Sign of LIfe
They say that ruin is the road to transformation. I suppose, with that in mind, they would also say that I am on my way to a total transformation. The sad part in all of this is that if that is indeed true, I have experienced total transformation several times throughout my 49 years on this planet. Over and over again; each time, hitting what I believed was rock bottom. The sad truth about that being that each of those supposed rock bottoms seemed to worsen and grow in intensity as the years went by, and the experiences became harder and harder to live through.
They also say, that experience is a teacher; and that the lessons learned throughout each of these experiences help us to see what needs to be changed or altered in our lives. If they had lived my life, they probably would not have survived as long as I had. If they’d walked in my shoes, they may have slipped too. Maybe even lost your footing, entirely. And, if you had walked in my shoes you might understand how and why I did, as well. And, why it took such darkness and despair to finally help me make those changes to my life.
I had been married and divorced so many times. Either in a relationship, breaking up from one or looking for or building another one; a new one. I had no idea until I was alone, either how to be alone or how much I needed to be alone. Alone in my darkness, alone in my wickedness. Alone in my processing all of these things. Alone in my loneliness, alone in my joy; alone in my happiness, alone in my pleasure. It was crazy that I had never been alone and didn’t realize how much I truly needed to be alone – not lonely when you are with someone, but alone and content alone. In order to live, or know how to live with someone else. In order to learn how to love myself, and ultimately, learn how to love someone else properly; unabashedly, openly and with truth, love and light. I’d had so much bad mojo; you know, the kind from the wrong kind of sexual and intimate energy exchanges. There’s so much power in the sexual energy exchanged between partners and strangers, alike. Its either positive and uplifting or it’s negative and draining, and can darken the soul. In my case, I’d had more of the dark and draining, the soul crushing and energy sucking sexual energy exchanges than I’d had of the positive and uplifting.
In part, this was because of my broken love template and the dramas and traumas I had experienced, beginning as early as childhood. Then, done what many childhood abuse survivors do, and became promiscuous; had multiple sexual partners, unhealthy relationships and behaviours that were slightly broken where it came to intimacy and love. I needed to be whole again, healthy again, clean again – but I had no fucking idea what that meant or what it looked like because I’d never had it – never had it modelled for me, either. I had no fucking idea who I was either, and had never known.
I had always been whatever someone needed me to be; friends, family or intimate partners, because all I wanted was the love and acceptance that I’d never received from my origin family. So, I became what someone else wanted me to be with every relationship I engaged in and entered into – friendship and love interests, alike - and lost myself in the process, if I’d ever had or known me, at all. Someone said that in order to be loved by others, that we needed to first, love ourselves. I didn’t know myself so how could I love myself? If I couldn’t love myself, how could I love others? Or how could others love me? If I wasn’t being myself because I didn’t know myself, would I ever truly be loved? The authentic me? I didn’t know.
All I knew was that there was a terrible darkness inside of me from all of the damage that had been done to me by so many; including those entrusted to protect me from the world, from them even. And it almost killed me after my final divorce, my military experience and my broken and twisted psyche.
Black - Darkness, Broken Bits and Another Sad Goodbye
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach.” ~ Lucas, One Tree Hill
And there I sat, in the bathtub of my rented Private Military Quarters (PMQ) in Petawawa; glass of red wine on the edge of the tub, One Tree Hill soundtrack playing on my iPod in the background and razor between my fingers, trying to summon the ‘courage’ to just slit my wrists and end it all – right there and right then.
This moment had been a long time coming – a long and bumpy road from what I thought was healthy, to anxiety ridden, lost and desperate. I had seen so much, been through so much and had been holding on for dear life for so long just to get through day to day. I had suffered in silence long enough and the silence had become deafening. I started thinking about what had happened when I finally spoke up about what happened to me at Basic Military Training (BMQ). I recalled the moments of the assault, itself and the aftermath of it all. I recalled what it had done to my already tortured psyche to keep silent for so long – and why I had kept silent. In fact, it wasn’t until after my husband asked for a divorce that I finally told him the truth; out of desperation to make him understand what had changed me and how.
Expecting him to understand why I had been so cold and distant. I said it out loud for the first time in a year and a half since the ‘incident’; “I was sexually assaulted by a member of my platoon”, what a relief it was to say the words out loud. Like I’d been drowning for a year and a half and I was finally coming up for air. Like I could finally breathe again. I was half expecting him to take me in his arms and embrace me tightly; tell me that he was there for me and that everything was going to be alright. To finally understand why I had shut down on him and why I hadn’t been the same open, loving and affectionate woman he had married three short years before. I waited – for the revelation moment, the “aha”, “I get it”, “I’m sorry that I wasn’t more understanding” – but it never came. What came instead was, “you’re a liar… you would have reported it… I know you, you wouldn’t allow this to happen and not report it… you’re dirty… you cheated on me and now you’re crying rape… you’ve made up this story so I won’t be mad that you cheated… you’re crying rape so I won’t be angry - to keep me from leaving you”, each word cutting deeper and deeper than the last, and chipping away more and more at my already broken soul. I was the walking wounded, expecting empathy and a cure to this hopelessness, darkness and helplessness that I felt had taken control of a once, strong and otherwise fierce woman. Instead, I was met with mistrust, disbelief, and utter and complete disgust. And from the one person that I had once considered my safe place; my home. His reaction caused a chain reaction that eventually lead to that fateful night in my bathtub on an army base in Petawawa when I realized that I hadn’t been strong; but had been simply white-knuckling it through life and just holding on for longer than I would like to admit.
Sitting there, razor blade at the ready, examining my wrists and pondering the depth of the cuts I had to make in order for it to be what my comrades would consider a ‘successful suicide’ for their police report. I thought about the song I was listening to, ‘It’s Only Life’ by Kate Voegele, when she played ‘Mia’ on One Tree Hill and she was asked why she made music “I want to help someone. I want to reach that girl or that boy who wakes up one day and feels like it’s not worth it anymore... It's about that girl who's had a horrible day and she hears your song and for five minutes there's hope, you know? It's like, for five minutes the worlds not such a scary place for her anymore." I pondered this and I thought, “if only” … “if only you knew how scary my world had been as of late – well, nearly all my life to be honest.”. The music stopped suddenly and I pondered the idea of getting out of the tub to restart it and press shuffle on my iPod so it would continue right until the end. I mean, who wants to die without music – who wants to die with the same silence with which they had lived for so long? But then I thought, if I got out of the tub, I’d chicken out and not make the first cut. I took a sip of my wine and thought about all of the hard work and sacrifices it taken me to get to where I was – as a 40+ year old Military Police member – and thought of the apparent futility of it all. And I thought, “you’re just a fucking number in the military and no one wants you to stand out or get recognized ahead of others. Uniformity – let’s all be ordinary in our sameness; unique in the same way. Nothing special as per my normal sense of self. And, who was I doing this for? If not for my family. Who was I without them? Who the hell was I at all?” I’d gone from pleasing others and changing for them to be loved and accepted, to being uniform and the same as everyone else behind this uniform. What was the point breaking my body, mind and spirit to be a cop anyway? Was I better for having sacrificed everything for the badge? Was I a martyr because I gave up so much just to serve others? Had it all been in vain? Then I looked at my wrist and thought, “here’s the vein – this will make it all go away, make the pain stop”.
I looked down at my bra and panties and mused aloud, “shit, I should have worn a tank top and shorts”. I didn’t want my comrades to find me in my unmentionables. And it ultimately would be them that found me. I considered getting out and putting on shorts and a shirt but like, when I considered getting out the start the music over, I decided against it because I didn’t want to chicken out. I needed the ‘courage’ to be ‘successful’ and if I moved, I’d lose my ‘courage’ – if that’s what you call it. I wondered to myself what my soon to be estranged husband would think/feel about my death. Would he miss me? Of course, he wouldn’t miss me, he’d found a way of not missing me for over a year now and he was leaving me for her. I considered writing “fuck you J”, in my blood of course. Then I thought of all the bastards who had hurt me and wronged me, bladed or back-stabbed me since I had joined the military and thought of listing all of their names in my blood on the wall – beginning with the asshole who’d raped me – and including the married prick from another unit who was trying to sext me, even though we were both married and I couldn’t think of a single reason why he would think this was okay. It made me doubt myself and wonder what I had done to deserve this kind of toxic attention. Then I thought, “fuck them, they’ve got enough of my blood already”, and, “Canadian Forces Housing Authority (CFHA) will probably charge my kids for clean-up of the PMQ”. My kids!! How could I do this to them? Military recruiters are really good at selling that the Military is “family friendly” and making you believe that they will support your family in your absence. They somehow make you feel like everything will be okay and that what you’re doing is worth all the headaches, heartaches, trauma and loss that you and your family experience throughout your career. I know I bought it, and needless to say was not only shocked but entirely destroyed by the series of events that followed giving my life away to Queen and country.
I reconsidered the repercussions of taking my own life – the decision to end it all – to end all the fucking chaos, disorder, trauma, loss, pain, hurt, disappointment, rejection – at that point, I almost got out of the tub. Until the flashbacks started again – his fingers inside me, his hand on my mouth. My husband’s reaction, “you’re a slut”, “dirty, cheating liar…”. The words sliced me open again and again. Someone must have heard. Someone did. Someone said something, asked what was going on; but no one came to my aid. Some fucking brotherhood this green machine was. I took another sip of my wine and thought again how I wished the music would come back on so I’d have music to die to. I didn’t want to suffer in silence even in death. I considered standing up again – getting out of the tub and calling on my comrades, “they’re not all bad”, I thought to myself. “I have some pretty fucking amazing human beings in my unit – they’re not all bad. If the good ones knew, they would have been there. Stop suffering in silence, Linda. Report the fucking sexual assault!”. Then I thought about my childhood sexual traumas and realized I’d become a cop to try to fix what happened to me – to right the wrongs of my childhood through helping others through similar things. I thought about the time I’d been forced to give a boy oral sex on my 16th birthday at a house party, and how I hadn’t even realized, at the time that this was abnormal or that it was sexual assault because my love template was so broken and twisted, and I was so scarred from it all. So many things, so much trauma and I’d never reported any of it to police… and now I was a cop, telling others to report these offenses – when I’d never reported any of it or apparently, even processed any of it. So many times, and so much of my life I had truly felt like the “dirty slut” my then husband had called me – not realizing that it was because I had been victimized so much and hadn’t processed any of it before getting into another relationship – one after another, after another… and so on.
Was I so damaged that I allowed others to use and abuse me and not make them see justice for their actions? Is that why I’d stayed in in my previous relationship despite all of the violence and abuse? And why, I’d allowed J to ‘rescue’ me from the after math of escaping that one? Could I really fix myself by helping others? Could I fix myself at all? Not if I didn’t know what needed fixing, or who the fuck I was. Was I really helping anyone, if not myself? Now I was disgusted with myself – not for my empathy for others, but for the apparent lack of empathy for myself. And for my apparent weakness and lack of self-awareness. Of what I had allowed others to do to me – that had broken me and shaped my empathy.
I looked down on myself – I looked down at myself – in the tub, and considered how I would look dead. Would it be poetic? Bathtub filled with the red of my blood, me floating, swimming in it – hair flowing out around my face. Would it look artistic? Or would I just be bloated and smelly by the time they found me? I thought of the douchey guy – my first coach officer – who made my life a living hell at the detachment; and remembered a “welfare check” call I went on while I was still brand new to the detachment – me saying there was something wrong and that the door needed to be breached. My then partner arguing with me – saying the guy was just AWOL and would eventually get caught and arrested. I told him that, my Spidey senses were tingling and nothing was quite right. He made fun of me saying, “what, your two weeks on the job highly honed police sense is telling you to break the guys door down?” … He got a nice big serving of crow when the door was breached and the guy was dead inside! I always wondered – if he hadn't stood there arguing with me about his superiority to me in the typical militarized alpha male style – would we have found the guy alive? Save-able? Or at least more easily recognizable? I hoped it wasn’t him who was dispatched to my welfare check. He’d wait until the next business day and get a CO’s warrant to arrest me for AWOL, I’m sure. Instead of knowing and realizing something might be wrong and breaching the door. Would anyone breach my door to save me? Fuck no! I had to break it down myself; save myself. But I didn’t have the energy or even the desire anymore, it seemed.
I looked at the razorblade again and thought aloud, “it’s funny, I know why they call this the blade trade”. I tested the sharpness of the razor on my finger and thought, “is this bravery or is it cowardice?” Just as I was finally about to make the first cut, the music came back on and startled me. I knocked my wine glass into the tub. As the tub filled with the red of my wine, I heard the words, “tears are forming in your eyes- a storm is warning in the skies – the end of the world it seems – you bend down and fall on your knees well get back on your feet- don't run away - it's only life - don't lose your faith don't run away – hold on tight it's only life.”. I sat there staring at the wine filled tub and wondering if this is what it would look like if it were blood. I listened to the entire song – sitting there in the red. “Hold on tight, it's only life”. “If I make it through this”, I thought, “I should get that tattooed on my wrists.”. Then I stood on my feet- got out of the tub – toweled myself off and went downstairs and poured myself another glass of wine, thinking, “you're right Kate - it's only life… but thanks for saving mine. Thanks for making my world not such a scary place anymore”. And then I thought, “thank you God, life, Buddha, divine intervention or whatever the hell you want to call it.”. I guess I didn’t really want to do it. I didn’t want to kill myself and I didn’t really want to die. I just wanted the pain to stop once and for all. I just didn’t know what that looked like or how to make that happen.
Origin Families and the Lessons We Learn
I would like to tell you that this was the beginning of all of the good stuff – the realizations and revelations and the journey to self-awareness and self-love but if I did, I’d be lying both to you and to myself. It was a beginning – of sorts. It was the beginning of trying hard to want to live but it wasn’t the beginning of wanting to live well – not just yet, anyway.
I’d also like to tell you that this was when I decided to be alone for a while but, unfortunately things had to get really dark before I finally had that epiphany. It was, though when I decided to start over; which is exactly what I did when I was finally posted to Kingston. And then almost five years later, realized again just how much I needed to be alone – but we’ll get there.
I believe, that for someone to truly want to live and appreciate the beauty and fragility of life, they need to have danced with the darkness. Thought about death and dying or experienced something or things that made them look up and take notice. I also believe that sometimes, in order to move forward you have to take a look back. Not to stay there or live in the past, but to look back long enough to see where you’ve been, where you need to go and what you need to know to do that. And, so you can see the beginnings and the how’s and why’s of who you are and what path you’ve taken this far. So, history doesn’t repeat itself and so you don’t take the same path. My beginning was rough. Very little about my path was easy.
Broken Love Templates and other Disasters
I watched a movie the other day, and there was a beautiful monologue by the main character, about her mother; how amazing her mother was and how much everyone loved her. Including her. She spoke of what it was like to have her as a mother, and the absolute devastation when she lost her. How she could barely breathe when she thought about her, and how lucky she was to have experienced that relationship and bond.
Bonds with our origin family set the standard for, and give us the foundation for future relationships to be built on. If we are lucky enough to have a good, strong origin family with whom we share a strong and healthy connection, then we have a chance at strong, healthy relationships later in life. They set us up to succeed in marriage and family and even, in friendship by being there for us. They are our role models and create our love templates by modeling healthy behaviours like; communication, unconditional love and acceptance, and positive regard for one another and us, alike. They provide us with a sense of self and self-esteem, make us feel safe and help us realize who we are, and what we are worth. They value us and teach us to value ourselves. A healthy and bonded origin family provides their children, grand-children and partners with a sense of belonging; healthy attachments and self-efficacy.
Unhealthy origin families do the polar opposite. I had never had a close relationship with either of my parents. My father was the very definition of deviant – if you'd looked up the word sociopath in the DSM, there would have been a picture of him in it. My mother, well she was her own kind of broken, hot mess. She was a hoarder; a collector of things because of all that she had either lost or given up throughout the years; parents, kids, spouses and much more.
I came from an unhealthy origin family; which speaks volumes for what that meant for me growing up and later on in my life and subsequent relationships. Which, was ultimately why I had been alone so long, and why I had no intention of beginning anew with new friends or relationships at that point.
My children on the other hand; for some reason, despite my lack of a proper foundation or a strong and healthy love template, I was successful in raising healthy kids who felt loved and accepted, valued and had at least one half of a healthy parental modelling experience. My children were my greatest gift and accomplishment, simultaneously. They were my three best friends, now as well. But they were grown and off doing their own thing. I loved them well and taught them that they could go anywhere, and do anything they worked for. This backfired because they were all off doing just that. And, despite my need for a new tribe now that they were gone, I was happy for them. In order to build a new tribe or find a new partner, if that was really my goal, I had to first know myself, date myself, care for myself and learn to love myself; fully, completely and unconditionally, the way I loved and cared for my children.
