depression

Pizza Plus

A family owned pizza shop.

I honestly can’t remember how I started working for the Casson family at their pizza shop in Kingsway Garden Mall.

I know that it was before the summer of 1982 when I started in the Westfield Program.

There was Jackie Casson, Bonnie Casson, and Colleen Casson.

Jackie was the matriarch of the family. Bonnie and Colleen were Jackie’s daughters.

I know that I was working for them prior to the summer of 1982 as when I was in the Westfield program we had a school trip down to a Boston Pizza shop that was on 118th Ave and 127th Street. This trip occurred between the summer of 1982 and January of 1983. We were there to make our own pizzas. I already knew how to oil the pan and spread the dough, so this is how I know that I was working at Pizza Plus already.

My “duties” at Pizza Plus were to wash the pans. Oil the cleaned pans. Measure and cut the dough for the pans. And then stack the pans in the undercounter cooler. I’d also help with getting supplies out of the storage locker under the loading bay.

It wasn’t much of a job really. But it did give me a little spending cash and all of the pizza slices that I could eat.

I had a bicycle that I would ride down from Canadian Forces Base Griesbach at 137th Ave and 97th Street to Kingsway Garden Mall at 109th Street and Kingsway.

Even after grandma moved out, Richard would frequently drop my brother and I off with grandma to spend the weekend. Grandma lived over at 107th Ave and 111th Street. So walking over to the mall was easy enough.

I think that Jackie let me “work” there because she knew something was wrong at home and she felt sorry for me.

Jackie had a house in the west end of Edmonton and she had let my brother and I come swimming a couple of times.

I honestly can’t keep her two daughters straight in my mind, the ol’ brain is getting tired. I think that it was Colleen that owned a Triumph TR-7 sports car and she used to take me for rides around the city. And I’m pretty sure that it was Bonnie that owned the Pizza Plus that was in the food court at Cadillac Fairview place downtown.

In the summer of 1984 and 1985 when Richard had sent my brother and I up to Edmonton to spend the summer with grandma I would spend most of my time either working at Pizza Plus or pedalling the ice cream carts for Dickie-Dee.

In the summer of ’84 I went up north with a woman who was somehow involved with the Cassons. She ran a small pizza shop at a board of education building. I can’t honestly remember what town this was in. I’m thinking Bon-Accord. I would have been 12 at the time. I think I was gone for about a week. Funny thing was when we got back to Edmonton, my grandmother vaguely remembered me going but she was sure that I’d turn back up again.

The Cassons were great. Even though I couldn’t have been much value to them, they always made me feel welcomed. Which was far better than what I was getting at home. They kept me fed. And they gave me enough spending money to keep me out of trouble. The money I was making from the Cassons was enough to pay for games at the arcades or to let me go see a movie. It was money from the Cassons that allowed me to catch the city bus up to CFB Griesbach and then the shuttle bus up to CFB Namao when I tried to report P.S. to the military police for the first time in 1984.

In my foster care records it’s mentioned that my child care worker asked me in January of 1983 if there was anyone in particular that I wanted to go stay with after they removed me from the home.

This lady would have been Jackie Casson.

I didn’t want to go live with my mother. I didn’t want to go live with my grandmother. I didn’t want to go live with my uncle. I wanted Jackie to adopt me.

And see, it’s stuff like this stuck in my head that haunts me to this day.

I could have been free of Richard. I could have been clear of the Gill family dysfunction. I could have received treatment for my major depression, my severe anxiety, and the effects of 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

I could have gone to live with someone who was nice and who actually cared and who would have treated me the same as she had treated her own grown daughters.

There would have been absolutely no way that Jackie would have tolerated anything less than grade 12 for my education.

What my life would have been like or could have been like? I don’t know. All I can say for sure is that it would have been a hell of a lot more meaningful if the Canadian Armed Forces hadn’t interfered with my removal.

I could have had a normal life, but secrets needed to be kept.

Defending myself

One of the oddest things about growing up in Richard’s house is how defending myself often put me at the risk of being on the receiving end of Richard’s rage.

Being a child with severe depression and severe anxiety meant that I liked to keep to myself a lot. There were two boys on Canadian Forces Base Downsview that used to take extreme pleasure in beating me up. One of the kids lived at the end of the row house that I lived in. And we both attended Pierre Laporte Junior High. This kid I’ll refer to as “G”. The other kid that “G” hung out with was “S”.

Military bases were like the proverbial “company town”. Everybody knew everybody’s business and everybody knew everybody’s issues. If you came from one of the many dysfunctional families that lived on military bases in Canada, you may as well have had a scarlett D tattooed on your forehead.

There were four kids that attended Pierre Laporte Junior High that made my life a living hell to the point that one more than one occasion I contemplated stepping in front of the CN train that ran through the middle of the base just behind the PMQs or even the TTC subway train. “G”, “S”, “R.K.”, and “R.A.”

And the thing was, these four would often gang up on me. So it was never a fair one-on-one fight.

These four and their girlfriends were always taunting me about my lack of a girlfriend and my apparent “funny walk”. Also, my father’s frequent anger outbursts and the domestic dispute which occurred in the summer of 1985 seemed to feed these kids even more.

On one occasion I was coming home from school when both “G” and “S” caught me behind Downsview Secondary School. What I didn’t anticipate was that my only friend at the time, John, saw what was happening and he intervened to keep “S” out of the fight. I don’t know if “G” didn’t put as much effort into the fight because “S” wasn’t able to help him, or if I just realized that I had a once in a life time chance to fight back. But I landed a few good punches and “G” decided he wasn’t interested in fighting me.

When I got home my shiner was starting the develop.

Let’s not kid anyone. At that point in my life I was on the scrawny side. “G” was much more developed than I was. Christ, even my younger brother was taller and more muscular than I was. I didn’t actually break 120 lbs until I quit smoking in 1996 when I was 25. At the time I lived on CFB Downsview I’d be very surprised if I broke 90 to 100 lbs. During my adolescence my chest muscles and body fat were so thin that you could easily see my ribs.

I thought that Richard would have approved of me standing up for myself instead of getting the shit beat out of me as usual. Nope. I got a nice back hand across my face and he told me that I had to stop doing things to get myself beat up. He said that he was getting tired of me picking fights and then playing the victim.

I can only look back and wonder if Richard was projecting.

Projection in the psychological sense is where you take all of your flaws and superimpose them onto someone else.

In 2011 when I received my foster care records from the Alberta Government I would discover that both the psychiatrist hired by the Canadian Forces as well as my civilian child care workers had noted that my father refused to accept responsibility for his family, blamed others for his problems, felt victimized, expected others to solve his problems for him, often told conflicting stories, and often told those he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear.

Richard had already made it known to me at various times between the summer of 1980 and the fall of ’87 when I moved out that I was at fault for allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother. As an adult I full well realize that this is the stupidest thing that Richard could have ever said. But as a child this cut right to the bone.

So was that it? Was Richard projecting all of his shortcomings and failings on me? Richard wasn’t home like he was supposed to have been and he left my brother and I in the care of his alcoholic mother. Did Richard blame me because otherwise he’d have to step up to the plate and take responsibility for his two kids being sexually abused on a secured defence establishment?

Richard would often “rage out” and get so violent, but then turn around mere hours later and forget all about it. Did Richard view me standing up to “G” and fighting back as me “raging out” like he was prone to?

I forget what rank “G’s” father was at the time, all I know is that he outranked my father. Was my father just afraid of catching flack from “G’s” father or from a superior of “G’s” father?

Richard’s refusal to allow me to defend myself has had repercussion well into my adult life.

Not being allowed to defend myself fostered a very low self esteem.

Not being allowed to defend myself taught me to appease others and just go with what others wanted as this would avoid confrontation.

This will always be a mystery to me as Richard is long since dead.

And honestly whether or not I ever got an answer from Richard would be pointless as the damage has long since been done.

Mental Health Treatment

Sometimes nothing can be done.

Over the course of time that I have been running my blogs people have come forward and have suggested that I just need to seek counselling to deal with the cancer in my brain and that everything will be just fine. And I know that these people mean well. But sometimes there is nothing that can be done.

I know that I am going to sound like a broken record, but sometimes the damage is unfixable due to the severity of the damage, the spectrum of the damage, and how long the damage was allowed to fester.

In my case not only did I come from a family with intergenerational dysfunction, I was sexually abused repeatedly from 1978 until 1987 by various people. I was blamed for the abuse which occurred from 1978 until 1980. I was blamed for my brother’s abuse that occurred from 1978 until 1980. I was labelled a homosexual even though I more than likely was not one. I was pitted in a war between my military social worker and my civilian social workers. I grew up being spoon fed lies by my father. My educational endeavours were severely curtailed due to my father’s belief that what was good enough for him was more than good enough for me.

My father also seemed to be the kind of person that would destroy anyone he felt was a challenge to his intellect or authority. Sarcastic putdowns were a hobby of his. He could wield his putdowns like a machete and inflict massive wounds.

I know that my untreated depression and my untreated anxiety were probably what led to me being sexually abused frequently as a kid. How many times was I sexually abused? More than you’d probably care to know.

See child sexual abuse, dysfunction, and mental illness go hand in hand.

A dysfunctional household means that you often have no one to confide in as the adults in your house are wrapped up in their own drama and are dealing with their own demons.

My mental illnesses meant that I was often alone, scapegoated, and ostracized. Kiddie diddlers and perverts love ostracized children. They’re often alone and by themselves. Children who are depressed often have such low levels of self esteem that these creeps and perverts only have to make basic overtures to these kids in order to get these kids to comply. Also these creeps and perverts know that children with low self esteem can be made to believe anything and can be easily manipulated. All they have to do is offer a compliment on how handsome you look or how smart you are and they’ve got you in their traps.

If I had been allowed to receive treatment for my depression and anxiety would I have not appeared so odd and bizarre to the other kids? And if I had been accepted by the other kids would I have been such an easy target for the creeps and pervs?

I remember as a kid frequently crying because I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was wrong with me and why I was such a fucking freak. The last time that I had actually broken down and cried with these thoughts was back in 2008.

Dying was a frequent wish of mine as a kid. I would often hope that I would get kidnapped and murdered and that during the police investigation my father would go to jail for neglect. I remember the 1984 McDonald’s shooting in San Ysidro , California and how I wished that I could be killed in a similar manner. I really didn’t want to live as a kid. I was just too chicken to do anything about it.

I wish that I could say that “talking” was going to fix my issues. But I know that I can’t be honest with counsellors. After all I spent three years of my childhood being manipulated by military social worker Captain Terry Totzke and my very own father. And by being manipulated I mean that every time that we went to counselling sessions at the Westfield Program my father and Terry would tell me to be very careful with what I said to the counsellors and that I should check with them before saying anything to my counsellors. Sure, I’ve learnt recently that both my father and Terry had their own agendas. The fact that I now know of these agendas doesn’t change the fact that the rot and cancer of mental illness was allowed to permeate the far reaches of my brain from 1980 until 2011. And I understand that my father may have had no option but to follow the instructions of Terry as Terry was a captain in the Canadian Forces and my father was only a master corporal.

Another problem with talking freely with counsellors is that they honestly don’t listen.

Children don’t live on military bases.
Military bases would have been the safest place for children to live.
Military police are real police officers and can’t be interfered with.
All you had to do was tell someone.
You’re successful, you can’t have any mental issues.
You never sought help before, how bad can your issues be.
You’re blowing things out of proportion.
You’ve adapted to your depression, you can tough it out.

Also, I have various people residing in my skull. And they’re not going anywhere. And no, they’re not there for trivial reasons. Who are these people?

P.S. a 14 / 15 year old male from CFB Namao
Captain McRae from CFB Namao.
The mystery man from the sauna on CFB Griesbach.
The man from CFB Griesbach
The man from Kingsway Garden Mall in Edmonton, AB.
Earl Ray Stevens, the retired member of the Canadian Forces who was a commissionaire at the Dennison Armouries in North York.
The guy who lived on Centre Island.
The University of Toronto student who conned me into a “human sexuality” study.
A guy from North York who tried to get me to participate in the filming of a child porn video.
The married guy who threw me out of his apartment when his wife came home.
The man who tried to strangle me in his car in High Park in Toronto.
A guy that I worked with in Toronto who threatened to “out me” to my employers if I didn’t look after him.

So, while I appreciate the urgings for me to “get help”, there honestly is no help.

One of my “gifts” if you will is that I am extremely pragmatic. Not everything can be fixed. Not everyone can be “cured”.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to learn how to cope. But sometime even coping isn’t good enough.

If you want to prevent people from suffering from complex mental health issues, the best thing to do is to prevent those issues from occurring in the first place.

The one thing that I have learnt over the last ten years is not to blame myself for what happened.

The other thing that I learnt over the last ten years is that our lives are so intricately. There’s a collective delusion in North America that everyone is their own person and that everyone is responsible for their own destiny. That I can promise you is the furthest thing from the truth.

Persons involved with the Government of British North America and later Canada, as well as members of the various Catholic organizations decided how to deal with the Indians. This of course had massive repercussions for the paternal side of my family.

Members of the Canadian Armed Forces from NDHQ in Ottawa, ON, to Western Command in Winnipeg, MB, as well as the local chain of command on Canadian Forces Base Namao decide that the best way to protect the image of the Canadian Armed Forces was to sweep the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal under the rug.

In 2011 members of the Canadian Armed Forces all the way from NDHQ in Ottawa, through the Provost Marshal in Ottawa to the CFNIS Western Command at Edmonton Garrison were fully aware of the connection between the person I accused of molesting my brother and I, and Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae, but the decision was made to gaslight me and try to convince me that there was no way that P.S. could have ever possibly sexually abused me.

As you can see, there are many people, people whom I’ve never seen in my life, people that I’ve never met, that have made decisions that have had drastic effects on my life. I guess the “one man army” appeals to a lot of people because they don’t like the idea that they are not in control of their lives.

The truth is none of us are truly in control of our lives. Our lives are so interdependent on others.

My father was a grade 8 drop out who had a successful career in the Canadian Armed Forces. He went to school in a single room school house in Fort McMurray where science class was probably spent learning the boiling and freezing temperatures of water and music class consisted of signing “God Save the Queen”. So my educational career was determined for better or worse by my father.

Where could my life have gone if my father had encouraged my academic adventures?

The Canadian Armed Forces chain of command in 1980 decided that they needed to limit the fallout from the Captain Father Angus McRae child sex scandal and evoked the “protection of public morals” to hide the court martial and the evidence “in-camera”. How would my life have ended up had I been acknowledged to be a victim of Captain McRae and of P.S. and that I wasn’t responsible for P.S. molesting my younger brother?

Captain Totzke didn’t work on his own. His agenda with me would have been set by the Canadian Forces. What would my gender identity and sexual orientation be like today if Captain Totzke’s mission back then hadn’t been to convince me that I was sexually abused because I had exhibited signs of homosexuality?

If the decision wasn’t made to get my family out of Alberta before I was placed into foster care, what would my life have been like today? Again, another decision made by people who were working against people who were trying to help me.

So many people made decisions about my life, and they made these decisions without any concern for the consequences of their decisions.

And the reality is, there are a lot of people that make decisions on a daily basis that affect the lives of others.

Yes, people can make decisions that affect their own lives, but these usually work in conjunction with the decisions that others had made.

Better watch where you stick your nose.

You might not like what you find.

As a kid, my father Richard would often tell me that I needed to be really careful with the questions that I asked suggesting that I wasn’t going to like the answers that I was going to discover.

Even when I had my series of telephone calls with Richard back in 2006 he suggested that I forget about the babysitter from CFB Namao and just “move the fuck on” and quit worrying about the past. The past was the past and there was no changing it.

At the time I didn’t understand what he meant. Well, I kinda understood what he meant, I made the babysitter molest my younger brother, and therefore I was just trying to blame the babysitter for something that I was ultimately responsible for.

None the less, I had to go and kick the hornet’s nest in 2011.

Do I regret kicking the hornet’s nest.

No. Not one bit.

As soul crushing as this has been, I’ve learnt that I was a victim, just as my brother was. I didn’t make the babysitter molest my brother. If anyone was responsible for my brother being molested it was ultimately Captain Father Angus McRae and the Canadian Forces chain of command that was responsible for transferring Captain McRae to CFB Namao even though they knew he was having issues.

So, in a way I’m happy to know the truth.

But the truth also kills me.

Knowing the truth has shattered some very longstanding illusions that I grew up believing. These were illusions that formed my life.

Now, let’s be very clear, it’s not knowing the truth that makes me want to seek M.A.i.D. in 2023. It’s all of the mental health issues surrounding my untreated major depression and my severe anxiety that were known about and left untreated between 1980 and 2011. It’s all of the memories of the sexual abuse of not only me, but of my brother, and of the other kids that P.S. would abuse and the manner in which he would abuse them.

Yes, learning the truth has been a very painful journey. But it also has been very liberating at the same time too.

Some of the truths that I now know that I didn’t prior to 2011 are:

Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae confessed in 1980 during an ecclesiastical trial to having had sexual relationships with young boys for years prior to his arrest and court martial in 1980.
The Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were both aware of the fact that P.S. was sexually abusing children on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
The Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit were both aware that Captain McRae had been bringing children to the rectory at the base chapel and that Captain McRae was giving these children alcohol and then “fooling around” with them.
That P.S. was molesting children was of no doubt as Captain McRae’s defence counsel was trying to discredit the testimony of P.S. by bringing up the fact that P.S. himself had been molesting young children on the base, in many cases performing anal intercourse on children under 10.
Prior to 1998 there existed two flaws in the National Defence Act which meant that even if I had come forward prior to 1998 with complaints against P.S. and Captain McRae that Captain McRae could never be charged for any crime he committed against a child which occurred on a defence establishment while he was subject to the code of service discipline.
Even though the Canadian Forces were prohibited from holding a service tribunal for the crimes of Murder, Manslaughter, and Rape from 1950 until 1985 and Murder, Manslaughter, and Sexual Assault from 1985 to 1998, they could oddly enough hold a service tribunal for sexual crimes committed against children.
My father was known to be a liar who would frequently change his stories.
My father was known to tell people he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear.
My father had issues with his role as a parent and showed very little in the way of responsibility towards his own family.
It was known since 1980 that I was a severely mentally ill child in need of help, but Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke for some reason didn’t ever seem to follow through with the recommendations that I receive help.
I was actually in the foster care system and it appears that Captain Totzke assisted my father with obtaining a posting out of the jurisdiction of Alberta so that Alberta Social Services couldn’t apprehend me and place me into care.
My mother hadn’t abandoned the family. Flaws in the National Defence Act and the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations meant that spouses and children were defect “visitors” on base that were only there at the pleasure of the serving member.

I can only wonder what my father truly knew about the events on CFB Namao from 1978 until 1980. Events he knew of but pretended that didn’t happen.

How could my father “forget” in 2011 that he was rarely home from 1978 until 1980 and that he had brought his own mother into the PMQ on CFB Namao to raise my brother and I. This seems like quite the omission does it not? It’s not like grandma popped in for a weekend or two and babysat my brother or I once or twice in the two years we lived on CFB Namao. She moved into the PMQ on the same day we moved in. She moved with us from CFB Namao to CFB Griesbach in October of 1980. Her husband Andy Anderson didn’t die until 1983.

My brother suggests that maybe the CFNIS leaned on Richard to get Richard to say what the CFNIS wanted him to say. I have a different thought. I remember when Richard was dating Vicki, he kept asking my brother and I if we would like to live in Wetaskiwin and he would get a job working as a mechanic locally. There were times when Richard was home for visit before he and Sue moved into the PMQ in August of 1980. We’d go for drives around the base and he always seemed to be certain that he was going to be out of the military and that he’d have to get a civilian job.

I think that in 1980 Richard sold my brother and I down the river in trade for what ever deal the Canadian Armed Forces was offering to service members if they would keep their mouths shut about what happened on CFB Namao. This would explain why I had to be blamed for my brother being sexually abused as well as me “liking the abuse” because it went on for so long which proved that I was a “homosexual”. We couldn’t pretend like nothing happened. Something happened, and alternative realities had to be created in order to get everyone to shut up about things.

When Richard was interviewed in 2011 he forget that grandma lived with us and he completely forget about P.S. even though he named P.S. on his on in 2006. Why? I think it would have killed Richard if what he had done in 1980 became known. What did Richard do in 1980? We will never know. He died in 2017 and he took his horrific secret to the grave with him. Was it the promise of some good promotions? He was a master corporal in 1980. He became a warrant officer around 1989. He had a problem with drinking and his anger. Did the Canadian Forces promise him that there would be no disciplinary actions taken against him for pending matters or that his previous history would be over looked at promotion time?

As I said, he’s dead and we’ll never know the truth about 1980 even though the military police the CFSIU, and the chain of command knew full well what both Captain McRae and P.S. were doing.

So yeah, I guess that in the end Richard was right.

I stuck my nose into the business of the Canadian Armed Forces and I smelt some rather rancid shit and this stench doesn’t wash out no matter how much detergent you use.

Wetting the bed……

I honestly can’t remember when I started wetting the bed. It was definitely in the aftermath of the sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

I can’t see me having wet the bed too frequently when grandma was living with us.

But it did start towards the end of our stay on Canadian Forces Base Namao.

By the time I was living on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach I was frequently wetting the bed. So much so that I even had plastic sheets on my bed.

Now, this period of time was right after the sexual abuse on CFB Namao and it was also when my father’s anger with me was beginning to peak because I allowed the babysitter to molest my younger brother and I had fucked with Richard’s military career. Not bad for a 9 year old, eh?

Actually, I’m pretty sure that I wet the bed one time when Richard had taken my brother and I to spend the night at Sue’s apartment by Londonderry Mall in Edmonton before she moved into our PMQ in August of 1980, so I would have been wetting the bed sometime after the summer of 1979.

So yeah, this would have been around when I was at and the abuse was starting to get bad.

They tried diapers on me. Didn’t work, couldn’t get adolescent sized diapers I guess.

Richard was supposedly looking at a device that would give me a mild electric shock when it had detected that I had wet the bed.

Sue had gotten so fed up with my wetting the bed that she rubbed my face in my own urine soaked sheets.

Initially when I started wetting the bed I’d get a fresh change of sheets and some new pyjamas. But as my bed wetting wore on I’d have to sleep on the same sheets. As there were no more pyjama changes, I started sleeping naked.

I still remember waking up in the middle of the night or the early morning with my sheets soaking wet and cold and smelling like pee. I remember learning to sleep around the wetness.

When I was allowed to take showers, no one at school would notice that I had slept in my own urine. But when it was determined that the best way to get me to stop pissing the bed was to make me go to school without a shower that when things started to get really bad at school. Who the fuck in their right mind wants to be anywhere near a kid that smell like piss?

And kids at that age can be very vocal in their opinions of someone who smells like a rancid onion.

So no, not changing my sheets, nor not allowing me to shower, nor any of the other humiliation techniques were successful in getting me to stop wetting my bed.

I did eventually stop pissing my bed.

I was 16 when I stopped.

I had found a room to rent locally and I moved out of Richard’s house.

That would have been around January or February of 1988.

I was terrified that first night that I lived “on my own”.

Know what?

My bed sheets have been dry ever since.

As a kid my beds were always the cheap disposable foam mattress type of beds. Not too long ago, actually earlier this year, I bought my first real bed. It has a frame and a box and a mattress that’s almost 8 inches thick. The box that the mattress lays upon has a solid flat surface. And there’s a head board. And real pillows. Why didn’t I buy a real bed before? I don’t know, I really don’t. Foam mattresses with cheap boxes were always what I had. Maybe that’s what I always thought that I deserved. Maybe I was also afraid that I’d just ruin a new bed by pissing on it.

To say that I was terrified of Richard would have been a grave understatement.

Did the sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao play a role. Certainly, of that there is no doubt.

With Richard being unable to take responsibility for his family, and with Richard needing to blame others for the problems with his family, it wouldn’t be too far out of line to say that the anger, disdain, and ridicule that Richard directed towards me for having allowed the babysitter to touch my younger brother as well as for me having “fucked with” Richard’s military career was taking an emotional and psychological toll on my young and developing brain.

Am I embarrassed to share this? No, not in the slightest. I’ve gone so far beyond the point of being ashamed that I no longer care.

Anxiety

The evil twin of major depression

I’ve suffered from severe anxiety since at least 1980.

I have no doubt that my anxiety comes from my mother’s side of the family. My hospital records make note that she was extremely anxious at times and was close to a nervous breakdown after the death of her father.

Just as my father’s genes have predisposed me to suffering from depression and that the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao triggered and amplified that depression into full blown major depression I have no doubt that my mother’s genes predisposed me to anxiety and the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao triggered and amplified this into full blown anxiety.

Just as when I’d have a depressive episode when I was a kid, my anxiety attacks were seen by my father as being nothing more than a childish attempt for e to gain attention. For much of my life I internalized my anxiety attacks and my depressive crashes.

Not having friends and not having close associates means that I was able to hide a lot of these episodes. When you don’t hang out with people and when people don’t visit it’s so very easy to hide your issues and to slip through the cracks.

I’m not sure which ones were worse. The anxiety attacks or the depressions.

Some of my anxiety attacks have been brutal. They typically last for about 45 minutes to an hour. And they start of suddenly out of nowhere. I can be riding my bicycle, I can be riding my motorcycle, I can be walking, I can be watching a movie, I can even be at work when suddenly I’m overtaken with a general fear of dread. Then my heart rate will start to increase. And my heart starts to pound harder. Or at least it feels like my pulse rate is increasing. I’ve checked my pulse during an anxiety attack and my heart rate only goes up a little bit. It’s just the adrenaline amplifies everything. I get tunnel vision. And my fight or flight response takes over and I have to flee where I am.

It feels like death is upon me. I know that sounds like something that I would be happy about, but not like this.

When I have an anxiety attack I usually have to get out of any building that I am in. It feels like the walls are squeezing in on me. In my apartment that means that I have to go down the stairs. All 16 flights.

Once I get outside I just head for the widest open space I can find…….

But even outside it just feels like the sky is about to collapse on me.

5 things I can see
4 things I can touch
3 things I can hear
2 things I can smell
1 thing I can taste.

This is called “grounding” and for the most part it seems to work even though some of my more recent anxiety attacks seem immune to the grounding.

The taste one is the difficult one, I usually end up skipping that.

And just as suddenly as the anxiety attack comes, the attack goes away often leaving me completely exhausted.

Not all of my anxiety attacks happen when I’m awake. I’ve woken up with such horrific anxiety attacks. It feels like I can’t breath or it feels like my heart has stopped.

One of my most recent sleep attacks ended up with me grinding my teeth so hard that I cracked a molar and had to have it removed. My dentist was pushing me to get an implant to replace the molar. I don’t see the need to. From here on if and when I crack teeth I’m just going to have them removed. I have an appointment coming up in a couple of weeks. My dentist wants to apply filling material to the insides of my canine teeth as they’re heavily worn from grinding. If the filling material doesn’t work I’ll have the canines removed preemptively to keep from cracking them.

How long has my anxiety been going on.

When my father was stationed at Canadian Forces Base Downsview I lived in the basement of the PMQ. My bedroom used to be upstairs, but sometime in early 1986 my bedroom got moved to the basement to make way for my step brother who had been born in August of 1985. Richard would often come over to my bed and wake me up because I was making so much noise grinding my teeth. Richard had a work area in the basement across from my bedroom. Due to housing regulations on base my bedroom wasn’t allowed to have a door because military rules said that no one was allowed to sleep in the basement for fire reasons. Richard had a problem with insomnia. Which no doubt went hand in hand with his depression. Richard would often go to bed around 10 or 11 at night. He’d be awake again by 2 in the morning. He’d come downstairs to the basement to watch TV and have some cigarettes. And if he heard me grinding, he’d wake me up.

But not once did he ever take me in to get me counselling or any other help. And this is even more upsetting now that I know that as far back as 1980 I had been diagnosed as having major depression and severe anxiety.

Was Richard really this fucking stupid?

Did I suffer my entire life because Richard was just too fucking stupid to see that his son needed help?

When I read my foster care records in August of 2011 I cried.

I could have been normal, or at least a lot more normal than I am now.

Maybe I’d have teeth.

Maybe, maybe, maybe…… so many fucking maybes.

I can only dream about what could have been because I sure as hell wasn’t allowed to have what should have been.

So yeah, much like my depression, my anxiety has been a constant companion of mine.

I wonder what life would have been like if I had known that there were medications that could have treated this.

That may sound funny, but it isn’t. See, when I was a kid living under Richard’s roof my depression was just an attempt to be the centre of attention. My anxiety was just because I worried too much.

Maybe it was the military environment. I know that back in the day mental illness was a sign of weakness. Mental illness indicated that you couldn’t get your shit together.

All I know is that I’m 50 years old now and my depression and my anxiety and my fight with the Canadian Armed Forces have worn me right down to nothing.

Yes, the escitalopram has helped, but I can hear and feel my depression and anxiety demons clawing at their cage waiting to be freed when my body builds up a tolerance to the increased serotonin levels. And I’ve been told that when my anxiety and depression come crashing out of their jail things will be worse than they were before.

what does it feel like?

One of the hardest things for me to describe is depression.

I’ve been living with depression for so long now that I really don’t remember having existed any other way.

Depression is a fairly debilitating mental illness.

I don’t think that I’ve ever been truly and honestly happy for so very long now that I’ve forgotten what happy feels like.

I’ve had days in which I am so mind crushingly numb that I feel so absolutely sick.

Depression is where you can’t accept praise from people because you “know” that they’re just saying nice things to keep you from being “sad”.

Prolonged depression can cause long term changes in the brain’s wiring and the brain’s chemistry.

As a kid I used to have so much trouble getting out of bed. It’s not that I stayed up late as a kid. It’s just the the depression had such a stranglehold on me that I wanted to stay in bed and die.

I wanted to die so badly as a kid.

Contrary to public belief, depression isn’t something that one can wish away simply by smiling or thinking happy thoughts.

My depression came from two places. I’m fairly certain that I inherited depression from the paternal side of my family. And you can’t go through what I’ve gone through in life and not be somewhat depressed.

Depression as a child is just a negative feed back loop of epic proportions. When you’re depressed as a child you don’t want to hang around with other kids. When you don’t hang around with other kids, you become marked as “odd”. Kids love teasing and antagonizing “odd” misfits.

As my grade 5 teacher said. I had become the class scapegoat and everything that went wrong the other kids blamed on me.

With Captain Totzke and my father blaming me for what had occurred on CFB Namao it just drove me into such a deep fucking depression that I never surfaced again.

Is there a fix for my depression? I honestly don’t believe so. It’s been eating away at the inside of my brain for so long. And that’s not being melodramatic. That’s the truth.

Yes, I responded pretty quick and dramatically to the escitalopram, but the escitalopram hasn’t stopped the depression. It’s just raised the floor to which I can crash down to.

The depression has stolen everything from my life.

What would I have been like if I could have found a partner earlier in life?

What would I have been like if I cold have determined what my orientation was earlier in life.

What would I have accomplished in life had depression not filled my head with so much self doubt, so much self loathing, and so much self hatred?

At work I just finished a project for trending and logging the temperatures of sixteen medical fridges and freezers. I used general refrigeration components to do this. Some Dixell Universal controllers for doing the actual monitoring, TTL to RS-485 converters to allow the Dixell Universal Controllers to communicate on a MS/TP network, NIST Certified temperature probes for measuring the temperatures, and a web server to act as the front end to allow anyone anywhere on the Vancouver Coastal Health network to log in and see the temperatures, read the logs, and generate reports.

Then there’s working with IMIT to establish an active Ethernet port, get the web server a static IP address, give IMIT the MAC address of the web server to allow it onto the hospital network, have messaging allow the web server to use the MSTP server to send emails for alarms and reports.

Dixell Fridge Monitoring Project
I shouldn’t get in trouble for this video – no personal information visible…..

When this project is completed the pharmacy department will also be able to monitor the fridges at Mt. St. Joseph hospital. This will be done using a Ethernet to ModBUS converter that will allow the web server to communicate via the Vancouver Coastal Intranet with a pair of Dixell Universal Controllers at Mt. St. Joe’s.

After this, pharmacy would like to expand this through the tower to pick up all of the ward fridges.

Am I proud of this?

Nope.

I feel like an idiot even talking about this because if an idiot like me can do this, then anyone else could have done it, right? My old man always said that I was just showing off by doing stupid things.

And that’s what depression does. It steals everything fucking thing from your life.

I know that I did a good job on this. But the depression monster keeps yelling at me that anyone could have done this, that I’m not smart, that this was nothing special.

And of course once those thoughts start, then everything else starts.

I’ve aborted so many projects in the past because my depression monster knew that I was too fucking stupid to see through to completion.

Even talking about this make me feel like a stupid attention seeking crybaby.

That’s how this shit works.

I don’t make the rules.

I try not to play by the stupid rules of depression.

But I’m also not able to fight them.

Many a braver man than me has lost their battle with depression.

Why don’t you talk to the media?

Or how people assume that the media runs with everything presented to it.

Just recently a Twitter user that stumbled across my opinion of Medial Assistance in Dying suggested that I contact the media. The media will grab this story lickity-split!

In the over ten years that I’ve been dealing with this matter I’ve gone to the media numerous times.

A non-comprehensive list of who I’ve talked to:

CBC National
CBC Go Public
CBC The Fifth Estate
CBC The Passionate Eye
CTV W5
Global 16X9
Global National
Maclean’s
Esprit De Corps
L’ Actualite
The Edmonton Journal
The Vancouver Sun
The Toronto Star
The Ottawa Citizen
Canada Press
Paula Simmons
Jennifer Tryon
Claude Adams
Anne Marie Owens
Rachel Ward
Jenn Blair
Frédéric Zalac (As a member of the ICIJ and as a CBC reporter)
Maya Hamovitch with CTV W5
Avery Haines
Noémi Mercier
Alec Castonguay
Aedan Helmer
Justin Ling
And many, many, many more.
The only two reporters that even touched on my story have been David Pugliese and Nora Loreto

Even after the news story broke about my class action lawsuit against the Government of Canada and the Canadian Armed Forces the media showed very little interest in me.

The most significant reason why the media refuses to run this story is the sheer amount of media consolidation in this country. At one time the newspapers in this country competed with each other and fought for subscribers. Now the major newspapers are all owned by the same companies. It’s an oligopoly really.

The second most significant reason is the lack of investigative journalism, there really aren’t any investigative journalists anymore. The newsrooms have been cut to the bare bone. This is one reason why “press releases” are run almost 100% verbatim.

Another reason that can’t be overlooked is the sheer ignorance by those in the media towards how the Canadian Forces actually operate. Far too many members of the Canadian Media believe that military soldiers would KILL anyone that messed with a child. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Too many members of the Canadian Media grew up watching “Major Dad” on TV and think that this show illustrated the real life of a military family.

Most news reporters have absolutely no idea that children lived on military bases.

Most news reporters have absolutely no idea that military bases were self contained “company towns” where rank held sway and where the private police forces (both the military police and the CFSIU) prior to 1998 were under direct command of the leaders on base. To amplify the issues of the “company town” were certain sections of the National Defence Act that ensured that residents of the “company town” were legally required to obey the wishes and directives of their superiors least they face a lifetime prison sentence.

Most news reporters believe that military police officers and CFNIS Investigators are “real police” and not simply soldiers first and police officers second. Even nowadays the CFNIS, which are often trumpeted as being “independent” of the chain of command are actually under the direct command of the Vice Chief of Defence Staff. As the Military Police Complaints Commission has indicated, due to the Chain of Command structure within the Provost Marshal and the Military Police Group, investigators with the CFNIS may not even be aware of Chain of Command decisions that ultimately interfere with their investigation.

A poor understanding of the National Defence Act and the Criminal Code of Canada also contributes to the media being totally unwilling to get involved in a story like mine.

Flaws in the National Defence Act such as the 3-year-time-bar-flaw or the summary-investigation-flaw are such foreign concepts to most members of the media that they laugh at me when I suggest that the 3-year-time-bar alone prevents the investigation or charging of anyone who committed a service offence prior to 1998. A sixty year old man could in theory bring charges against his school teacher from back in the 1970s so long as the school teacher was still alive. A former military dependent who was sexually abused be a member of the Canadian Armed Forces in 1996 would NOT be able to bring charges against their abuser due to the 3-year-time-bar on all service offences.

Members of the media seem to think that Service Offences are only limited to “military type” offences. Service Offences also include all Criminal Code of Canada offences. Yes, the military couldn’t try for the crimes of “Murder, Manslaughter, and Rape” from 1950 until 1985. But under the pre-1985 Criminal Code, Gross Indecency, Indecent Assault, Buggery, Incest, Sexual Intercourse with female under the age of 14, Sexual Intercourse with female between 14 and 16, Sexual intercourse with Step-Daughter, or even Incest were not “Rape” and therefore the military had jurisdiction to try for these offences.

The media wants more victims. I don’t run a victim tracking service. And with the other kids from the different bases moving around as often as I did it’s a miracle that anyone remembers anyone else from childhood. By the time I was 12 years old I lived in 7 different PMQs on 5 difference bases in 4 different provinces. Military dependents were not tracked by DND or the CF. When we turned 18 and aged off the base we were very quickly forgotten about by the military.

The media wants quick and easy stories. Stories where everything fits together in one nice little package. This will not be one of those stories.

Martin Kruze was a victim of a child sex abuse ring at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, ON during the 1980s. Martin tried to get the police to listen to him, they wouldn’t. The police as it turned out were big fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs and couldn’t see past their own adulation of a professional NHL hockey team to understand that very bad things were happening in Harold’s house. It wasn’t until the Toronto Police Service assigned a pair of women to the investigation that things started going the right way for Martin. I guess the female officers weren’t so tied up in sports hero worship like their male counterparts were.

Martin tried to get the media to listen, the media wouldn’t listen. Gordon Stuckless was eventually sentenced to prison. But Martin would go on to commit suicide.

I can’t help but wonder what drove Martin that far. Was it the abuse? Was it the fact that no one believed him, even though Gordon Stuckless would go on to be convicted of molesting numerous boys. I’m going to go with the fact that no one believed him or listened to him

So far in my life I have endured:

Sexual abuse at the hands of a teenage male.
Sexual abuse at the hands of a military officer.
Sexual abuse at the hands of a retired member of the Canadian Forces.
Counselling at the hands of a military social worker designed to convince me that I was mentally ill because I “enjoyed” being sexually abused.
Counselling at the hands of a military social worker designed to convince me that I was responsible for my younger brother being molested.
The rage of my father who no doubt was placing special emphasis on what the military social worker was telling him due to the rank of the military social worker
The long term effects of untreated major depression and severe anxiety as the Canadian Forces could not risk me being cared for in the civilian system.

And many, many more issues.

Now, to be certain, I am not seeking M.A.i.D. solely because no one in the media believes me. But let’s be honest, being ignored by the media, and I mean the entire Canadian media, sure does help with making that final decision.

How many other former military dependents from the multitude of bases have committed suicide over the years because the Canadian Forces swept them under the rug and no one listened to them?

A person can only be tired and worn out for so long before forever sleep becomes irresistible.

National Coming Out Day ?

Really?

Well, looks like I missed out on yet another queer friendly event.

National Coming Out Day………. you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t get too excited about this. The boot print is still fresh on my ass from when I got swiftly kicked into the closet when I was 9.

After all these years I still don’t know if I really deserved to be kicked into that closet, but c’est la vie as they say. Decisions were made and my father went along with them willingly or otherwise.

In life everyone expects a person to fit into a predefined package. If you’re a male and you’re not into women, then you must be gay, eh? If you’re bi, you’re really just an undecided gay. If you don’t like sex with other people then you’re just a sick fucking freak.

Have I ever been to a Pride Parade? Honestly I think I’ve only gone to the Pride Parade or the pride festival four or five times in the 24 years that I’ve lived in the West End.

I’ve never really felt welcome or wanted at these types of events. I’m not a party animal nor am I a drinker. And it really doesn’t help that I don’t really identify as gay, straight, bi, or anything else.

Yeah I’ve had sex with a couple of females in my life, and yeah I’ve had sex with a few more males in my life. And no, that’s not including P.S., Captain McRae, the man in the sauna, Earl Ray Stevens, Al M. or a few others that I probably won’t be able to name because I forgot their names but not their actions.

I don’t really like being “intimate” with people. Is that my depression, my anxiety, or just my general confusion, or the fact that from 7 to 16 I was always someone’s sex toy?

Had captain Totzke not drilled it into my head when I was young that I was exhibiting a mental illness called “homosexuality” would I have been straight, or in the alternative would I have grown up to be a happy and well adjusted homosexual male?

If I hadn’t been abused on CFB Namao, would I be as conflicted about sex as I am? Sex to me is repulsive, sickening, and something that you provide when someone wants something.

I wear dresses not because I identify as female. I wear dresses because I don’t identify as male. And as such I see no reason as to why I can’t wear dresses. They’re far more comfortable than pants, pants suck, dresses rock.

Yet, if I went looking for a new job tomorrow and I went in to the interview wearing one of my many dresses I can promise you that there’s a high probability that I would not be hired.

I had a departmental manager not too long ago refuse to allow me to wear shorts to work when I was working on the roof in +25C temps. His reasoning was that shorts were simply a wedge issue and that if he allowed me to wear shorts then I’d want to wear dresses.

I had another manager years ago at a previous employer who always used to call me “Freddie” as in Freddie Mercury. If I got sick he’d always ask me if I came down with AIDs. He used to threaten to “out me” to the Board of Directors.

When I got mugged in 1995, the investigating VPD officer was adamant that I was a homosexual prostitute.

Is there something about me that makes others think I’m gay or queer?

I know as a kid I used to cut off my eyelashes thinking that was the problem.

If frequently wondered if the reason I got sexually abused so many times as a kid was maybe I was a homosexual like Terry said that I was. Maybe my abusers detected something about me and thought that I would enjoy with their wishes.

So I dunno, Pride, Coming Out Day, they really don’t mean anything to me ’cause I have absolutely no idea of what I am.

I just am and I just exist.

And that’s it.

World Mental Health Day.

You gotta be shitting me.

Well, who knew. But apparently October 10th is “World Mental Health Day”.

Justin, like most politicians, can speak out of both sides of his mouth.

What’s funny about Justin proclaiming “World Mental Health Day” is that his Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan, has been going out of his way to hide any historical event that would have damaged the mental health of children living on the Canadian Forces bases in Canada.

I don’t think that my mental health has ever been decent in any sense.

It’s always been so hard to try be “normal” while knowing that there was something horrifically wrong. You have to remember that from October of 1980 until August of 2011 I had absolutely no idea of the mental health issues that I had been flagged with. Everything had been hidden from me by my own father. Instead of getting me the help I needed, he drilled it into my head that I was just an immature cry-baby looking for attention.

As far as I was concerned, everything that was going wrong in my life was because I was a fuck-up.

I had no idea why I couldn’t make friends.

I had no idea why no one really liked me.

I had no idea why I always seemed to be on the receiving end of everyone’s derision.

After all, if there was something wrong with me, if I had been diagnosed as having issues, Richard would have done something, right?

Now, the laughable thing about World Mental Health day is that it is almost Im-fucking-possible to get help with mental health.

And believe me, I’ve tried.

But I think that even mental health “professionals” realize that there really is no way to actually fix mental health. Sure, you can medicate mental health issues, but you can’t fix them. You can teach a person with mental health issues how to deal with their problems, but that’s still not fixing the issues.

No, fixing mental health problems in the typical sense simply means teaching the person with the mental health issues how to keep their problems to themselves and how to internalize their problems so as to not cause others discomfort.

Tell me, how do you think the damage that Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke did to my brain from age 9 until age 11 can be undone? Just not thinking about it isn’t the correct answer. Nor does adopting the mantra “sometimes bad things happen to good people and if we just smile everything will be fine”.

How does one undo the sexual abuse that one suffered from the fall of 1978 until the spring of 1980 when they were 7 to 8 years old? Especially sexual abuse at the hands of a military officer and his 14 year old altar boy that often involved alcohol and physical and psychological abuse.

How does one undo the years of neglect and abuse at the hands of his own father who was found to be unable and unwilling to take responsibility for his own family, often blamed others for problems with his family, expected others to solve the problems with his family, changed his stories frequently, and told people what he thought they wanted to hear.

You can’t undo this type of damage.

I spent my entire youth being blamed by my father for having allowed the babysitter, P.S., to touch my younger brother.

In 2011 I was told by a case manager with the CFNIS that my complaint against P.S. was not credible. At the end of the investigation in 2011 I was told that the CFNIS could not find anything to indicate that P.S. was capable of the crimes I had accused him of.

During the 2011 CFNIS investigation it was suggested that I was a “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military” and that I was only making my complaint against P.S. to get some easy money.

The Minister of National Defence, Harjit Sajjan accused me of playing games and of playing an angle when I asked him for help in my matter.

In 2020 the Military Police Complaints Commission released their report into their review of my complaint against the CFNIS. The MPCC came to the conclusion that the Military Police in 1980 were well aware of the actions of P.S. involving young children on Canadian Forces Base Namao, that it was P.S.’s involvement with molesting these young children that brought Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae to the attention of the military police, and that Captain McRae’s defence counsel tried using P.S.’s molestation of younger children to discredit his testimony against Captain McRae. The Military Police Complaints Commission stated that the CFNIS was in possession of these court martial records during the period of time that the CFNIS was investigating my complaint against P.S.

I get told that I should simply move on. That P.S. was the true victim in this matter, suggesting that I’m just some sort of whiny cry baby who just wants to shift the blame to P.S..

So again, please humour me on World Mental Health Day. Tell me what exactly it is that I have to do in order to make you happy and how I can keep my mental health issues from making you uncomfortable.

If you let me know, I’ll try my best to keep the damage internalized.