Sleepless In The Lou

I originally wrote this nearly six years ago back in late 2018. Then I locked it away like skeletons in the closet. At the time, I was chest deep in the waters of PTSD and barely treading water. Like a drowning man doesn’t have the air to scream for help, I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with the fallout this post would’ve caused in that season of my life.

A few months later in 2019, I finally reached my hand out and sought professional help. It was the help I needed to untie the chains that were wrapped around my feet on one end and tied to my box of trauma and burdens on the other end…weighing me down in the waters of my own personal hell.

As I found it today…six years later…I’m in a better place. By the nature of my career, I’m still in the water…but the chains of my past that were pulling me under then are no longer there. I’m not just treading water anymore, I’m swimming like the badass man I am! (a statement of personal affirmation more than a declaration of pride.)

Make no bones about it…the stigma of mental health (particularly in the fire service) is still very real…and felt by those who are strong enough to be vulnerable and open about their struggles, myself included. It’s been both challenging and rewarding to be open about my PTSD throughout this past year. but and I’m no longer ashamed to admit I’m not okay…but I will be.

Not having posted here since August 2019, I welcome you back into my head with where I’ve been for the past five years…

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Been awhile. Haven’t had so much as a hot minute to be still and collect my thoughts well enough to organize them into intelligible sentences.

Even now, I’m exhausted and want to sleep. My eyes are heavy, and I’m craving it, but my mind just won’t shut off to allow it. So here I am…hoping that typing this out will help.

Something has been bothering me all day really…eating away at me every second for the past 24 hours now. But I haven’t been able to place what. I just now in the last hour realized that the “it” that should be bothering isn’t what’s bothering me at all…and that is what’s bothering me!

When did I become the guy who is no longer emotionally affected by death the same as I was 22 years ago when I first started this job?!!!! I’ve slowly become a hard, calloused, and cynical robot that just endures and perseveres…muddling through the challenging calls and moving onto the next one like it’s just another day.

That’s messed up. The fact that I can work a pediatric trauma code, and 5 minutes after she’s pronounced dead in the ER, I’m in the waiting room drinking a Pepsi and waiting to get back to my crew…just feels wrong on a deeply intimate level. Like it’s just another thing we do. That’s messed up in more ways than I know!

But here I am…the emotionless, stone-cold, old man who just locks it down and moves on. Can’t even make myself cry anymore. What’s worse is not knowing how to work through it anymore. Used to be, I could write about it, but even that started to feel like I’m searching for sympathy from others…and that’s the last thing I want. I don’t need…nor want…pity for the career choice I made.

Nope, not gonna have it…keep your sympathy to yourself and gimme someone who’s walked here before to just sit with me, listen to me vent, and admit that it’s fucked up. What we do is fucked up. There, I said it. If I ever share this, there’s gonna be some in my circle of friends and acquaintances who are shocked to read that…offended even. Well, welcome to the shit show friends…here I am…one messed up guy struggling to navigate a 22-year old minefield of baggage that comes outta the depths of my head every time another ghost is added to the mix. A Jesus-loving Christian doing the best I can with what I got, I struggle to walk the walk just like the rest of ya…maybe just in a different and more public way.

I talked with a good friend on the phone today who doesn’t get it. He really is a rock in my life, and as hard as he tried to convince me he does, he just doesn’t. Pisses me off to no end when someone gives me a hard time, even jokingly, for the schedule we have. “Ten days a month, and even then you get to watch TV and sit in the recliner and sleep through it…” blah blah blah…different version of the same old truth…people on the outside don’t get get it. And they never will.

All it does is widen the gap and isolate me even more…cuz I can’t make him see or feel it. Hell, I can’t make myself unsee half the things I wish I’d never seen…how do I get someone who’s never done what I’ve done to understand. “Sleep through it,” he says. Brother, I haven’t slept in 40 hours now. I tried…Lord knows I laid my head on the pillow. But when you hope to escape the memories of what you just experienced with a few hours of sleep…and the dreams take you right back to the scene…there ain’t no rest in that.

That’s my reality. Sleepless nights that slowly eat away at my life expectancy. Restless nights of fighting to keep the demons at bay…some nights successfully, other nights – not so much. All the while knowing that when I can finally muster up the cajones to call one of my brothers who also walks the thin line to admit that I’m not alright and need someone who’s been there to sit with me…he’ll be there – no questions asked. Cuz that’s what we do. All the politics and the bullshit arguments and disagreements we have every day get left at the door, and we step up to the plate and walk through the valley with each other.

Even at the end of a sleepless 40 hour day, there is no other job like this…and I wouldn’t trade all the sleepless nights (and the ghosts that come with it) for any other job in the world.

Son, I’d be proud as hell if you chose to pick up the baton and carry on our family name in such an honorable and noble profession. You’d be damn good at it. Just know that it comes at the cost of many sleepless nights. And if you find that your heart has become so battle scarred and hardened that it no longer brings you to your knees to watch a child die a brutal and horrifying death, pick up the phone and call me…or someone who’s been there…cuz that ain’t right.

Love,

Dad