You Know I Don't Speak Spanish...

Sometimes being married is hard.  It’s two people, sharing living space, germs, a bathroom and toothpaste.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Sean and couldn’t have asked for a better partner in this life. Being married to him is exciting and hard and fun and exhausting.  If you try to tell me that you have a perfect marriage, I know you’re lying.  There are times when I want to push Sean down the stairs, but I don’t, because who would clean my house? I’m sure there are times when Sean feels the same way, but he won’t because who will eat all of the ice cream in the freezer so he won’t have to?

Everyone knows that married life isn’t what we see on T.V. and in movies. In my life, it’s brutally honest and real.  There are amazing days and difficult days, and I’ll be honest, for Sean and I, it’s sometimes a lot of work.  More specifically, for us, sometimes it’s hard to communicate and I’ll tell you why.   

Let me preface what’s to follow with this: First Responders are not crazy, they see things that the rest of us don’t.  They see a lot of horrible things in a short shift.  There are days when Sean comes home from work and I know he had a bad call because he has the “Thousand Yard Stare.” He can’t focus on me or the kids, he’ll acknowledge us and help everyone get on with the day but something is missing.  I know his heart is home, but his head isn’t.  His head is with the girl whose face was literally torn off in a car accident. It’s with the family who lost everything in a house fire and with the family of the man who had a massive heart attack in front of all of them.  How can someone just turn those memories off?  They can’t.  Sean and I talk all the time about what it’s like on scene.  He tells me over and over again, the second he arrives on scene, his emotions get shut off.  He says that he has to use the practical part of his brain to assess and make decisions in the moment.  Then, after cleaning up the mess, Sean and his crew go back to the station and eat dinner.  I don’t know if they talk about what they’ve seen or if they just make inappropriate jokes about it; but my guess is the latter.

Where do these emotions, or as Sean calls them, his ghosts go? I’m no psychologist but this is what I know.  These emotions, at least in my husband, get shoved away somewhere deep in his brain and they come out at random times throughout his day. There are times he loses his cool when our kids are jumping on the couch because he has a flashback of the kid that broke some limbs jumping on his couch.  There are times when we’re at a social function and people ask him, “What’s the worst call you’ve ever been on?” flashback to the girl who was texting and driving. There are nights when he can’t sleep because he’s dreamt about something he’s seen.  (Sean would want me to tell you that he can still sleep with the lights off.)  Sometimes, I’ll try to talk to him about anything; work, the kids, the dogs puking on the carpet and I know he can hear me, he’s just not actively listening and it takes everything in me to not shake him and say, “Pay attention to me! I’m pretty!” I’m kidding, I would never shake him.  Sean tells me that he can’t come home or be at a party and explain to an average person about the stressful and gruesome details of a call. He says it will screw their heads up even more than it does his. I know that not communicating those calls to me is his way of protecting me from hearing the unthinkable.  The fact is; I want to hear about those calls, in my mind it would help to ease his burden. It’s a catch-22.  This is what we deal with.  It’s real and it’s hard sometimes not knowing what’s going on in his head. I don’t want you to think this happens daily, because it doesn’t.  It’s sporadic and like everything in life, we deal with it as it comes.

To my fellow fire wives and girlfriends, old and new, I know this is something you've experienced because you've told me.  But let me tell you this, what your husband or significant other is "dealing" with shouldn't diminish your role in this crazy life.  Continue to work on lifting yourself up, because sometimes, your husband just can't do it.  My mom always told me growing up, "You can't depend on a man to get you through this life." My mom loves Sean, but she's right.  His ghosts shouldn't affect my ability to be happy.  My happiness is up to me.  Surround yourself with people who make you feel good. Don't take your spouse's lack of ability to share what's going on in their mind personally because if you do, the ghosts will weigh you down too.  I consider myself lucky because Sean recognizes what's happening and he owns it.  For the small number of times I don't feel "paid attention to" he builds me up and celebrates me and my successes. More importantly, he makes the kids feel valued and important, and that to me is all that matters in life.  That and a fresh coat of nail polish.