It's Only Life

"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; to end it all, right there and right then.

This moment had been a long time coming; a long and bumpy road from what I considered 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 each day. As a soldier, I’d been taught to suffer in silence. To hide the pain, and carry on like everything was okay. But I had suffered in silence long enough and the silence had recently 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, the “aha” moment or the, “I get it now”. The, “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 my way through life. That I had been 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. She had played the character, Mia on One Tree Hill; a television show that helped me through a number of difficult times. Mia was once asked, on the show, why she made music. Her response resonated deeply with me, “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 she knew this girl. If only she 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 forty plus year old, newly trained Military Police. I thought of the apparent futility of it all, and 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 at its worst. Like, let’s all be ordinary in our sameness; unique in the same way. Sacrifice everything in the process; including your dignity. Allow yourself to be humiliated, violated and separated from your family, for the purpose of being this new number you have been assigned. Give up your life and your well-being, for Queen and country, and give up your family, in the process. Why had I bothered? Who was I doing this for, anyway, if not for my family. Who was I without them? Who the hell was I at all?

I’d gone from the child from a broken and dysfunctional family; pleasing others and changing for them, just 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? A badge I’d longed to have since I was five years old. Was it really worth the dream? 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. This will 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 inevitably 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, of course 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, at the time. I couldn’t think of a single reason why he seemed to think that 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, that the Canadian Forces Housing Authority (CFHA) would probably charge my kids for clean-up of my PMQ, anyway.

My kids!! How could I do this to them, especially after they had sacrificed so much, themselves already; for Queen and country? I'd been away for so long, and missed so much because of this career choice. Why had I bothered? Was it worth the sacrifice my family had to make? 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 signing my life away to Queen and country.

I reconsidered the repercussions of taking my own life. I reconsidered my decision to end it all; to end all the fucking chaos, disorder, trauma, loss, pain, hurt, disappointment and rejection. At one point, I almost got out of the tub. Until the flashbacks started again; his fingers inside me, his hand on my mouth. I remembered 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, about 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, actually. 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 trauma. I thought about the time I’d been forced to give a boy oral sex on my sixteenth 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. Because 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, advising 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 many times and hadn’t properly processed any of it. 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 even, 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, self-efficacy and self-love. Of what I had allowed others to do to me, that had broken me and shaped me in this twisted way; shaped my empathy, similarly.

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 misogynistic guy at work; one of many, I had encountered, as that was normal, military culture, at the time. He was my first coach officer and, made my life a living hell at the detachment. I remembered a ‘welfare check’ call we went on when I was brand new to the detachment. Me suggesting that, there was something wrong and that the door needed to be breached; that we needed to get in there to find out what had happened. Him, arguing with me; 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 wasn’t 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 sure 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 Commanding Officer’s (CO’s) warrant to arrest me for AWOL, I’m sure. Instead of realizing that 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 razor blade 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 with such ferocity, that it startled me and made me knock 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.”. It was the lyrics from the Kate Voegele song, “It’s Only Life”; that woke me up, and that ultimately, saved my 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, towelled 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 for this girl, anymore”. And then I thought, “thank you God, life, divine intervention or whatever the hell you want to call it.” I guess I didn’t really want to do it. I didn’t really want to kill myself. 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.

I thought, “Thank you, Kate. Thank you for reminding me not to give up; reminding me, that, “It’s only life, after all. I did, eventually, get these lyrics tattooed on my wrists; as a reminder, for if and when things got dark again for me. A reminder of how precious and short life is. A reminder of how important it is to keep going in times of darkness. A reminder of how much I have to give others, and how much fight I still have in me. A reminder that I need to fight for me first, so that I can survive. So, I can survive to fight for others, as well. And, as a reminder of how greatly music can affect a person’s life. How a song, can literally save a person’s life. And, often, without the singer/song writer ever knowing.

In this case, however, the singer/song writer did know. I did have a chance to show her my tattoos, and I got to tell her that she unknowingly reached out to that girl who didn’t think it was worth it anymore, or that she could fight anymore; that she saved a life through her music. That, even though she says, "it's only life", she illustrates, through her music, that it's a life worth fighting for; a life worth saving. And, she saved mine.