Long Story Made Short….

I guess its time for another heart felt apology to the Administrative Staff and the readers and followers of  Hoopieworld.  I signed on to write a “weekly” or as close to weekly as possible article.  I have failed to do that and wish to express my sincere regrets.  I have been going through as messed up a divorce as anyone in the history of the world could ever suffer through. (But that’s my sob story and I will not harass any one with reading through the details.) While muddling by, during the last few months, I began to think of all of my friends in the Public Safety fields who have met the same fate.  So now I am compelled to share my thoughts on why the divorce rate for Emergency responders is so high.

Let’s begin with what I hope we can all agree are the obvious explanations. There are many demands put on an individual who chooses to serve his or her community.  There are the endless hours of meetings, trainings, and fund raisers.  It seems to me that in the Post 911 world we live in, these demands may never cease to grow. When I was a kid growing up in the fire station , the Fire Station was just that.  It was a group of men and women who responded to primarily Fire incidents.  But in the 18 years that I have been involved as a responder I have seen the addition of EMS, Rescue and HAZMAT responses.  I have sat through many classes where the Instructor has referred to Fire Service Responders as ” Jack of all trades Master of None”. It has become clear to see, that despite my valiant efforts to prove otherwise, ( I wanted to be the First Master of ALL)  that this is as true now as it ever will be. I can’t say that  I see an end to the  need for an all inclusive service to remove people  from the bad situations they always seem to place themselves in. I guess we can call it job security, but it will have a toll on some eventually. We have all had the unfortunate opportunity to miss a family get together or  a young child’s sporting event or dance recital.  I’m sure we understand the concept of ” Family First”.  I have found my self on many occasions allowing my desire to help others come before my family and friends. I have made countless friends in the business and even considered some of them brothers and sisters in the literal sense.  We all have used the phrase ” Brotherhood”.  I don’t disagree with the concept. The brotherhood has been the cause of several of my friends separations.  We all have to separate our selves from the work we do occasionally.  I found in my case that it gave me a chance to see where I went wrong and what was needed to keep from going insane.  I called it my “mental health break”.  If we don’t take the breaks it causes burn out.  Once burned out,  I feel that its hard to regain the passion for the grind.  The grind is all that I have mentioned so far and much more.  We have calls that we will always remember, faces we will never forget, and all the other memories of thing we’ve seen or done.  You can sit at any Fire or EMS station and here the so called “War Stories”.  I actually enjoy listening to people share their experiences.  I like to think that I may learn from the experiences that these folks have gone through.  I also like to think that if I give 10-15 minutes of my precious time,  I may be allowing these people a much needed chance to “off load” some baggage. I can only speak about me, but  I tend to internalize alot of grief until it has to explode. (YES thats the cause of the divorce).  I think most Emergency responders do this too.   For us its the most sensible way to deal with pain. Just hide it away.  Tell a joke or two and laugh it off. I didn’t mean for this article to become a tutorial in CISD.  I did want to put the thought out there for everyone to think about.  We need to thnk outside the box a little.  We all are trained to the highhest degree possible.  We can handle almost any situation that we are thrown in to.  If we are so well adapted to helping others , why is it that we neglect ourselves.  How can we continue to place ourselves in to the worst of situations and keep expecting good things to happen.  I believe that it was Albert Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is to continue to do the same things while expecting different results. Pleas folks, take some time for you.  We all deserve the best for us too.    It makes a huge difference to everyone in the end.

STAY SAFE  KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

FTM-PTB-EGH

FIREWALKER

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