I’m listening to The Absence. At The Gates come to mind. I scored a new receiver at the thrift store this morning. It’s a step up in modernity, relatively speaking. I try to feel injured instead of mentally ill despite my diagnosis and symptoms. I try to be positive about needing medication even though it seems like everyone I meet thinks it’s okay to take it but they personally never would. I struggle to be okay with knowing I shouldn’t drink because of what it means I am. The mirror shows me nothing but I’m not sure what I’m looking for anymore anyway. I was proud when my parents watched those epaulettes get put on my shoulders. 15 years later I had to have my wife phone to tell them I had suffered a mental breakdown at work. I couldn’t even let them know myself.

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I have a picture of the past on my phone. All of my kids and I in the back of an ambulance. It was a great experience to have the kids visit me at work. That wasn’t a frequent possibility. The picture is proof that I once was. As time goes on I’m getting less hopeful that I will return to the road.

There’s a lot of sadness to the picture along with the joy. I was already broken and hanging on by a thread, drinking every day and isolating as much as I could. It would be another year before I finally admitted I needed help. I look at that picture and wish that I could help that man overcome his shame and humiliation easier. I wish he could have seen the symptoms as an injury and not as weakness and failure. I wish I could have told him it was okay to not feel okay and to not be able to explain it. I wish I could show him that alcohol never equals coping. I wish I could tell him that he mattered and that he was not a piece of shit ruining life for those around him. I wish I could give him a hug.

I have told him those things finally. More than once, to help make sure he believes it. I told him it’s okay to cry and feel sad. I have repeatedly argued with him that it’s okay to share. I have told him it’s okay to honour this period of life and move on to the next if necessary. I’m not sure he believes that one fully. Who would want to be forced to say goodbye to the fruits of their labour?

I’m proud of my time as a paramedic. I want to think I have more in me but I suspect I’m dreaming. So what do I do now? How will I deal with the disappointment if I try to return but can’t? Do I set my sights on some other ‘role’? There must be some sort of list of the possibilities I could contemplate. “Now that you can’t do what you wanted to do what do you want to do”? I feel like I’m in a restaurant without a menu and everyone is asking me what I’m having. (Fitting, sirens always happen when they’ll be the most psychologically abrasive). Possibilities. I need to consider them before I know if I’m going to need them. Can I really dream twice? The safe bet would be that quiet job in the supply warehouse. I don’t want to be tripping over the bar but I don’t need to be hitting my head on it either.