I’ve come to the realization that I suffer from a bad case of “Resting Bitch Face”.
Here’s an album of my “Resting Bitch Face” in Canada, America, and Iceland…..
What causes Resting Bitch Face?
Probably a life time of being dead on the inside.
It’s hard at work because I gotta fake a smile all the time otherwise people seem to think that I’m going to snap.
It’s not that I hate or despise perky people. I just don’t feel the need to run around all day with an insane grin on my face.
In my house there was no need to smile.
The best thing around grandma, Richard, or Sue was to just adopt a blank face.
And growing up keeping a blank face also work at school as it kept the other kids and the teachers from knowing that anything was wrong at home.
When I went to the Westfield program in Edmonton from June 1982 to March 1983 we had to talk about our “feelings”. We also had to do “temperature check” every morning before classes so that we could express our feelings and emotions.
This did not go over well with me. I hated it. I hated talking about feelings.
Richard, Grandma, and the events of CFB Namao had killed off just about every emotion that I ever had.
Even to this day the worst thing that you could do is ask me to express emotions, or talk about my feelings, of talk about personal things.
“You don’t like to talk about personal things?”
Get the fuck outta here!
What the fuck is this blog then?
This blog is therapy and a testament.
Besides, I talk about what I want to talk about when I want to talk about it.
But Bobbie, you gotta talk about your feelings if you want to get better……..
Nope.
That’s not how this works.
You don’t get to ignore the past and then wash your hands of my dysfunction by further blaming me for being me.
Don’t forget, a lot of my dysfunction didn’t come from bad personal choice. Almost all of my dysfunction can be traced back directly to bad decisions made by members of the Canadian Armed Forces.
You didn’t honestly think that what I endured wasn’t going to have an effect on me, did you?
And blaming me for the dysfunction wasn’t going to cure me.
I think that this may be one of the reasons that I embraced an eccentric manner of dressing, what I lack on the inside I cover up with nice colours, patterns, and designs on the outside.
In 2015 the Supreme Court of Canada issued its decision in the CARTER matter. The Supreme Court of Canada said this: “of no force or effect to the extent that they prohibit physician-assisted death for a competent adult person who (1) clearly consents to the termination of life and (2) has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition.”
The Government of Canada agreed with this decision and prmossied to introduce legislation to allow competent adults suffering from Mental Illness to receive assistance in having their lives terminated.
It’s now 11 years after the decision, and the Government of Canada still insists on denying me the right to end my life with the assitance of a trained professional. The Government of Canada has just added an additional 3 years of suffering to my life. And there’s no indication that in 2027 the Government will finlly allow me to obtain the peace that I desire.
Just couldn’t muster enough strength or energy to get out of bed.
I did manage though to file a complaint against the Federal Government for their faiure to provide Medical Assistance in Dying to persons suffering from mental illness.
I specifically named Justin Trudeau, Mark Holland, and Arif Virani. Justin Trudeau is the head of the Canadian Government. Mark Holland is the Minister of Health, and Arif Virani is the Minister of Health.
Some may say “Bobbie, isn’t this a bit harsh? They’re only looking out for Canadians”.
No, they’re playing politics.
They’re putting the electability of their party ahead of the needs of persons suffering from mental illness.
Canadian society turns a blind eye to the number of easily prevented deaths on the public streets in the name of car driver convienience. Mandaroty GPS based speed limiters and a 20 km/h blanket speed limit in any municipal area would cut the amount of deaths on the public streets by at least 3/4.
Canadian society turns a blind eye to the ever increasing death toll from illicit drugs because the law ‘n’ order crowd says it must be so.
I no longer want to be burdened by brain crushing depression, anxiety, and never ending memories of the abuse, neglect, and degredation of my childhood and the bible thumpers jump up and down that suffering is good for the human soul and that their imaginary friend would be sad if I died.
On the complaint submission the form asks what you expect to see as a resolution. I basically said that until legislation is introduced to formally enshrine the rights of Canadians to die by M.A.i.D., the Justice Minister and the Health Minister should be required on a case by case basis to review applications for M.A.i.D. and either approve or deny the applications on a case by case basis.
Anyways, it will be intereting to see what happens with this. I’m sure that the government has some sort of legal immunity to having to respond to the BCHRT.
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.
Beeshive 