What I do.

Hi.

I'd like to talk about a little bit about my job in the medical field. I'm currently an EMT and working for a private ambulance company. Not too long ago, I was just a driver for people in wheelchairs needing transportation to various medical appointments and procedures. I've been doing this for a little over three years now. Learned a few things about the people I interact with. I won't bore you with a lot of details. I just want to share some of the highlights.

You see, one of the things people not involved in the medical field often don't understand, is that's it's more about dealing with people, not so much what their medical issues are. Now, when I encounter someone needing my services, it's never on their best day. Often it's on one of their worst. You think working in customer service sucks? Try it in my field sometime. We human beings can be really bad at interacting with each other. The jerk in line at the coffee shop who treats the barista like crap. The nasty customers at a restaurant who bad mouth their server and don't tip. The person trying to return an item that clearly isn't returnable and goes off on the clerk. The idiot who fried his computer and can't understand what tech support is trying to tell him. We've all got stories and some of us have ourselves been those unfortunates engaging in that lousy behavior. I plead the fifth, ahem. 

Now take that less than perfect person and give them a medical problem to deal with. They are now in a situation that affects them deeply on an emotional and physical level and is often well past their ability to easily understand. What happens to them now is at least partially and often totally removed from their control. If they have to be admitted to a hospital or similar facility they also lose quite a bit of privacy, independence and their dignity. It's not a pretty sight. 

And that's when I get to meet them. Regardless of whether or not they need it from a medical perspective, I'm required by state law and my supervising doctor (whose authority is what guides my actions and carries the legal liability for anything and everything I do) to do a bit of poking and prodding of every patient I transport, every single trip, both ways. It's a good rule, it keeps everybody medically safe and legally protected. It is however, often annoying to my patients. I ask them questions they've been asked a dozen times already. I take their vital signs, which is sometimes difficult and uncomfortable. I get to know a lot of very personal information that could cause them a great deal of harm if I were to steal or share it. Most patients don't really seem to be bothered as much as they could be by that last bit. Some are. Then they get to sit or lay down on a relatively uncomfortable cot in the back of my ambulance with me. You feel every bump, curve, stop and start about ten times more back there than in a normal car seat. It can really suck on long trips. A lot of people get car sick and some even throw up.
At either end of a trip, my patient and I also get to deal with staff at the facilities offering them their care. These places are often understaffed and overworked. This does not always lead to an easy exchange. We have to wait on them and we aren't usually their highest priority. 

Now, most of the time, things go relatively smoothly despite all the potential for it not to. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I'm late, usually due to having a previous transport take more time than expected or just a really busy schedule with not enough crews to fill the gaps. Paperwork gets misplaced and has to be tracked down. Facility staff is having an especially trying day with their other patients or even mine. Patients of mine often aren't able to do much for themselves when these hiccups happen and it's my job to step in for them and deal with it. 

I'm good in a crisis, better in a disaster. I stay calm under pressure. I have a knack for smoothing out wrinkles and making things work even when everything seems to be trying to go wrong. People instinctively like me. I have the ability to empathize with their problems and help them cope a bit better. I've found that this talent is often the most important part of my skill-set, more so than my ability to drive an ambulance or take vital signs. Yeah, I can restart a heart or splint a broken bone and those are great things. However, what I'm more concerned about is talking to the elderly lady with dementia or consoling a child that doesn't understand why mommy won't wake up after the car accident. Not everybody has both the compassion to do those things and the strength to do it, every single time. We EMT's, Medics, Nurses and Doctors, we have to be able to do both. And I'm glad I can. 

So, if the day comes when you see me walk up to you after you've been through the ringer, just know that you're not just a job to me. You're my patient and I'm going do whatever it takes to understand what you're going through and give you the best I have, every time.

He wanted me

I was inspired to write this after watching a short clip from an iconic show, "the Fresh Prince of Bel Air". The clip is very different from much of the show's humor and comedy driven content. It's incredibly poignant and displays actor Will Smith's capacity for raw emotion in his acting.
I'll put it here, go ahead and watch it before reading further.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSKyaXkzVvc

In it, the character Will is rejected at the last minute by his biological father after being under the impression they were going to spend some time together. It's made pretty clear by Will's following speech to his uncle Phil that he's desperate for that kind of father-son interaction and it's been largely absent in his life.

I've not spoken too much about my father to very many people in my various social circles. To be sure, I don't say much of any import about my family in general outside of the people who already know them well. And that's not because they're terrible people. I'm just reserved about such things.

Today I'd like to put something out there about my dad. You see, I started this path of becoming ideal with the realization that my various dysfunctions weren't something I had (mostly) done to myself and I wasn't doomed to live under their rule. I'm dysfunctional largely in part due to my parent's dysfunctions. Most people are, really.

In my case, I share several of my dad's less attractive personality traits, like conflict aversion, terrible time management and putting myself down whenever someone compliments me. He's more extreme, I acquired a few traits from my mother and other adult figures in my life that have really helped balance me out better. I should point out that my dad and I also share a number of positive traits. We're both compassionate, generous with our time and resources and people instinctively like us, or at least don't dislike us. 

When I decided I was going to get better, one of the things I had to do was take stock of the various negative influences in my life. My relationship with my dad stood out prominently. We can bring out the worst in each other, especially when I was a teenager and felt the need to push my boundaries. This often forced the two of us into confrontations that neither of us really knew how to handle well. Now, my mom and I could argue productively. She brought out my more assertive traits and knew to fight fair, even with her own kid. Dad didn't fight fair, because he hated having to fight at all. He often just tried to assert his authority and attempt to manipulate my emotions, particularly guilt. Which is fine (and sometimes necessary) when you're talking to a 5 year-old, not so much an emotionally intuitive teenager. First I feared him, then I resented him and finally I began to regard him with contempt. I realized that the time he spend lecturing me was more to reassure himself that he was right, not so much to correct me. 

This screwed up my ability to know when I should or shouldn't feel guilt and remorse over my behavior. Since I wanted to be a good person, I erred on the side of feeling guilty by default, while simultaneously resenting the situation and usually person that caused the feeling. This is not healthy, at all. It causes you to build up a lot of self loathing and disappointment. And frustration with the world around you.

Fortunately, I got better. I'm still getting better. I've learned to focus on the positive aspects of myself and put effort into making them grow stronger. And this caused me to also look at other people with a different perspective. Like my dad, who I eventually realized hadn't gotten where he was by himself. His father screwed him up, too. The more I find out about my dad's interactions with my grandfather, the more I understand why my dad is the way he is. I'm still not "ok" with it. He could be better.

Here's the thing, though. My dad didn't screw me up as badly as his did him. That might sound like faint praise, but it's not. Because it wasn't an accident. He very deliberately loved me to the best of his ability. I know this, because unlike a lot of men, my dad chose to be my father on purpose. My biological father was a married coworker of my mother's that she had an affair with. He was a bit older and I never got the chance to meet him before he died. 
My dad married my mother and adopted me. I never felt like I wasn't his son. Even at our worst, that never happened. The one time he asked me if knowing I was half adopted was why I was acting out, I broke down in tears because he asked with such anguish in his voice. It never got brought up again. And you know what else? When my dad sees and hears about the things I've accomplished in my life and the lives of others, the teary-eyed look of pride he gets, it makes my day. So, when I look at him, I don't hear the word "stepdad". I hear the word "daddy". 

That's because, unlike the Fresh Prince's dad, my dad wanted me.

Birthdays Matter

So, it was my birthday yesterday. I used to hate birthdays. It sucks being that kid whose birthday falls near or on a holiday. Nobody has time to really focus on you. Now,  my parents were excellent about making sure I got Christmas and birthday presents independently. It was really kind of them to do that, given they had 8 other kids to worry about. However, not everybody else got the memo. And besides that, who wants to throw a birthday party the same week as Christmas? After a while, I started looking at my birthday as a big hassle. I didn't want to be a bother. I rarely complained other than right around the time. Eventually, I just started to ignore it altogether. Didn't seem like a big deal at the time. I still got presents, people still occasionally remembered to send cards and stuff. And the whole birthday thing just kind of faded out of my list of "gives a crap".

Then I started dating this girl. She acted like I was a big deal. That I mattered, a lot. She made it clear that she thought the world of me. I tried to brush it off, not let it get to me too much. Understand, I appreciated the effort. And I love this girl, to point of marrying her. I just had a problem with thinking much of myself. At the time we started dating, I was of the opinion that I was a failure. I had flunked college, got fired from two jobs and life wasn't going well. I wasn't even trying to be in love with her, because I though I wasn't good boyfriend material. That part got taken out of my hands. I fell for her like I'd stepped out of an airplane at 10,000 feet. So, anyway, two years after we started dating, she decided to throw me a surprise party. For my birthday. I'd let slip how much it sucked to have a birthday around the holidays. And apparently I came across as a bit bitter about it. So she got everyone in my life that could show up to do so. I walked into a room at the church my parents attended without a clue. And proceeded to receive the biggest "Happy Birthday" I've ever heard. Friends, family and just people I knew were there to wish me well and happy. My bitter cold heart towards birthdays melted on the spot. And I've never recovered. It was sweetest thing anyone's ever done for me.

My wife still makes a big out of me, especially about my birthday. And I love it. I don't even pretend to brush it off anymore. I now understand that it's important to have someone tell you that you matter. 

Because you do matter.

Something Good

So,
I realize that the last post was a bit negative.

I mean, that's how I felt. About that one topic. I'm not going to take it back. However, there are a lot of things going on in my life. And I have feelings about all of them. Allow me to share something more positive. 

This past Wednesday night, I passed my EMT class. I'm gonna take a moment to appreciate what that means for me...*Big Sigh of Relief* 
It means I did it. I broke the cycle of failure that has plagued me my entire adult life. I don't have to take crap from my subconscious about what a loser I am, anymore. I DID something that matters. In the process I lost my job and it's been incredibly stressful trying to deal with that and still stay on top of all the other things in my life. There were days I really wanted to give up again. But I didn't. I won, fair and square, against my own broken nature. And I don't even care that there is still a state test I have to take, because I'm gonna nail it. I can feel it.

Damn, that feels good. You know what else feels good? Writing here again. without something terrible happening to prompt it. I'm long overdue getting this writing thing kicked off properly. Now, I feel like I can really do it. Actually, I feel like I can do just about anything. And you know what? I probably can. This feeling will pass and there will almost certainly be dark moments in my life again. That said, I will always have this moment as an objective marker of my ability to persevere and come through. I've never really had anything like this before. It defies even my subconscious' facility for minimizing my accomplishments so it can make me feel like shit.

Cause you see, I have some kind of depression. And when you have depression, your mind screws with you. It lies to you, cheats you and distorts your reality. And when your own mind does that to you, it really helps to have external and objective reminders of reality. And now I have one.

There you go, something good.

Just how I feel

Tonight catches me in a rare moment.

I have decided to try sharing that moment with any of you that happen to read it.

I am a creature of feeling. I prioritize emotion and meaning over rational thought and logic. This is a part of myself that has actually bothered me quite a bit. I mean, much of our society prizes the engineers, scientists and business people over the poets, musicians and artists (celebrities not withstanding). And why not? Every society has to have it's "folk that get stuff done" in order to survive. I mean, let's be honest, us touchy-feely folk aren't gonna do it. We'd try if we had to, but something would eventually get the better of our attention and then everything would go to hell. 

I have the heart of a poet, but the skills of a mechanic or a laborer. And I hate that. I can't seem to focus long enough to develop the skills to actually reflect my nature and heart's desire. I can't draw, can't sing, can't play an instrument and can't write well. Put a broken car or electronic device in front of me and I'll fix it, given the right tools and a chance to study the problem.

But I can't tell you why the sunset makes me weep sometimes. Or why a song just cuts my heart into pieces for no reason. I lack the tools for that job. And it hurts. I feel locked inside myself without outlet. Every time I try to get something out, I can't satisfy myself with it and it gets discarded. I want to inspire people, make them think and feel things they never have before. But all my hands seem to get out is utter rubbish. Don't ask me about my voice. Hate the sound of it.

I don't know how many times I've sat in front of this computer and tried to get words typed up to share. I'm not even sure if I'll make it this time, either. We'll see.

My wife has often encouraged me to blog and write more often. Her insistence is kind and thoughtful, but it makes me feel inadequate when I still can't manage to get something done.

Many times I wish I could just stop having all these worthless feelings that rattle around my head. That I could just become like Spock or Sherlock or even like my wife. I get tired of being distracted by the feelings and never being able to use them for anything productive or even creative. It's a tough spot to be in and I feel like I'm wasting my life trying to be something I'm not. The problem, is that I don't what I am supposed to be. Nor how aspire to it.

There, that's my rare moment. I'm telling you how I feel and not backing out at the last minute. 

Thanks for reading.

A thing that happened to me.

About a year ago, about the same time I tried to start this blog, I fell into melancholy. Clinically referred to as mild depression, melancholy is something that happens to people for a lot of reasons. In my case it's usually just one of the emotional phases that I go through periodically. This time was different. It wasn't just a couple days or weeks of being at low ebb. For months, I was unable to be happy or joyful about anything.

I avoid conflict and stress instinctively, even more so than most other people. And while there are a number of healthy ways to do this, I often do so in unhealthy ways like put off important things that I feel insecure about or just plain don't want to deal with. Obviously, this doesn't solve the problem and in fact almost always makes it worse when I finally am forced to confront what I am avoiding.

In this particular case, I was supposed to apply for EMT class. It's something I have wanted to do for several years now and was intended to be the beginning of my career as an emergency medical professional. Thing was, I had a few things going in my life that were going to make that more difficult.

For starters, when I went to college, I flunked out. I wasn't a bad student and my grades were good. My major was criminal justice, I wanted to be a cop like my mom. Towards the end of my first semester, the pressure of deadlines and uneasiness towards a future of even harder classes got to me and I suddenly folded up. I made a lot of excuses for myself, but fundamentally, I just stopped trying.

Guilt and self doubt became good friends of mine at this point and they helped lead me into a years-long cycle of: Find a job, try to care about job, fail to to care about job, begin to sabotage myself at said job and ultimately lose job. Increase levels of self doubt and guilt, then repeat exercise in futility. Finally I tried to break the cycle. I put everything I had into my job, despite not liking it. I started angling for a promotion and after almost 2 years, I became a shift manager. 3 days later, I was fired for violating a zero tolerance policy for tardiness. I tried appealing to the owner of the establishment and was cussed out and mocked for my efforts. I felt betrayed and completely rejected. So I went back to my first love, law enforcement. I applied for a position at the local police department and began the process of qualifying. It was a competitive situation, they weren't going to hire all the applicants and my first attempt had failed (it was about a year after flunking college). I got to the same phase I had previously, an interview with three current officers to explain to them why they should let me be a cop. And... I choked. I just didn't show up to the interview. I told my parents and my girlfriend that my job had me scheduled for that day and time and wouldn't let me off. Truth was, I made no effort to be available for that interview. At some point, I had become filled with fear of rejection and failure. Once again guilt and self doubt crippled me.

Two successful, but poorly paying jobs later, I broke down and got a position at my dad's workplace. It paid well, I wasn't at odds with my dad anymore (I had grown very far apart from him in my adolescence) and I wanted to marry my girlfriend, Valerie. Her encouragement and support was a huge bright spot in my professionally unfulfilled life. Eventually I decided to find another career that I cared about emotionally as well as financially. I looked to the closest field to my law enforcement interest, emergency medicine. I got a job transporting people in wheelchairs to their medical appointments and started to learn more about the business. Eventually, I decided it was the field for me and I started to looking for education options.

Now we are back to just about a year ago. I'm working full time and I want to learn how to be an EMT and possibly then a Paramedic. However, I still had this personality defect of putting off things that intimidate me. And boy, was I intimidated. It had been almost ten years since I had graced the halls of higher learning. Ten years filled with bad life choices and patterns of behavior that I hadn't completely recovered from. I had been working in the medical transport field for about a year and a half already. The idea was to be already working for a company that would employ me as an EMT once I acquired the certification. So far so good, but I kept finding reasons not to go ahead and apply for a class. I found the course I wanted to take and had even contacted the people running it to make sure I could get in. And yet, once again, fear and doubt crept up and paralyzed me.

So I let the deadline go by without enrolling.

Immediately after, I left on a week long trip to indulge in my favorite hobby, boffer weapon combat. I had a great time and met many cool people. I forgot all about going to school, my career and all that stuff.

Then I came home. I went about my routine as before, working, playing, eating and sleeping. There was no event or moment that I can point to and say, “right there, that was when I became depressed.” You see, it happens gradually, creeping up on you until it's too late to stop it. And that's what happened. It was almost two moths before I was able to realize something was wrong. Valerie noticed well before then, but she only knew that “something” was off, not what. As I said, melancholy is a natural part of my spectrum of moods. Normally it comes on and then it cycles out in favor of something else. And for two months, it hadn't. I went deeper and deeper into numbness and joylessness. I'm not sure I can describe what this is like to someone who hasn't experienced it to that degree. You may think of depression as sadness or grief. That's not really accurate. A lot of people with depression often refer to it as being filled with nothing. A Nothing so big and impenetrable that it crowds out all emotion and feeling, even pain. This is more like what I experienced.

I won't go on about it. If you never understand what it's like, be at peace with that.

Once I began to understand what was happening to me, two emotions broke through the cloud of Nothing. One was terror, a fear more intense than any I had felt before. The other was rage. My own mind and body had betrayed me. Although I couldn't express these emotions outwardly, inside I was roiling. And I'm pretty sure these negative emotions are responsible for my eventual recovery. Because I started fighting back, hard. It was the most difficult thing I've ever done. I'm choking up thinking about it right now. Every day I got up and lived my life. And every day was agony, forcing myself to embrace the pain of terror and anger, because it was the only thing I could feel. You may think this is horrible, but understand, they were all I had and I clung to them desperately. (Three Day's Grace has a song called “Pain” that very bluntly describes this experience).

So I fought and I fought and I fought. I refused to give in to Nothing. At some point, I rediscovered sadness through listening to music and I cried for the first time in months. It was exhilarating and cathartic. I quickly dove into listening to music to try and extract the rest of my emotions from the dark place they had disappeared into. I talked with a counselor about things that might help accelerate the process of recovery. I prayed and listened to God, asking for my joy back. I mostly struggled privately, though I told a few friends about it afterward.

Valerie was immensely supportive and patient throughout this experience. She's an incredibly good listener. She doesn't try to make you feel better, just hears you out.

One day, I laughed. Actually I bellowed so hard I almost passed out. My ribs hurt, but it was awesome. The battle was over, I had won. It sounds too simple, even to me. And yet, that's where it ended. My joy was back. I could be happy, sad or whatever, and my mind and body were mine again.

A couple of months later, I enrolled in emt classes and am currently doing quite well.

So, there you are, this thing that happened to me.

Clarity, I hope so.

And another thing.
Sorry, I shouldn't make Douglas Adams references I probably can't tie into my actual post.
Having said that, another thing about me that some may find interesting, is how many seemingly conflicting viewpoints I have.
For instance, I am (in terms of what I personally believe) a rather conservative Christian. I  believe the Bible is the written word of God and it is completely valid for the modern age. Including the prohibition against the lifestyle of homosexuality. I completely reject the concept of two men or women being in a marriage. However, so long as the federal and state governments continue to tax and regulate people based on their legal union status, I happen to think it is absolutely fair to allow any two people to enter into a legal status that protects their interests in the same way a traditional marriage currently does for heterosexual couples.
My preference would be to take the word marriage out of the legal code involving this union. The word "marriage" means something very important to a lot of cultures (including mine) and it is unfair to ask us to accept a meaning that offends us. Since we will never agree to surrender our meaning, I think we should take the word 'marriage' out of the law and leave it up to the respective couples and their society to label the relationship. You want call two men in a committed sexually active relationship 'married'? Fine, go right ahead. It's a free country and you can think and say what you believe. Please, just don't try to force me to compromise my deeply held beliefs while you do so. And don't condemn me for my stance on this issue, none of you have the right to do so.
Both sides in this argument have valid points, but as long emotion clouds reason, I don't believe we will come to an acceptable solution.
In summary:
If you think homosexuality is wrong and that marriage is only between a man and a woman, good for you. We agree, on that. We just don't have the right to force people to accept a law that penalizes their consensual behavior. The constitution doesn't recognize that right, because God didn't give it to us.
If you think you have you have the right to the same legal status with your same-sex partner that I'm entitled to as a result of my marriage to my wife, good for you. We agree, on that. We just don't have the right to force people to accept a law defines marriage's meaning as something that deeply offends their beliefs.

This is a pretty good outline of beliefs on this issue. Some people on my side of the meaning of marriage will never accept the concept of letting homosexuals have their legal status, no matter what is called. Some people on the other side of the meaning of marriage will never be satisfied with merely agreeing to disagree. They both want to use the law to force the other side into submission. I utterly distance myself from both of those elements.