Bittersweet

Bittersweet.  An oft used word when describing polar feelings.  It is defined as arousing pleasure tinged with sadness or pain.  When thinking back on 2015, afuckingmen to that.

Experts always say start with the good stuff first because your body releases dopamine, the "feel good" hormone, and that allows you to better handle the bad stuff that comes afterwards.  If you tell the bad news first and then the good, your body is already in a state of "depression" per se and concentrates on that without ever really hearing the good stuff.

Now having said that, on with the good news...I fell in love.  Okay, more on that later.

Next, the mental wellness initiative that I advocated for within my department is moving forward.  Key aspects of it are already in place or will be enacted within the first few months of the year.  The program will...

• conduct in-service training to sworn and civilian personnel.  The training will include mental health conditions, warning signs, intervention techniques, coping skills, and available resources.
• identify providers within our current Employee Assistance Program (EAP) that have experience in dealing with law enforcement officers and the trauma they face.
• conduct family support training.  This training is designed specifically for family members and loved ones and includes warning signs, intervention techniques, available resources, and forming a support system.
• provide for an annual wellness check-in for sworn personnel where they can meet with a mental health professional to review the year gone by and sharpen coping skills to prepare for unforeseen future stress and trauma.
• increase our department's membership with the county police peer support team.
• create publications to promote and educate about the initiative and wellness issues.  Materials will include business-sized cards for officers to carry on their person.  These cards will have available 24/7 resources and warning signs.
• identify already available 24/7 resources that focus on law enforcement mental health.  These resources will include online, telephone and text support options.

This initiative is comprehensive with the idea of it being proactive as well as reactive to mental wellness issues to not only the officers themselves, but their families and loved ones as well.

A big milestone, that was not originally in the initial proposal, occurred.  I was introduced to a key representative of our county's premier mental health services nonprofit.  I discussed with her the mental wellness issues involving police officers and the unimaginable suicide rate within the law enforcement community.  Despite working for this large nonprofit, she had no idea that police officers kill themselves at a rate two to three times more than they are killed feloniously in the line of duty.

Quite frankly, how could she?  That's simply not something our extremely tight knit, and tight lipped, brotherhood talks about.  When an officer commits suicide, the agency announcement is usually vague on the details.  For example, an active duty police officer within my county, killed herself this past year.  When her department sent out the press release on her death, they said that Christina Splaine died suddenly.  No shit.  A .40 caliber hollow point round traveling at over 1,000 feet per second and entering your cranium at very close range will certainly have that result.  We owe it to Christina and all the other police officers who took their own lives when they felt that they had no other option.  We owe it to them to talk about this, raise awareness, make a change, and break the stigma that has a stranglehold on our law enforcement community regarding this deadly problem.

So, this rep and I are doing something about it.  I have  personal experience and intimate knowledge about these mental wellness issues, such as depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress, and even suicide, and how they relate to and affect our peacemakers.  And she, well, she has sick business sense, smarts and connections to move mountains and make things happen.  Her professional experience is invaluable.  In 2005, she helped lead the fight to have Maryland establish a teen suicide prevention program.  Together, we are looking to pioneer a comprehensive approach to battling these debilitating wellness challenges for law enforcement.  This public-private partnership will attack these issues on two distinct fronts with the hope of cracking the stigma, once and for all, that holds officers down, so those who we summons for help will know they, too, will have someone they can call on to help them.  More details in future posts on this exciting partnership as it progresses throughout the year.

Is the dopamine flowing?  Hopefully a little.  Now for the shit.

I was hired in January 1994 as a part-time park officer in Pennsylvania.  So, in a few days, I'll be starting my 23rd year in law enforcement.  During those more than two decades of police work, sadly, I have been to many line of duty death funerals.  Far too many, really.  But this past month saw a first for me.  One that I pray to God never gets repeated again.  It was the first time that I worked a scene where one of my brothers in arms was killed.  As one of my teammates was completing a U-turn to back up our brother, he saw the officer get struck, thrown, and run over by a small SUV.  My teammate called out over the air "Officer down!"  I will never forget the sound of his voice.  I was riding shotgun with one of my other teammates to pick up my cruiser after it was serviced.  Before the radio transmission was over, he already had his Crown Vic screaming down the road.  We got there moments later, one of the first cars on scene.  I can remember running up to our stricken brother.  He was lying in the roadway, still a piece of the striking vehicle's bumper laying across his legs.  I yelled for someone to get a first aid kit.  I'll never forget the far off look in his eyes or his shallow, labored breathing.  I could see the life within him slipping away.  Since there were countless other officers surrounding his body, I knew there was another aspect to this incident, so I found the driver and began part of the investigation.  I knew through instinct and experience upon contact with him that the driver was intoxicated.  The tragic irony is that my fallen brother was part of the holiday driving under the influence task force.  It was virtually an all night affair.

Officer Noah Leotta would stay on life support another week or so before his family had to make the heart wrenching decision to take him off of it.  I cannot even remotely imagine their pain and suffering.  Five days later, I volunteered to serve on my department's honor guard detail for Noah's funeral.  It was only afterwards that I saw a Washington Post photograph of Noah and my first thought was, "Oh, that's what he looks like."  The image of seeing him lying there in the middle of the roadway will be forever seared on my brain.

Through it all, the good and the bad, my body, mind and soul took hits this year, but it was buoyed by my love and the love of a woman.  After years and years of personal suffering, heartache, and mistakes, I found true love.  In her.  With her.  From her.  And I cannot begin to tell you how critical it is - how absolutely essential to your own health and well being - to have someone in your life that can lift you up with just the sound of their voice.  We need someone to talk to when we suffer from trauma and experience stress.  Believe it.  I am so blessed to have her in my life.  She is my rock and my sounding board.  My safe harbor.

So, for all of it, two thousand fifteen will be a year I will never forget.

Taking Chances

Taking chances.  Really no explanation needed for that two word statement.  Taking chances.  That's what life is all about.  You take a chance when you get in the car to go to the store.  You take a chance  when you place an order at the restaurant.  Or when you buy clothes for your picky ass kid.  Or when you purchase that refurbished "smart" TV on Groupon.  (What?...it still works fine.  I just need it to show Netlflix.)  Of course, there is very little personal risk with any of these meager examples (OK...maybe getting the right clothes for the munchkin...you always wanna keep peace whenever you have an opportunity to do so.)

But make no mistake, many of us take chances on a daily basis that affects our very lives.  One little fuck up could have enormous consequences.  Clearly, police officers make such decisions all the time.  And every time we do, we're taking a risk.  Most times, it weighs on us.  Taking a chance that we're making the right call.  That our decision, say, to not arrest someone in that domestic violence incident and instead "encourage" them to find another place to sleep it off will not lead to a deadly conclusion later on.  Or we take a chance when we're running lights and siren to that personal injury collision and, as we're working our way through shitty rush hour traffic, we're hoping no one will jump out in front of us or that car won't make that last second, unexpected turn and we make impact on body or automobile.

None of this, really, is a grand revelation.  And, quite frankly, even "announcing" that everyone takes chances is trivial.  We all know that we do.  Or, at least, I hope everyone knows that they do.

But some of our greatest chances are made from within.  I read a friend of mine's writing recently, which brought me to this theme.  (Admittedly, I "stole" her title to her blog and it now rests atop this one as well.  No...never said I was overtly creative.  And why reinvent the wheel?)  The risk taking arising from inside us can be the most significant we ever make.

The author wrote, "What holds you back from taking a chance on something that peaks your interest or from doing something you dream of doing?  Fear, usually.  The comfort of the known, maybe."  How very true her words are.

Fear.  And comfort.

She hit the nail right on the head with both.  When I talk to people about my own personal struggles, particularly with my ruinous relationship that constituted a marriage, I speak of the "known" and the "unknown."  If things were so bad for years, why did I stay?  Why did she stay?  I truthfully have no sure idea about her.  Maybe it was the last vestiges of hope in salvaging a sinking ship.  Me?  That's easy.  Well, easy to explain now that I've stepped out of it and can see with clearer eyes.  But not easy while mired in a sea of shit.

Fear paralyzes us.  Most are able to overcome it, but not necessarily when it comes to the big ticket items like changing a career or leaving or starting a relationship.  When we take a chance in one of those arenas we're in the big leagues.  We're playing with our livelihoods.  Our confidence.  And, in all likelihood, our hearts.  If we let that trepidation set in and let it slither through our body, mind, and soul, then it begins to rule our ability to make decisions.  We cripple at the thought of failure.  What if I take that new job, perhaps in another part of the country or even world, and I hate it?  Or suck at it?  Or what if I let my heart go and begin to let my guard down for someone else and then it doesn't work out?  We go our separate ways and I'm scarred.  Burned and hurt.

And that's where comfort comes in.  Those possible outcomes and their ramifications on our psyche, our spirit, can be devastating.  So, we just stay put.  It may totally suck where we've settled, but it's familiar.  We know what to expect.  The problem is, it's mostly bad shit.  But it's more comfortable for us.  Knowing what to expect lets us know to prepare our bodies and minds for the vortex of pain that usually comes when living and experiencing that "bad shit".  (I really wanted to drive the point home here...not too dramatic, I hope, with "vortex".)

That's the way it was for me.  I was miserable.  Arguably, we both were.  But I was debilitated by the fear of the unknown.  And accepting of the known however distressing it was for me.  My mind and, subsequently, my body got into a routine of preparing itself for the worst.  Constantly.  Although cortisol is an important hormone, particularly when it comes to our "fight or flight" mode, excessive amounts of it at sustained levels can have destructive affects on the body.  When we're in a depressed and sorrowful situation, we're in that "fight or flight" mode.  We're always prepared to fight our way out of a complete bullshit argument over dishes or to fly the hell out of that inevitable quarrel and seek refuge somewhere, anywhere, else and thus avoiding the real issue altogether.  I'm confident my cortisol levels were high.  All the time.  Yet even after the separation occurred, I desperately wanted to be back in that defective relationship for no other reason than because it was familiar.  Comfortable per se.

Yet, without having read her blog before, I did what my sweet friend was sharing and advocating.  I took a chance.  On me and what I wanted and needed.  And I lived.  Am living.

If you are there, in a place where you are gripped by fear or moored in a bad spot because you're "comfortable", get up, get out...and take a chance.  On yourself.  On someone else.  Rise up.  Live.  Your life is out there waiting for you.

P.S. A heartfelt thank you to her.  Her own message was an inspiration for mine.