To My Peer Support Counsellor:
I lived the first 30 years of my life just fine.
No criminal record, no DUI, not even an at fault accident.
My issues didn’t begin until I moved to Saskatoon, which I didn’t even do recklessly.
I don’t need to come up with a “plan” for anything.
If I think I’m having a heart attack, my plan is to call 9 / 11.
I’m not gonna bother coming up with a plan B of what I’ll do if their response is “actually, we would much rather you die…” as the Dubé told me to my face MULTIPLE times.
And then to be told by an ER doctor that I was being incredibly selfish and inconsiderate in showing up at the hospital thinking that I deserved assistance.
I lived the first 30 years of my life just fine.
I fully intend to live the next 30 the same way.
I’m not going to be shamed for anything I’ve been through.
A year ago a Saturday morning would have been spent in bed in the middle of a bender.
This past Saturday I had Pip at her 11am gymnastics class, and sat and visited with the other parents for the duration of the 1.5 hour class.
I don’t need you to be told to touch grass, put on some soothing music, or take a deep breath.
I don’t need to be told to come up with an outlet for the rage or violence that I don’t struggle with.
I didn’t reach out to you today for anything minor. I reached out to you because the exact same thing that happened a year ago with Kenny happened again with Ollie, but compared to a year ago, I’m in a infinitely better place in life, and instead of destroying me like it did a year ago, it was the catalyst I needed to vindicate and exonerate all my pain and suffering over the past 6 years.
I fully acknowledge that this is going to have to end some day, which is why I’m comfortable setting a timeline of after bottom surgery (you keep reminding me that this can’t keep going forever, then get frustrated with me for being unable to see it as anything but black and white, which is something that I have explained to you many times).
I don’t need weekly intensive therapy.
I didn’t need it for 30 years.
I don’t need an outlet for my rage.
I’ve never even punched a hole in a wall.
I know you’re not the medical professional who told me to my face that there’s no way that I don’t beat Jacey, but you’re also telling me that I need to figure out a different, more physical and violent method of letting out my anger, when I have tried to explain to you time and time again that I’ve never had anyone in my life, until Chris, that I felt truly comfortable opening up to.
I wouldn’t have survived to meet Chris without you.
The past 5 years, any time I’ve had something positive to say, or I’ve had to defend myself, I’ve had no choice but to fight for my life and had to repeatedly justify my existence on a daily basis.
Since you and I started working together, I’ve came to trust and feel safe around you, and our time has been anything but in vain.
When we met April 2024, I was living with Jacey, in active addiction, and had just started my job at Impact.
You’ve seen me through Saskatoon, Hastings, Calgary, Regina, Julez, Chris, Ollie.
I don’t NEED to talk to you on a weekly basis anymore.
We’ve set a tentative end date of bottom surgery.
We’ve reduced our sessions to monthly.
UNLESS something like Ollie, Hotel Sask, or anything else totally unforeseen happens, in which case I am in crisis, and after even having Laurie tell me to pull the trigger already when I reached out to her to talk through saving Julez’s life.
After reaching out to a certified mental health counsellor who I befriended.
Who gave me her card and told me I could call her any day, any time, any reason, and she would help me out, only to actually call her in the middle of a crisis, and have her tell me “you’re being extremely immature right now, Raye. You seriously need to grow the fuck up!” before hanging up on me.
I trust(ed) you to be the one person I have in my life (prior to meeting Chris) whom I didn’t have to worry about whether Jeckyl or Hyde would be answering my call that day.
I will eventually be fully comfortable talking to Chris, but for now, you are still the one person who knows the most about me and that I trust(ed) to be honest and call me out.
All I’m asking is that we keep checking in with each other on a monthly basis for the next 9-18 months till after bottom surgery, as I know there will be some unknowns surrounding that which I’ll probably need help working through.
But for now, if checking in with each other for one hour once a month for the next 9-18 months, even if it’s only to update you on how good my life is going, so that I don’t have to waste time getting you up to speed when I need you is time that you could better spend elsewhere, then I’ll understand, and I’ll make sure I give you enough of a heads up cancelling my session if I only have positive things to tell you about that month.
“Don’t you think that you should come up with a plan so that you don’t overreact like such a drama queen next time this inevitably happens to you?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. He graped you. Boo hoo. Get over it. How about I help you come up with a plan so that you don’t react like such a little bitch after you inevitably get raped again”.
“Maybe you should check yourself into a maximum security prison before you try to make Columbine look like an outbreak of food poisoning”
“I… I’ve never even implied anything of the sorts…
“Yeah, well that’s what you’re going to attempt if you’re allowed to remain in public…”
“Yeah, yeah, you lost everything in a house fire. Get over it. You have missed an unacceptable number of days in the past 2 weeks, and I have no choice but to put you on a performance improvement plan. You have to prove you allegiance to your job, and next time your house burns down, you have no excuse to miss more than a half day of work, as you already know what the process afterwards entails, and hopefully you won’t be such a little bitch about it next time. You’re bumming everyone out”.
Why is it MY responsibility to have 1000 individual contingency plans for everything up to and including Abraham Lincoln rising from the dead and shooting me in the back with a musket?
Why is it MY responsibility to be hyper vigilant and aware that anyone at any time for any or no reason whatsoever intends to grievously harm me, and I have no say in it whatsoever?
Why is it MY responsibility to temper and restrain MY honest, pure, and visceral reactions to genuinely traumatic, life altering tragedies that would have destroyed and ended a mere human, then to come out the other end with a massive redemption arc, ending with with a wife, house, and two kids way faster than I would have if I had gotten someone pregnant, all while going cold turkey off of whatever I had been trying to kill myself with.
No one is taking that away from me.
No one is taking away the fact that I saved Julez’s life.
I don’t need to keep a 3 terabyte folder full of contingency plans on my desktop in case I accidentally end up getting stabbed a third time in a case of mistaken identity.
I don’t need to keep cycling through everything bad everyone has ever done to me so I can make sure I haven’t missed any of them.
I don’t need to be told “well that one is on you for trusting him”.
PLEASE just let Chris and I live our lives in peace and happiness, without having to constantly watch our backs.
The fact that Chris and I have BOTH survived pain, suffering, betrayals, and losses that we have, and we STILL prefer to assume the best in everyone that we cross paths with is the only true measure of who Chris and I both are at our core that anyone needs to judge us upon.
The world gave us EVERY excuse to become cold, bitter, resentful, hateful people, but we didn’t.
I do not appreciate your attempts to plant seeds of paranoia and hyper vigilance in me, “because remember that extremely traumatic, life destroying, catastrophic event that happened to you 4 years ago? Yeah! There’s a very high probability that it’ll happen at least two more times in your life, so maybe you should take the next few days off to reflect on your dramatic overreaction and if you are willing to agree to only take one day off to grieve next time someone runs over your cat”.
I’m done being quiet about everything I’ve been through and everything I’ve survived and suffered through.
I’ve decided that my new litmus test when I’m deciding whether or not someone is worth bothering to invest any more time into is to tell them my story about saving Julez’s life, while being open and honest about the fact that her and I were both high on meth when this all happened. If, by the end of the story, they had stopped listening to a word I was saying as soon as I mentioned meth, then that’s not someone worth my time.
Because I’m DONE watering down the absolute miracle I managed to pull off with Julez by telling people that her and I were smoking legal cannabis.
I get to fall asleep beside Chris now.
The haters can scream and moan all they want, as the only screams and moans I’m concerned about these days are those of pleasure coming from my bombshell of a wife.
