatred. Richard was destroying his own family out of indifference.

The Nazis had taken everything away from Bob and Bob in turn built a miniature empire and looked after his wife and his daughter.

Richard never had to deal with a force of destruction like the Nazis, but here he was content to exist in his little self absorbed world not caring in the slightest where his kids were getting off to.

It shocks me now to look back on all of the people I had interacted with as a child. People who I liked. But people who I though were wrong about my father. It wasn’t that my father didn’t care, my father was in the Canadian Armed Forces. He was a busy man defending Canada. Besides, I made the babysitter molest my younger brother, so maybe he was right to not like me very much.

I didn’t know that my father was being physically or mentally abusive. My father’s attitude was common on the bases amongst the other fathers. In fact when I saw civie kids “getting away with murder” I thought it was their parents that were abnormal or just too weak to discipline their kids properly.

Now I fully realize that men like Bob Becker were right. There was something horrifically wrong with my family. My family was a dysfunctional and self destructive military family.