Tag: neglect

What makes this whole thing worse.

What makes this whole matter much worse for me is the fact that people knew.

As I’ve said before.

My father knew about the assaults.

He may not have known about them when they were happening as he was always living off base.

But he knew about them when he eventually had to move back into the PMQ with us on CFB Namao.

Richard used to wear wool sweaters at the time and I used to refer to him as “wooly bully” at the time as in the song by Sam Sham and the Pharos.

When Richard moved back in with us, he was a different man. I was certain at the time that my real father had died on a training exercise and that the Canadian Forces had replaced my father with a look-alike.

Richard may not have known the true extent of what had happened on the CFB Namao, but knew what the babysitter and I had been doing as my father would be in the “counselling” sessions that I started having with Captain Totzke when we were moved down to CFB Griesbach in October if 1980.

Richard was present when Terry told me that he had the base military police watching me and that they’d tell him if I ever kissed or touched another boy.

When Terry said that I shouldn’t play sports because of the change rooms, my father ran with that. Richard never once questioned it. In fact Richard used this logic to deny me permission to go on a swimming trip in Edmonton.

And I know that Richard also used this logic when I was going to Sheppard Public School in Toronto while we were stationed at Canadian Forces Base Downsview. My grade 6 class was going on an end of the year school trip to Quebec City in Quebec. The school was covering the costs of the transportation, and the meals, and the accommodations. Richard didn’t want me going on this trip out of fear that I was going to be uncontrollable with other boys in their beds. Somehow Mr. Cross and Mr. Blair convinced Richard to allow me to go.

It’s obvious that Richard knew.

And it’s obvious that Richard’s attitude towards me was heavily influenced by his knowledge that from age 7 to age 8 I had been sexually abused numerous times over the course of a year and a half.

The fact that Terry had described me as a homosexual at age 9 and that if I didn’t change my ways that I’d be going to prison wouldn’t have really been very beneficial to the relationship between my father and I.

What I wouldn’t know though is how many people knew.

But suffice to say, a lot of people knew.

It’s not the fact that people knew that is driving my desire to die.

It’s the fact that people like Captain Terry Totzke and my own father, Mcpl Richard Gill knew, but allowed my mental health problems to fester untreated.

It the fact that my gender identity and my sexual identity were destroyed by Totzke and my father.

At this point in time, I really don’t give a fucking rat’s ass as to why it was decided to keep me from receiving proper psychiatric counselling for my issues. But, just remember that the DND and the CAF did throw a “wall of secrecy” over the entire Captain McRae matter.

Were they afraid that if I receive counselling for my mental health issues that I’d blab about what had happened on the base, and that this would get the civilian authorities asking questions that DND and the CAF didn’t want asked?

a “Wall of Secrecy”

In fact, I would say that the actions of my father, Mcpl Richard Gill, served to amplify my mental health issues and my suffering.

Just because I didn’t know until 2011 that I had been diagnosed with Major Depression and Severe Anxiety, or that my condition had deteriorated by the summer of 1982 to the point that I was supposed to have been institutionalized in a psychiatric facility, doesn’t lessen the damage.

In fact, not knowing what was really wrong in my head made things that much moe fucking worse as I always blamed myself for being a fucking loser and a fucking fuckup.

There were times in my life when I couldn’t believe how fucking stupid I really was.

The fact that I didn’t know until 2011 that I was in the process of being removed from the home and placed into residential care or foster care doesn’t lessen the fact that the house that I was living in was emotionally and physically abusive.

As I’ve said previously, my father had his own treatments for my depression and anxiety. It was literal kicks in the ass, open handed smacks across the face, hits to the back of the head, the leather belt on my bare ass.

My step mother had her own treatments for my bed wetting and my depression.

My grandmother had her own treatments for my issues.

If I wasn’t left to suffer all of these issues on my own, and if I had received timely help with my issues, what would my life have been like?

Boyfriends, girlfriends?…….. who knows.

Trans, gay, straight, bi?……. again, who knows.

In a way I wish that I didn’t have any sex organs as I really don’t like the idea of sex. Since Namao I’ve always really despised my genitals.

Nowadays there is emasculation surgery, which would remove my penis, my testicles and my scrotum. Absolutely nothing down there save for a little hole for me to pee from.

At least I wouldn’t have that fucking thing down there. That fucking thing that caused so many problems in my life.

The reason I changed my name back in 2008 was more than just to get away from the Gill clan. I had no idea what my gender was. My gender has always confused me. I’ve never really identified as a male. I’ve never identified as a female. I don’t like having sex with women. I don’t like having sex with men.

Actually, that’s not true. Sex with men is great, I prefer sex with men over sex with women. But I don’t have it very often because Totzke and my father are screaming at me in my head. Sex is really unenjoyable with that shit going on.

And as much as I like having sex with men I can’t stop wondering if I’m a homosexual because of what happened on CFB Namao.

So, it really is a no win situation with me.

In 2008 I changed my first name to Bobbie. Bobbie is the unisex spelling. Bobby is the male spelling, Bobbi is the female spelling, and Bobbie is the unisex spelling.

I really loved having a first name that didn’t indicate the junk between my legs.

Is Namao alone my reason for my gender issues. Probably not, but Namao and Totzke really didn’t help with my issues.

There were so many opportunities that I missed out on in life.

Finishing high school?

Trade school?

College?

University?

Theatre?

Arts?

I have no idea of what I could have been or what I should have been.

And remember, I wasn’t able to make these choices because I was lazy, or because I was scatterbrained.

I wasn’t able to make these choices due to intentionally untreated mental health issues that I was left alone to struggle with.

Drugs won’t fix my fucked up brain.

Drugs won’t fix my gender issues.

Therapy, nope, been through a lot of therapy since 2011.

Maybe if I had therapy back between October of 1980 and 1990 things would have worked. But I’m 52 now. The rot in my brain has been allowed to fester since 1980. That’s 44 years now. And it’s not 44 years of issues that no one knew about. That’s 44 years of issues that were started off by 1-1/2 years of sexual abuse and 2-1/2 years of very inappropriate counselling.

I know that there are those who will say that I have to simply try harder. That I need a positive attitude. That I need to be thankful for every day that I am alive. And that I need to stop whinging about something that happened over 40 years ago.

Nope.

I just want M.A.i.D.

If society doesn’t want people like me obtaining M.A.i.D. to escape our pain and our torment, don’t let us suffer this pain or this torment in the first place.

Finger wagging at me, and tut-tutting me are completely inappropriate responses.

I don’t owe it to you to suffer another 20 years so that you can say that you saved me, like I’m some fucking pet project of yours.

My life is my life, I lived it, and I don’t want to live it any more.

Richard Gill Pt. #2

I don’t know why I thought of this, I think it came about because I was out pawn shop surfing a few weeks ago and I noticed some Canon camera gear. Looked like it was part of an ’80s estate sale.
And this post has just sorta been percolating since then.

My old man had a Canon AE1. Which apparently was a fairly decent camera back in the day.

I know he had all sorts of lenses to go with the camera, specifically a really large autofocus lens. He also had a large auto winder for this camera.

The funny thing was, except for taking pictures of hockey games on TV (yeah, he did that), I don’t think he ever took pictures of either me or my brother. I know he never showed up to awards nights at cadets.

My brother and I took part in the Battle of the Atlantic sea cadet parade at Queen’s park just before I quit cadets in the spring of 1987.

I know that as far as 21 gun salutes goes, ours sounded like 3 volleys of random machine gun fire. But what were you expecting from a bunch of 13 to 18 year old kids.

And yes, these were real rifles firing blanks. I’m not sure when cadets were no longer allowed to fire real ammunition, but in my day we had the Lee-Enfield which was originally a .303, but ours had been re-bored for .22. In addition to using these rifles for parades and drill, we used them on the range for target practice.

And I know our parade skills left a lot to be desired, but again we were all kids.

Richard brought all of his camera gear and set up his tri-pod and stuff off on the sidelines. He kept grumbling after that “the stupid camera” didn’t load the film properly.

If I had to guess, the pictures probably turned out, but Richard was more than likely embarrassed that he captured such a rag-tag performance on camera. He was always like that, praise from Richard was all but non-existent, criticism on the other hand came in spades.

For such an avid photographer, he just never seemed to take pictures.

And when he did take pictures, they just didn’t seem to have any life in them.

And the more I think about it, Richard was more about having the knick-nacks than actually using the knick-knacks.

Richard had a shit load of tools, testers, and other stuff, but he rarely used them.

He had broomball gear, but yet he rarely played broomball.

He had hockey gear, but I never saw him play hockey often.

He had a private pilot’s licence, but outside of a couple times at CFB Summerside where he rented a small airplane, he never took my brother and I on flights.

He had a motorcycle licence that he got in the early ’70s. Outside of a few rare rides he never rode his CB550-Four after 1984.

Richard had a ham operators licence, but never owned a ham radio.

Richard invested a lot of time and effort in learning the C+ programming language on his TRS-80 model IIIs and model IVs.

It wasn’t uncommon for Richard to sit down at his computers after supper and stay there until close 22:00. After a couple of hours of sleep, he’d be back downstairs typing away on his computers until something like 02:00 or 03:00.

I know this because sometime just after the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, my bedroom was moved into the basement. My stepbother was old enough to be on his own, so he got my old room, and I got punted down into the basement. The basement wouldn’t have been too bad, save for the fact that I didn’t have a bedroom door due to the fact that you weren’t supposed to have people living in the basements of the PMQs and by not putting a door on the bedroom, Richard was skirting that rule.

Just about every night, Richard would wake me up with the noise of his computer work. Said that it was his house and that if I didn’t like it, I could move out.

Except for selling a small database program to a church in Toronto, he never went anywhere with his computer programming.

Over the last couple of weeks, the more I thought about it the more I began to realize that Richard, outside of being a soldier in the Canadian Armed Forces, was completely lost and empty on the inside.

He hoped that his do-dads and gizmos would give him meaning. But they didn’t.

He had no goals in life. He had nothing that brought him any type of joy. And I think this is more than likely why he spent absolutely no time being involved with my brother and I.

Where this emptiness came from? I have absolutely no idea.

Sure, grandma wasn’t the ideal parent. She had a lot of emotional issues herself. She drank alot. She had a short temper. She wasn’t afraid to get carried away with corporal punishment. If you disturbed her you’d be told that “children are best to be seen and not heard” or “children are not to speak until spoken to”.

Yes, Richard’s father Arthur Herman Gill buggered off when Richard was fairly young. But Richard really didn’t seem to have any attachment to Arthur.

Uncle Doug seemed normal. Yeah, okay, we didn’t live with him. But ever time he’d come home from the oil fields and stay downstairs in the base when we lived on CFB Namao, he’d always buy my brother and I gifts and presents.

Uncle Norman seemed normal as well. In the two weeks that grandma, my brother and I spent out in Terrace, BC back in the summer of 1984, Norman would frequently take his kids and us out to the lakes and rivers around Terrace for fishing and other activities.

As soon as we moved to CFB Namao in the summer of 1978, grandma enrolled my in Beavers, Youth Bowling, hockey, basketball, and swimming.

Even when she came to live with us out on CFB Summerside after my mother left, she enrolled me in Sunday school, bible class, and various activities with the Knights of Columbus.

Did she do this out of guilt for what she hadn’t done for her kids when she was raising them in Fort McMurray, AB in the late ’40s to early ’60s?

Again, Doug and Norman seemed normal. So, I don’t think that Richard could really blame his mother for his issues.

The social services records from Alberta Social Services said that Richard couldn’t name one single activity that our family did together

And I think that is the key to understanding Richard.

He had nothing to offer, nothing to give. Something had killed him years ago.

Was it the HMCS Kootenay?

Was it the accident on the HMCS Bonaventure?

Was it the CP-140 Aurora crash on CFB Summerside in 1977 when he was attached to the Aurora Sqn?

Was it something else altogether?

I think that by collecting things and knick-knacks and do-dads he was trying to fill the empty holes inside.

And it would appear that my brother and I were also filler material meant to fill voids. He fathered us. And that was about it.

Unfortunately, children make very shitty filler compound.

Richard would often get upset at me for not raising my brother properly. But, I don’t think that’s how that is supposed to work. It’s not my name on my brother’s birth certificate.

I think Richard’s aloofness was best summed up by the Alberta Social Service records when he first stated to Alberta Social Services that he had no idea that both of his sons were having emotional issues. He then stated that his mother was hiding these issues from him. Finally he blamed his mother for these issues.

Where his emptiness came from, I don’t think anyone will ever know. That’s one of the many secrets that he took to the grave.