In this video I talk interests.
I’ve had interests in life. But they were always the wrong interests and I had these interests for all of the wrong reasons.
I wish that things in life had been different when I was a kid.
But they weren’t, so I can only live in the shadows of the aftermath and the destruction.
So, sold off my 2020 Macbook Pro 13 today.
I think he was a college student, but needed a computer, so I gave him the Macbook for a good deal.
He seemed happy.
Now that everything is in a wind down phase I really don’t need to keep much anymore.
Time to start shedding all of my physical possessions.
The only real purpose that any of my computers served was for me to search for information, make FOI requests, and store and sort information.
But now that we are officially in the year 2024, none of this stuff matters anymore.
I have an iPad Pro 10″ that I’ll be getting rid of next.
So far I’ve gotten rid of anything that I had in relation to electronics.
Got rid of my soldering and desoldering stations, my parts bins, cross reference guides, etc. As I said before, electronics wasn’t something that I was really interested in, but I persisted in it thinking that one day a spark would light inside. That spark never came.
Same thing with computers. I just never had the creativity to create write programs.
Same thing with motorcycles. I’d ride them for a while and then get bored.
I donated all of my hand tools and power tools to a local shop that loans tools out for next to nothing to low income families that need to use tools.
Got rid of my Play Station.
There were only a very few games that I liked to play.
Didn’t want to go through the hassle of selling it so pulled the hard drive from it and put the play station in the computer recycling cage at work.
Got rid of my CD collection last fall.
Got rid of my movie collection at the same time.
Now, don’t think I don’t have anything left.
Still have my iPad, and I still have my desktop.
But there will come a time when I will get rid of the desktop and my drives of data.
I won’t have much use for any of the information that I’ve compiled over the last twelve years.
Disposing of the desktop and the drives will probably be done later in the year.
I’ve already disposed of reams and reams of hard copies. We have a shredding service at work that shreds all documents that are put into recycling.
I would have thought that the media would have shown the slightest interest, but it looks like consolidation and foreign ownership have turned Canadian media into nothing more than stenographer services for the institutions with secrets to hide..
I’ve eliminated a lot of my dresses. That still leaves me with a lot of dresses.
I’ll probably start whittling down the number of dresses that I have until the final weeks.
Then I’ll probably hold on to a good pair of heels and a few dresses.
Haven’t decided which dress and which heels I wanna wear at my procedure, maybe I don’t even yet own the dress that I want to wear.
I want a real intense ruffle dress. Maybe something with a robust petticoat.
I make my application in March of this year.
I have absolutely no doubt that time will fly past really fucking quick from this point onwards.
But, I’m already enjoying the peace and serenity that my approaching death offers.
The one thing that I’ll have to wait for until I obtain my approval from the two assessors is at which funeral home will I undergo my procedure and cremation.
What does death actually feel like?
I know that this sounds like a morbid question, but I have a curiosity.
I imagine that as long as violence isn’t involved, and the death isn’t due to slow external or internal bleeding, that death should come on nice and peacefully.
I’ve had two incidents of syncope with elevated troponin levels in the last few years.
The dropping to the floor didn’t hurt.
The being unconscious didn’t feel like anything.
It didn’t hurt.
It wasn’t scary.
It was peaceful.
And then I came to.
Both times I was actually disappointed that I came back.
I can only hope that the dying process is as peaceful as the death.
I know that in the weeks, days, hours, and minutes leading up to my death that I will be anxious as hell.
I know that it’s going to be nerve racking climbing into my death bed.
And I know that it’s going to really be anxiety inducing feeling the midazolam starting to flow into my veins, knowing that I will soon come to the point of no return.
But, all I have to do is remember what depression feels like and what the memories of CFB Namao and CFB Griesbach do to me.
I really wish that there was some way that I could make you understand how being alive hurts.
The depression, the anxiety, the confusion, the numbness.
The memories of the neglect. The memories of the sexual abuse. The memories of the physical abuse. The memories of the mental abuse.
I never asked for any of this.
I never asked for life.
And I should have the right to say that enough is enough.
The opinions of the catholic church and other religious leaders should have no bearing on my request to end my life.
The point of my life is for me to enjoy my life, not to make you happy.
If I can’t enjoy my life, why should I be forced to endure this?
That’s one of the problems with being human.
I’m flawed.
But we’re all flawed.
We have two brains, our primitive brain and our prefrontal cortex.
The primitive brain looks after our basic reflexes and urges.
The prefrontal cortex looks after our higher functions, regulates the impulses of our primitive brain, and basically guides us on our daily struggles to be better than our fellow animals.
The prefrontal cortex as it turns out is very susceptible to stress and mental trauma. And when it becomes damaged it has an even harder time regulating our higher functions.
This is why frontal lobotomies were used to “cure” depression, anxiety, and other issues related to emotional wellbeing. A sharp instrument would be driven into the brain via one or both orbital sockets. The instrument would be moved back and forth, side to side, in order to sever the connection between the frontal cortex and the rest of the brain.
Yes, the procedure would often “cure” the ailments, but it would often leave the patient without the ability to feel any type of emotions, would leave patients apathetic and unmotivated. In worse cases the patient would become catatonic or even just die.
The prefrontal cortex is a relatively new feature in our primate brain. Our closest relatives, the Chimpanzee, which is a great ape, has a prefrontal cortex, but it is much smaller than the human prefrontal cortex.
Chimpanzees aren’t noted for committing suicide.
Humans do.
And quite frequently.
And with very imaginative techniques.
I think it’s just that the prefrontal cortex is too advanced for our primitive brain and it can’t deal with the human flesh and blood body that it is attached to.
When it becomes damaged due to trauma, neglect, or abuse, it is unable to cope properly anymore. It can’t properly regulate anxiety. It can’t properly regulate stress. And it can’t regulate depression.
Structures in the prefrontal cortex change. The prefrontal cortex then decides that dying and death are preferential to being alive.
And the prefrontal cortex makes this decision quite frequently.
It is estimated that around 700,000 people in the world commit suicide each year.
This of course doesn’t include suicide attempts. Nor does it include suicides that couldn’t definitely be proved to be a suicide. And of course sometimes the police / medical personal will avoid recording the death as a suicide to spare the family or loved ones of the deceased.
Who am I to say that the desire to die is wrong.
And is the desire to die really wrong?
Why do I have to live with the trauma that was gifted to me as a child?
Why do I have to live with the brain that was damaged due to neglect and psychological trauma?
Humans by nature, so I have learnt, are far from perfect.
Human brains are so delicate and so easily damaged.
I am far from perfect.
Trauma can destroy a brain.
I should know, mine is fucked.
Mine often feels like it is getting warm, and being crushed from within.
Brains, once traumatized, will never be the same.
No matter how hard you try, you’ll never forget how to ride a bicycle once you’ve learnt how to ride a bicycle.
No matter how hard you try, you’ll never forget how to skate on ice once you’ve skated on ice.
Once your brain has been traumatized you will never be the same.
There will be those that say “Well Bobbie, you’ll just have to try harder and just get over the past”.
Doesn’t work that way.
As I’ve said elsewhere, it wasn’t that people didn’t know about the abuse. People did know about the abuse. And the chose not to do anything about the abuse. And they chose to blame me for the abuse.
That fucked with me. That fucked with my brain.
And how your brain reacts to trauma is genetically set as well.
My mother had issues with anxiety to the point where she couldn’t care for me at times and I had to be taken in as a boarder at the hospital in Halifax.
My father had issues with depression to the point that he was returned to port by the Canadian Forces. Alcohol was his crutch. He was a happy drunk, and that’s why he drank. He only became a raging asshole when he was sober.
People commit suicide A LOT.
People will ALWAYS commit suicide.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 4500 people die by suicide each year. That’s over 12 per day.
America had about 48,000 suicides in 2021
There’s only so much trauma one person’s brain can endure.
The human brain is hardwired to survive.
The fact that the human brain can also devise ways to kill itself indicates that the brain can only take so much stress and damage before it says that enough is enough.
And society has to understand that.
The human brain is a mushy blob of fat with a billion or so neurones that pass around signals by way of electrical and chemical processes.
Forcing people to endure hell is not right.
I get people at work that try to be friendly to me and try to cheer me up all of the time. It’s so fucking annoying.
I like to work because it keeps my brain distracted from its desire to die.
But with depression and anxiety I only have so much energy to give.
Yes, I snap at people.
Yes, I get pissed off at people.
Yes, I find people who talk to much to be annoying to the point that my brain feels like its on fire.
Yes, I am extremely forgetful.
Yes, I cannot remember faces and I get really fucking annoyed when people equate my knack for building automation with being too smart to forget faces.
My brain is damaged.
And I am tired.
With all that I have been through in life, and all that I have suffered through on my own, death is not a punishment.
My death is not an indication of my failure.
My death will be my release.
People have an irrational fear of death.
Death does not hurt.
Death is painless.
Death is peaceful.
Dying is the scary part.
And with all that I’ve been through, I think I deserve to be able to end my life when I want to and to have assistance with ending my life quickly and painlessly.
Sure, there are those who will claim that I am being selfish, and childish, and immature, and unthankful, not considerate of others, and going against god’s will.
Here’s an interesting tidbit. In the next 100 years, over 7.5 Billion people are going to die. The current estimate to date is that over 100 Billion people have died since humans began to walk the face of the Earth.
That’s a lot of death.
And yet the Earth still orbits around the Sun, our solar system still floats amongst other solar systems in the milky way, the milky way is one of an estimated two trillion galaxies in the universe.
My death will have no effect on any of this.
So far as god goes, god is a creation of humans.
God or the multitude of other gods have served as a crutch for humanity to explain things that couldn’t be explained and to justify things that are beyond justification.
Humans have always had an irrational fear of death.
It’s one of the curses of our intelligence.
We know we exist.
We know we are alive.
We also know that we die.
The human brain knows what it is like to be alive.
The human brain has no idea of what it feels like to not exist.
The human brain cannot imagine being dead.
Decaying and rotting corpses look bad and they smell bad.
But you have nothing to fear as once your brain is dead your corpse is just a piece of meat that can no longer maintain itself.
So the human mind creates heavens, hells, Xanadus and Valhallas and a plethora of other places in the “after life”.
And it creates gods to rule over those places.
Gods serve as a source of creation to explain where we came from.
Gods also serve as a source of comfort to take the fear out of death.
But then people become afraid of angering the gods that they have created.
And so every life is sacred.
Life on Earth is a gift.
You are an evil and flawed person if you want to take your leave early.
You will anger god.
God will cast you into a void or a lake of fire.
So suicide and medical assistance in dying become bad, and wrong, and evil.
Forcing people to endure mental trauma and mental anguish to keep the god crutch happy becomes the norm.
No one was around in 1978 to 1980 to stop Captain McRae and his teenaged accomplice.
No one was around when I was in the care of the military social worker.
No one was around when I had to endure my father’s wrath for “fucking with his military career”.
So you know what, you don’t get a say in my death.
And you don’t get to shame me, or chastise me, or ridicule me for choosing death over life.
I didn’t ask to be born.
I didn’t ask for this life.
I didn’t ask for the sexual, physical, and mental abuse.
I didn’t ask for the mental and emotional neglect.
But what I am asking for is a peaceful death.
Is that really too much to ask for?
(( I will preface this post by stating that I am not speaking in an official capacity for my employer, Providence Health Care)))
If you’ve paid attention to the news over the last little while you’ll be familiar with the fact that St. Paul’s Hospital does not offer Medical Assistance in Dying on the premisses due to the fact that Providence Health Care is a Christian faith based organization.
Bobbie, you’re an atheist, how can you work there?
The same way all the other employees that follow different religions and faiths do.
Due to media attention that was generated over the transfer of end-of-life patients to other non-Catholic facilities to obtain their M.A.i.D. procedure, the Ministry of Health was being called upon to take action.
And action they did, they sat down with Providence and came to an agreement.
M.A.i.D. will still not be provided at St. Paul’s Hospital.
However, M.A.i.D. will be provided in a brand new facility being built directly adjacent to the hospital.
So far what I know is that the new building will not physically touch the Providence buildings, but will be close enough that a small walkway will connect the new facility to the Providence 2 building.
The new building will belong to and will be operated by Vancouver Coastal Health.
Patients at St. Paul’s who are requesting medical assistance in dying will be “transferred” from the care of St. Paul’s to the care of the VCH M.A.i.D. program.
I know more or less the exact location of this new building.
I know that it is supposed to be in full operation by the summer of 2024.
The oddly interesting thing about where this facility is going is that it is being connected to the Providence II building where the Providence IV building was supposed to connect. Due to the government in the ’80s and ’90s failing to provide the required funding, only half of the modern St. Paul’s Providence buildings were built.
Providence 1 was built, the funding fell through for Providence 2 so Providence 2 was built in two stages. Parking levels P2 to 1st floor. 2nd floor to 10th floor came a year or two later. However Providence 3 and Providence 4 were never built.
Will I obtain my M.A.i.D. procedure there?
Nope.
First, I believe that the M.A.i.D. facility will only be available for patients on site.
Second, this would terrorize my co-workers.
I once joked with the chief pathologist on site that I wanted my autopsy done on site……. the replied “Don’t even joke about that. I wouldn’t let my staff do an autopsy on someone they knew”.
With the exception of one electrician, no one at work knows what I’ve gone through and no one except for that same electrician knows that I wish to avail myself to M.A.i.D.
As I’ve said, I have two options.
One option is to arrange to donate my organs, in which case my procedure will occur in a hospital like Vancouver General where my corpse can be taken to an operating room immediately after my death so that my organs can be harvested.
The other option that I have, and this is the one that I am favouring, is to have my M.A.i.D. procedure take place in a funeral home.
This would be the easiest for me to set up. A one stop shop if you will.
Put to sleep
Store my corpse for the required 48 hours.
Cremate my corpse.
As of today it is 14 weeks and 5 days until I see my doctor to make my formal application for M.A.i.D.
I don’t seem my two assessments as being completed before anytime before June or July of 2024.
After that comes the 90 day cooling down period.
Then comes the prescription.
The prescription for M.A.i.D. is apparently valid for 1 year.
I don’t think I’d want to linger for the full year.
I’ll definitely want to take some time off work, not too long, maybe about 6 months.
And then I’d like to undergo my procedure.
In the meantime the new M.A.i.D. facility will be in operation.
Okay, so it’s been suggested to me to not publish anything at this moment that speaks directly to the class action or the subject of the class action as it has entered a critical phase.
I watched a movie yesterday on Netflix titled “The Luckiest Girl Alive”.
The film centres around an adult woman who is trying to make the perfect life for herself in order to hide her past.
Her past involves surviving a school shooting with allegations that she may have been involved with the shooting.
As the story progresses we learn that just prior to the school shooting she had been raped by three of the popular boys. During the shooting two of the boys are killed and one boy survives but is paralyzed.
At the time of the rape the girl was blamed for being assaulted with her own mother hinting that her own daughter was loose.
The school didn’t want anything to proceed legally.
And in the aftermath of the shooting, the paralyzed boy was looked upon with sympathy from the community and it appears that in order to scuttle any chance of the girl ever bringing rape charges against the boy and ruining his new found stardom, it was leaked to the community that she was implicated in the shooting.
In the end, everything unravels, as an adult she is able to get the paralyzed boy to confess to the fact the he did rape her.
This movie, along with “unbelievable” have a somewhat bittersweet taste for me.
Whereas the female characters in these two films receive their justice at the end of the film, there won’t be any such thing for me.
The babysitter will always be the innocent little angel.
I will forever be the homosexual pervert that allowed the babysitter to do what he did to myself and my brother.
When I talked with the babysitter’s father in 2015, he absolutely loved his son. He blamed himself for what his son had done.
My father threw me under the fucking train. No matter how bad my mental health issues were and no matter how bad the trauma had fucked me up, it was my fault.
Well, this doesn’t bode well for me.
Dying with Dignity Canada had a webinar earlier today that I had submitted some questions to.
Two of my questions were asked to the guests, but they were editied in such a way as to remove most of the meat from the question.
Regardless, I didn’t get the answer that I was looking for.
The sense that I get is that Dying with Dignity is trying to stay very far, far away from the topic of Medical Assistance in Dying for Mental Illness.
And what the two providers had to say wasn’t promising at all.
Basically, I’m functional. I can function on a daily basis. So therefore I will probably be unable to obtain medical assistance in dying.
In basic terms, I’m a fucking industrial robot. As long as I can perform the tasks required of me I’m A.O.K.!
Even if I was “non-functional” I would have had to undergo years and years of counselling and therapy in order to obtain M.A.i.D. for mental illness.
Now, you might be wondering, just like the M.A.i.D. assessors will probably be wondering……. “Bobbie, why didn’t you obtain treatment for your mental illnesses?????”
Well, remember, even though I was diagnosed at age 9 with major depression, severe anxiety, an intense fear of being touched, a fear of men, etc., my social worker at the time, Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke actively and intentionally prevented me from obtaining mental health treatment as it was a risk for the Canadian Armed Forces.
The Canadian Forces conspired to do everything possible to keep the story of Captain Father Angus McRae out of the media. The military even moved the entire courts martial “in-camera” citing the need to “protect the morals of Canadians”.
The last thing that Captain Totzke was going to allow was for me to obtain treatment for me mental health issues. That would involve me going for counselling, or therapy, maybe even time in a psychiatric facility for children.
The risk this posed is that I would open my mouth and start talking. And back then there was still enough interest in the media over the Captain McRae courts martial that the media would have torn into the Canadian Armed Forces.
So, instead I recevied “conversion therapy” at the hands of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke.
For 2-1/2 years I was labelled as a mentally ill homosexual by Captain Terry Totzke.
For 2-1/2 years I was blamed by Captain Totzke for what had happened to me on CFB Namao. I was blamed for what happened to my brother on CFB Namao. I wasn’t allowed to play sports.
Home life at the time and thereafter was a fucking nightmare for two reasons.
First was that my father was a lowly master corporal at the time. Captains greatly outrank master corporals. If a captain says that your son is a pole smoking homo, then your son is a pole smoking homo.
Second was that at the time the Canadian Armed Forces was an extremely homophobic environment. No service member wanted it known that they had a homosexual living in their PMQ.
Even after Alberta Social Services became involved with my family, Captain Totzke interfered with the attempts of Alberta Social Services to remove me from the home and appears to have been instrumental in assisting my father flee the jurisdiction of Alberta for Ontario.
And even though Captain Totzke had declared that I was a mentally ill homosexual, I was still dealing with major depression, severe anxiety, and a plethora of other issues on my own.
My father had his own helpful therapies to help me with these issues. One therapy involved backhands across the face. One therapy involved bare ass spankings with a leather belt. Another therapy was the “get the fuck up to your room and you’re not having supper” therapy. And of course there was the all time favourite “yelling and screaming like a drill instructor” therapy.
So, from my diagnoses in in October of 1980 until the discovery of my social service records in August of 2011 I was left to my own devices dealing with the wars and the shit and the terrors and the memories in my brain.
And as I learnt in 2011, dealing with this shit 30 years after the fact doesn’t do anything.
I did counselling with counsellors from Practitioner Renewal and even the Employee and Family Assistance Program.
I tried therapy with the BC Society for Survivors of Male Sexual Abuse.
I even went to meetings with the local chapter of SNAP.
None of this works.
Absolutely none.
Trying to explain what I’ve been through is a fucking nightmare. Civilians have no fucking idea of what life was like on the bases, especially for sexually abused children.
The fact that it is legally impossible to bring charges against persons subject to the Code of Service Discipline for Service Offences committed prior to 1998 means that absolutely no one has heard of child sexual abuse on the bases.
The fact that the Canadian Forces can be so very secretive with the information that they have means that the truth never gets out.
So when people like me try to get help, we’re literally laughed at.
And then there’s the fact that I don’t have a crack habit, or a heroin habit, or a drinking habit……..
YOU’RE NOT AN ADDICT!!!
YOU DIDN’T SUFFER!!!!
ONLY ADDICTS SUFFER YOU FUCKING WHINY ASSHOLE!!!!
We spend so much on addicts that there is sweet fuck all left over for those suffering from mental illnesses who aren’t addicts.
Chemical therapy and self blame is all that is offered these days.
Back around 1985 the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto said that due to staffing levels, budgetary constraints, and my father’s refusal to participate with the case workers that the CAST wouldn’t be able to get involved with my family unless there were credible reports of abuse from the community. We lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview at the time. There never would be “credible reports from the community”. Military members don’t rat out other members and the military washes its own laundry. This secrecy is how John Ryan Turner was starved to death and beat to death in his father’s PMQ on Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in 1994 and no one heard a thing.
And now it looks as if Medical Assistance in Dying is going to be beyond my grasp.
There are no therapies to fix my brain or to erase my memories.
I’m not going to subject myself to psychiatrists and psychologists blaming me for my problems.
I don’t want elctrocunvulsive therapy.
And don’t even mention to me sham “therapies” like CBT and mindfulness and other “we don’t really know how to fix the human brain so we’re going to set you up so that we can blame you for not trying”
My practitioner has said that he’s more than willing to help me with my application in March, but after watching the Dying with Dignity webinar today I don’t think that my application will go anywhere.
I guess I’m going to have to start getting serious about “alternative methods”.
I don’t remember asking my parents to fuck in December of 1970.
I don’t remember being asked if I’d like to be born.
I don’t really remember being asked if I’d like an alcoholic residential school survivor as a primary care giver.
I don’t really remember being asked if I’d like a rage prone alcohol fueled piss-tank for a father.
I don’t remember being asked by the babysitter if I’d like to have his penis in my mouth, or in my ass, or to have any of the other sexual acts that the did to me done to me.
I don’t remember being asked by Captain McRae if I would like to get intoxicated off a glass of wine so that he could do whatever he did while I was blacked out.
I don’t really remember being asked if I’d like to have conversion therapy from a military social worker.
But what I don’t want is to go on living with the remnants of untreated depression, untreated anxiety, and all of the other issues gifted to me by the events back then.
I do want to die.
I don’t want to be here any longer.
I am fucking tired.
I am fucking burnt out.
With all of the fucking horseshit that I’ve been through I’d like to be able to go out on my own with some form of dignity.
Dignity that I’ve never had in my entire life.
Surely going by M.A.i.D. or going by suicide will be the same thing, right?
Nope.
Suicide is painful.
Suicide is cruel.
Suicide is not always successful.
Suicide gives the Canadian Armed Forces what they want.
If I am forced to go by suicide then the CAF can point to me and tell everyone that will listen that I was just some “societal malcontent with an axe to grind against the military” and that I was just a fucking crazy nutbar.
If I am allowed to have Medical Assistance in Dying, I get to die without pain, I get to die with dignity. And the Canadian Armed Forces wouldn’t dare say fuck all.
March 17th 2023 was supposed to be the date that Medical Assistance in Dying became legal in Canada for those suffering from mental health issues.
I had already booked the weeks of March 20th and March 27th off.
I had already booked my appointment for March 21st with my family doctor to make my official request for Medical Assistance in Dying.
I booked additional time off from work as I theorized that I would probably require some time to acclimatize to my decision. After all, wanting to die and actually making concrete plans to die are two separate things.
Sadly, the religious nutcases in this country evoked nightmares of disabled people being hauled off to Cambodian style killing fields.
And of course our milquetoast politicians caved.
That’s to be expected seeing as how the right wing in this country are having their puppet strings yanked and manipulated by the MAGAt evangelical crowd south of the border where their imaginary friend gets off on pain and suffering.
Anyways, in the meantime I’ve got to deal with an additional year on this planet.
I asked my lawyers recently if as part of the pending class action settlement that language be added into the settlement that would request the Attorney General make exceptions to the current M.A.i.D. legislation that would allow me to obtain M.A.i.D. without having to wait for the government to grow a pair and legalize M.A.i.D. for reasons of mental health.
They both said that this couldn’t be added in to the class action as it would have to apply to all members of the settlement and that this more than likely wouldn’t be something that the courts would entertain.
One of my lawyers suggested that I might want to look at other options to obtain M.A.i.D. via tests and screenings to see if any type of cancer or other potentially fatal medical condition is currently manifesting itself in my body.
My father apparently died of cancer. My father’s brother died of heart disease. My paternal grandmother died of heart disease as well. My mother has had numerous aneurysms. My maternal grandfather died of a heart attack. I’ve had two cardiac issues and no one was able to figure out what caused them.
So, when I go to my doctor on the 21st, even though I can’t officially request M.A.i.D. as we had both agreed at a prior visit, I will mention the suggestion of my lawyer to my doctor to see if he’s game for this.
Either way, I’ve got a train trip coming up.
No. Not that type of train trip.
On the 24th I’m boarding a VIA train for an 8 day round trip to and back from Toronto.
This was one of those “bucket list” things I had started planning out last year. There’s a few things I wanna do before I go. And things like trips are something that I want to experience.
I know it sounds silly, but with the exception of a few trips to Seattle, I’ve never been outside of Canada. I’ve lived in Vancouver for 30 years now and I’ve been to Seattle maybe 6 times in all that time.
And even within Canada, the only time I traveled anywhere in Canada was when I went to Ottawa to do some research at Library and Archives Canada. I also stopped out in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I was born there, but other than popping out into the world in Halifax, I have no connection to Halifax as my birth in Halifax was an accident of birth. I could have been born in any hospital next to a Canadian Armed Forces base and that would have been my “home town”.
Travelling was never something my father did with us when we were kids. The one time we went to Banff when my father was stationed at Canadian Forces Base Griesbach was not very pleasant as Richard wasn’t the kind of person who could just chill and fucking relax on a vacation.
When we lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview in Ontario, Richard took us for a weekend trip up to Sue’s brother’s cottage on Georgian Bay. Again, not a fun weekend. Fun and fuckery were not words in Richard’s vocabulary. The only word that Richard knew that was even remotely related to “fun” was dys’fun’ctional.
So, I never developed the travel bug.
Never learnt how to go on vacation and just relax.
So, this train ride should prove interesting. 4 days to Toronto. I spend one night in Toronto. And then it’s 4 days back to Vancouver.
Didn’t book a private room. I got a sleeping berth. The car has showers. All meals provided. Access to the observation car, the coach car, and the dining car.
Why did I pick the train? Why not. As I’ve said I don’t do vacations. For me the travelling part is more entertaining than the journey.
Taking Amtrak back and forth between Seattle and Vancouver is enjoyable. When I go to Seattle there’s only a few places that I like to go. Other than that I skip all of the tourist traps. I don’t think that I could ever go somewhere to go to tourist traps.
When I go to Iceland this summer it’s so that I can see for myself what was so appealing about Iceland that Richard left my brother and I alone while he fucked off with the Canadian Armed Forces to Iceland in July of 1978. Other than that it’s a big expansive island. And it’s the summer solstice. So being that far north on the longest day of the year should prove to be interesting. The only interesting thing that I know of Iceland is that the island is made up from two separate continents crushing together. There’s apparently a fissure that splits the island in two.
Okay, so I can only say this from my perspective, but this is what depression feels like for me.
I don’t feel like I am good at anything. If someone as stupid as I am can figure something out, then everyone else should be able to as well, right?
Yes, I have a very low self esteem. And what makes it worse is when people congratulate me for my accomplishments as they’re obviously just saying nice things to make me shut up, right?
There are a lot of projects that I don’t undertake at work as I know that I am too stupid to get them done. And if they do by some miracle get done, my mind tells me that they won’t be liked, or that they will fail.
Sleeping. I sleep a lot. I always have. I’m sure that constantly waking up with night terrors or in a panic doesn’t help. But even in periods when I am able to sleep without these interruptions I still don’t like waking up or getting out of bed. I get home from work, I sleep. I hate getting out of bed in the morning. It’s not that my bed is nice and warm and I find it too seductive to get out of. I just don’t have any reason to get out of bed. There is no drive.
The most I’ve slept was on a vacation a few years ago. I spent almost 14 days in bed getting out just for food and the bathroom. No movies, mo music, no nothing. Just sleeping and going off to dream land.
I am habitually late for work. I always have been. Being late for work is nothing new. But most employers I’ve worked for have been more than willing to overlook my tardiness as the skills I bring are valuable to them.
Even when I was a kid, getting up and out of bed was a fucking chore.
And that didn’t change at all. into adulthood.
In the early years just after I moved out of the house in 1987, I would often sleep for days.
And just this past weekend I slept through Saturday and Sunday.
Making and keeping friends with untreated depression and untreated anxiety if fucking hopeless. You don’t feel the need to call your friends because you just know that you’re going to bother them or disturb them. And when they call you, they’re often calling in the middle of a depression cycle. And then when no one calls the anxiety kicks in and convinces you that no one likes you and they’re all avoiding you because you’re beyond worthless and they’re only being your “friend” because they’re either using you for a skill that you have, or they just feel sorry for you.
Why didn’t I get help instead of letting my depression progress for so long without treatment?
For starters, I didn’t know that I had been diagnosed with Major Depression in November of 1980 until I received my social service paperwork in August of 2011. When I was having issues with my depression between age 9 and age 16, my father’s way of helping me with my “piss poor fucking attitude” was backhands, slaps, spankings, etc.
I received my first medical card and medical insurance when I started working for the Elashi family in East Richmond in 1994. There was a Carepoint medical clinic in the plaza that the Elashi’s owned. I would go to the clinic to get help with my inability to sleep. Remember, I didn’t know that 14 years prior I had been diagnosed with Major Depression. The doctor and I were certain that I only had a sleep disorder. Looking back, the pills that I had been prescribed could also used for treating depression.
And at that point in time I would never have considered myself to be depressed. My father had drilled into my head that I was just a fucking lazy arsehole that often acted up for fucking attention and who often pretended to be smarter than he actually was.
So no, there was no seeking help for depression. My father, and even “Terry” had suggested that I was just suffering from a mental illness called homosexuality.
And at this time I was nowhere near ready to deal with my implied “homosexuality”. I wasn’t really ready to consider myself a homosexual. It’s just that both Terry and my father insisted that I was one and that why I messed around with the babysitter on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
I couldn’t dare be open with the doctor. What if I said something to him that allowed him to figure out that I was a homosexual that had sex with his babysitter? Or worse ye, what if the doctor discovered that because of my homosexuality I had allowed the babysitter to molest my younger brother.
So no, there was no getting help with my depression, or my anxiety, or my haphephobia. Or my sexual identity / gender confusion.
If both Terry and my father said that I was a homosexual, then surely I must be a homosexual. Yes, my brother swears that he never heard my father refer to me as “gay”, but it’s not like Richard and Terry needed my brother’s permission.
This assignment of my sexual orientation by my father and by Terry as a result of my 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse on Canadian Forces Base Namao by Captain Father Angus McRae and his teenaged accomplice probably did nothing to help me deal with my depression.
And being confused about my orientation didn’t help my depression either.
What else didn’t help with my depression? Haphephobia. The fear of being touched. Fuck do I ever hate being touched, especially unexpectedly. I really hate being touched in a sexual manner. One of the guys at work one put his hand on my shoulder from behind. I twisted away from him. He thought that this was funny so he tried it again. I did not think that this was funny. And I’ve had this haphephobia since the days of CFB Namao. How can a person have relationships if they don’t know their orientation, and they don’t like being touched. This in and of itself will feed depression.
My brain is often numb. It’s a weird sensation. It feels like my brain is stuffed with cotton. It’s very hard to concentrate. I often lose my train of thought if someone says something to me when I am not expecting interruptions.
Oh, and did I mention to you that I was diagnosed as having a notable “Auditory Memory” problem? Yeah, I’ve got tricks to work around this. First is don’t fucking call me on the telephone. Text me, email me, don’t call me. Want me to order something for you, fill out one of these handy dandy parts request forms. Auditory memory issues also ensure great fun with depression.
The funny thing about the auditory memory issue is that when Alberta Social Services wanted to remove me from the home and place me into foster care or residential care as a means to force my father to comply with the family counselling program, Richard himself pulled out the paperwork detailing this auditory memory issue as a cause of my problems in school. Yet in 2011 he didn’t tell the CFNIS about this auditory memory issue nor our involvement with Alberta Social Services or the fact that I was in the foster care system. And, he used to get pissed off and physical with me on CFB Griesbach and CFB Downsview if I forgot to do something that he told me to do or if I didn’t understand what he had told me.
So, as you can see, I’ve had my fair share of mental health issues that were diagnosed, but that were left untreated, hidden, and ignored.
I suffered with these matters all of my life.
And these issues are part of the reason I want MAiD.
MAiD is the only way for me to finally be freed from these issues.
My desire for MAiD isn’t a rash decision.
It’s the result of a very slow moving train that’s been gathering speed for the last 40+ years.
Well, it continues to grow.
The beard continues to grow.
It’s been what? About two weeks since I last shaved due to escitalopram pimples…..
The beard probably won’t stay very long. I have an appointment in February to get more tattooing on my face.
Going to black out some large patches on my cheeks. Working on some designs right now. I should have something firmed up in a few weeks.
I love my tattoos, and there’s going to me more of them in the next couple of years.
I’m going to try to get as many of them before I go.
But for now I’m growing a beard.
This really wasn’t on a “bucket list”.
In fact I don’t really have a bucket list.
But I have a beard.
We’ll see how it turns out.
I’ve never had a beard before.
And it’s weird at how white it is.
There’s one thin band of black hairs on the right side by the corner of my mouth, but other than that it’s white.
Like I’m old or something.
Like I turned into an old man over night, like Rip Van Winkle.
Beeshive 