Twisted Trauma

In August of 2012, I finally achieved my childhood dream of becoming a Police Officer. I can remember as a young child, my obsession was taking scissors and cutting out pictures of Police Officers from magazines. I would cut them out perfectly and stick them all over my bedroom wall.

Now, here I was! A real Police Officer ready to keep my community safe. Scissors I had used as child to cut my favourite pictures of Police Officers out, were now being used by my own son to cut his father’s picture out of the local newspaper.

This is my story. On Friday, October 13, 2017, I responded to a call for a missing 14 year old girl. After searching the whole property where she lived, I ended up finding her hanging in a barn from suicide. She had the same name as my daughter, and was so young. The next couple of weeks, I started to feel off. I was having really scary nightmares and flashbacks that were of the girl hanging in the barn. I was having trouble sleeping and was suffering with severe anxiety and depression.

Two months later, on December 8, 2017, just a few months later. I responded to another call where a male had left his girlfriend’s house saying he was going to kill himself. When I got on scene, I followed some footprints in the snow, out into a forest. The footprints led me right to the male hanging in a tree from suicide.

Over the next two years, I kept working even though my mental health was deteriorating. Then June 2019 came, and I was parked in my cruiser on a night shift. I had pulled into a parking lot at 3am in the morning. I was having thoughts of suicide. Tears were flowing from my eyes, and my mind was telling me to kill myself. I could feel my hand on the gun. Then from some miracle, I pulled a picture of my children out of my wallet. This gave me a moment of clarity within all of the chaos that was going on inside my mind. I decided to stay alive for my kids. I went home and broke down to my wife.

My doctor diagnosed me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and wrote me off work right away. I’ve been in therapy ever since. I am in recovery and slowly getting better. It has been extremely difficult trying to overcome the anxiety, depression, and fear from PTSD. Through my therapy I discovered writing. I started to write songs but I can’t sing, so I quickly turned them into poems. The poems were of all my thoughts and memories that I have stored in my mind. People started listening to them online and some people messaged me, saying how much my poems were helping them with their recovery. So I figured that if my poems were helping people, maybe my stories would as well. So I started a podcast called Twisted Trauma and then a fundraiser to raise money and awareness for mental health. I have so far raised approximately $8000 for different mental health programs in my community. I had my picture in the paper presenting a cheque to the mental health program at our local hospital. When the paper was delivered, I watched as my son used his scissors to cut my picture out of the paper. He took the picture and taped it to his bedroom wall.

My son and I, had both used scissors to cut out our heroes and decorate our bedroom walls. Giving both of us hope and happiness for the future.