Hold on Tight - It's Only Life
**This was one of my first blog posts on here. The story of my near-suicide (one of several attempts throughout my life but the closest I ever came to being, “successful”). The beginning, the middle and the end of one of the darkest chapters of my story, all at the same time. I’m re-telling this story now because of recent events that have me re-living some of the experiences. And, re-experiencing and re-examining some of the emotions that accompanied these experiences. The feelings that this story elicits every time I tell it. And, how often I need to tell it, to let others know they’re not alone. The story of how I danced with the darkness and somehow lived to talk about it; or in this case, write about it. Lived to tell others to, “hold on tight”, and that, “It’s only life”, after all.
I believe, that for someone to truly want to live and appreciate the beauty and fragility of life, they need to have danced with 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 just 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 thus far. So, history doesn’t repeat itself and so you don’t take the same path, again and again.
My beginning was rough. Very little about my path was easy. I’ve danced with the darkness far too many times to consider. But throughout it all, for some reason, I’ve held on tight and survived. Through it all, I’ve somehow kept just enough of a spark alive within me to re-ignite that fire in my soul.
“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 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. Razorblade between my fingers, trying to summon the ‘courage’ to just slit my wrists and end it all – right there and 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; to finish my training and get home in one piece. To keep my job, and not become what was seen as an, “administrative burden” in the military. In fact, it wasn’t until after my husband asked for a divorce that I finally told him the truth; out of desperation. As a way of trying 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”. Waiting for him to console me and finally understand what I’d been going through. 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. A night when I realized that I hadn’t been strong at all; but had been simply white-knuckling it through life and just ‘holding on’ for longer than I would like to admit. That I’d been holding on tight. But so tight that my own grip was strangling me in the process.
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. I thought about when she played ‘Mia’ on One Tree Hill and a scene where she was asked why she made music. “I want to help someone”, she had said. “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 deafening silence in 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, as of late. I didn’t feel strong, unique or powerful anymore. I felt weak and defeated. Like I had so many times before. Like I had every time I was forced to ‘submit’ and ‘suffer in silence’. Why was I doing this to myself, I wondered? 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”. Then, 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 to start the music over, I decided against it because I didn’t want to lose my nerve. 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. I couldn’t think of a single reason why he would think this was okay; other than that, he was a sexual predator of some kind and liked to abuse his authority. I was glad that I wasn’t posted to Kingston, after all.
**Joke was on me later, as I was eventually posted to Kingston, where his unwanted, toxic attention not only continued for two plus years but resulted in the beginning of the end of my career. But that’s another blog post (or five).**
It made me doubt myself even more, 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”. Besides, I was sure that the “Canadian Forces Housing Authority (CFHA) would 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.
For a moment, 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. Considered 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!”, I said aloud. Then I thought about my childhood sexual traumas and realized I’d become a cop to try to fix what happened to me. I thought I could fix myself, through righting the wrongs done to me; by righting the wrongs done to others. Boy, was I wrong. In fact, I don’t think I’d been more wrong about anything in my entire life, to that point. And, believe me, I have been wrong about plenty!
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. I hadn’t realized because of all of the compound trauma I had experienced throughout my life. Especially, the sexual trauma and abuse. And, because my love template was so broken and twisted because of it all that I was so scarred beyond recognition or repair; or so I thought at the time. 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 offences, when I’d never reported any of it or apparently, even processed any of it, myself.
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. At all, let alone 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 aftermath 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 I had for myself. 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. My 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 Petawawa detachment. I remembered a ‘welfare check’ call I went on while I was still brand new to the job. Me, saying there was something wrong and that the door needed to be breached. My then partner arguing with me. Him, saying the guy was just absent without leave (AWOL) and would eventually get caught and arrested. I told him that, my Spidey senses were tingling and something was very wrong. 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! ("Dead inside; like me", I thought).
I always wondered if, he hadn't stood there arguing with me about his superiority in the typical toxic masculinity narrative, and from the typical militarized alpha male perspective, 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, too. 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. Not that day, anyway. Not in that moment.
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 Kate Voegele’s words once again, “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 my 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 and toweled myself off before going downstairs and pouring myself another glass of wine. All the while 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, without even realizing it”. 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, after all.
I didn’t want to kill myself. I knew that now. 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. All I knew was that I needed to “hold on tight”. And keep holding on tight until I had a grip on something healthy and worth fighting for.