I was right!

I joke with people that I am right just often enough to think that I am always right. This time I was dead right (trying to make this a thing). In a previous post I was approaching my first therapy appointment and trying to sound out my position on me taking any medications for my CPTSD symptoms, which include Depression. I am glad that I did, even if it was for my own sake, it never came up. I discovered though, I don’t need to mask my feelings, they are both real and valid, even if they should have been processed years ago.

The great news is that I am ready to be healthy and willing to do the work to become so. I think talk therapy may help where my current tools have yet to. As the appointment neared, I even planned out my answer should the therapist ask what I hope to get from counseling, “A constant” would be my reply. You see, I am ok with the weight of my life most of the time, it may be heavy, but I am quite literally built for this. Other times just like in hiking, the terrain changes and the weight sits different, it becomes nearly impossible to bare the burden.

I have friends, each of them would no doubt sign up to help me if they knew of my struggles, but truth be told several of those relationships are me helping carry their weight, and they know not the price of carrying mine. I personally do not think my shit is worse than anyone else’s, in fact I believe that everyone has been through the worst thing that every one has ever been through. But it can be ugly, raw, and real. We men are mostly ill equipped to just hold that space without competition or judgement. On more than one occasion my reaching out to a friend for help has cost me the friendship. I think it has something to do with whatever story they have about me going on in their head or maybe the competitive way that men have developed with each other. I have no clue, I know only the outcome.

The last time it cost me the best friend I had ever had. I don’t regret reaching out as my mind was seemingly working against me. What really scares me was how many dark thoughts kept wiggling in. Another thing that I’m sadly built for, both my father, and his father were amongst the 22. I hope the number is and continues to go down but they say that 22 veterans a day take their own life. I knew a few people while I was still in that checked out early, which led to more mandatory training. I always kept this slight indignation about the whole subject “ I know the cost it leaves behind, I would never”, so when the ideations started piercing through my armor, I was scared.

I really appreciate him taking the time to try and hear me, It helped. I needed in that moment to be heard, to be considered and he provided that when I had no one else to turn to. I am thankful that I did not know the price, I probably would not have paid it, and I likely would have tried to power through it, however successfully. All it cost me was everything, it changed how we talked, first the guarded nature and odd placating that was never present before, then the avoidance. We had a trip set to canoe the Buffalo River there In Arkansas, by day 3 of 10 we were barely speaking, He tried to instigate a fistfight on day 5, and we have been unable to talk since. What I couldn’t see because I was struggling, was how bad he was struggling. My Buddy Blake, who by all accounts is an amazing father, was going through a divorce, and feeling distant from his children. That is a heavy burden, The reality is that him and I both have the same diagnosis and if I had a healthier friend I would have been bound to call them. We both have the same struggles even if they manifest differently. The worst part of it all was seeing his marriage fall apart, I loved their family, and hearing the sound of “Hi Mr Irwin” from his daughters with their thick German accent. I know that he is an amazing father, and I feel for what he is mourning, but I am relegated to do that from afar. The damage already done, where was a competitive nature where there wasn’t before, judgement where there had been grace.

The second time would be comical if it were not so sad. It was with the pastor of my small church that I had been attending, whom I was working with secularly for several months, and whose familiar I was spending a lot of time with. I stop short of calling him a friend, because each day when we would chat, it was mostly him, as he was experiencing some medical scares and if I am correct, realizing his mortality for the first time. I was hurting though and having a harder time holding the space each day, worst yet, I could never get a thought in edgewise. I started noticing how little I was actually being considered, and whatever considerations were being made seemed to be for things in myself that I didn’t see as part of me. I couldn’t rectify the image that I had of myself with the ones that others seemed to hold of me. I was struggling with figuring out how to help my children who were struggling, I was struggling to sound out ideas and thoughts that just get jumbled when left alone. I could feel it all starting to build, my daily tools becoming less and less adequate. I literally said, “ hey man, I want to sound this out, I am having a hard time and could use a friend”. He said “No”, the excuse was that he felt led to focus on showing his grandchildren something other than the mistakes made as a father. I asked then for his help as my pastor, his reply no kidding was, “who is to really say what the responsibility of a pastor is”

“God, in the Bible” I replied

“Well, like Jesus having a core group of 12, I believe that God called me to a core group of 19” coincidentally, that was the number of children/ grandchildren he had.

The third day was our shortest conversation, he started by telling me that he figured out what my problem was, that “I was just too sensitive”. Later came the passive aggressive pulpit remarks about how “depression is a result of focusing too much on yourself and not enough on God” and that people should just “get over it”. This should not be taken as a dig on God, rather to show far we all have to go. To show that the struggle is real, a lot of men are going through it.

So, what I was hoping for in therapy was someone that could help me process what I have not been able to, without my fear of what it will cost. The fear of how it changes how people see me. To be considered. I know my curiosity would be peaked if I were reading this, as surely there must be something quite juicy in my past to cause all this, sorry to disappoint, it really is just the cumulative affects of this life. One with poor examples of love from parents who never healed, and great examples of abandonment, neglect, abuse. Add a couple wars, some toxic people and wallah! Most of all it comes from me stuffing everything into the deepest crevices of the mind as a coping mechanism. Now that I am ready, it is time to deal with it all and the effects it has left.

So hopeful for this growth.

My first attempt at an appointment started poorly though as she stared at her computer typing, not even turning towards me to ask the questions. I straight up told her I would wait until she could provide her attention, she said, “no, it’s alright” still staring at her computer. I said “ no it isn’t, I don’t want to talk to the side of your head”. This seemed to get her attention, but it seems like an odd thing to have to say to a therapist.

Honestly I had a feeling that I was going to the wrong appointment, and it didn’t take long for her to agree. We settled on a course of her providing a couple of bridge sessions until I could be seen by the right person. She must have been staring at the screen typing when I asked repeatedly to be seen in the community I live in rather than traveling to the VA, or she forgot. Either case I kept todays appointment solely to one more time try and get that corrected. Now that it is, I just have to start the waiting process again. Anyone who has ever served probably heard or said the following in their head just then “hurry up and wait”. It is the Army way.

I say all of that to say this, I am not ashamed of my struggles or who I am, these scars were earned. I am quite awesome to be honest, and try to always give more than I consume, but I do struggle. I am truly thankful To be standing here today, I love life and the people who I meet. I hope to one day see you all again as a healthy, well adjusted man, whatever that means.

Until then,