I apologize for the language that might come out of this post, but I have some very strong feelings when it comes to this.
We live in a world right now, where we can hop on social media and see what everyone is up to. I think it has trained us to feel like we need to know everyone's business when in reality, that's the last thing we need know. Nothing irritates me more than when people ask the most popular question to a first responder..
What is the most insane thing you have ever seen or done?
This is literally the most inconsiderate question. Do you really want to know the most insane things they have seen or done? Let's just be real for a second.
Do you really want to know about the time he had to tackle a 300 pound man, so that he wouldn't have to see his lifeless father that had just passed? You can imagine that emotion of pure horror just stays with you all the time.
Do you really want to hear about the time he held an elderly man in his arms as he said his last words?
Do you really want to hear about the time-no you don't because it does absolutely nothing for you. Nothing.
There is no reason you need to know the details ESPECIALLY when it comes to the calls that don't end well. The details that they could share with you are the ones that haunt them at night and trigger them over the simpliest of things that we think nothing of.
Growing up my dad was on the fire department. When I was older, I remember him telling a story among others about how he had responded to a crash. It was a teenager that didn't make it and the back of his car was filled with empty beer cans and to this day my dad still can't drink that specific brand of beer becasue it triggers that terrible moment that no one should have to witness. This was over 20 years ago those memories don't just disappear.
If you are not a therapist, counselor, first responder or someone that actaully understands what they just went though in that moment. DON'T ASK ABOUT IT! Truly just shut the **** up because you are being noisy and it is not fair to make them relive their hardest calls where they had to respond to other families worst nightmares.
If you are just trying to be a good friend and check up on them please do it in a way that's open ended and let's them decide if they want to open up not by playing the 100 questions game. No one likes that game.
Just listen validate their feelings and empathize with them as a friend not as someone trying to be the know it all of hot topics for the week. It doesn't matter how many days have passed some triggers will just never go away instead they learn to live with them.
I know such a small fraction of details from over all the years my husband has been a first responder and that is OK. I don't need to know. If he wants to share with me I am more than willing to listen and be there for him, but if he doesn't than I have to be ok with that because when he is ready he will. As hard as it is to sit back and just wait when as a wife you want to hear all the problems and make them all magically better, but in reality those problems are not as easy as kissing a boo boo when your kid gets hurt. These ones cut deep. Plus, he may open up to other first responders before me and that's ok because they will be able to help him process way better than I ever would be able to.
I feel like society has made first respnders into this cool person who gets to do all the badass things and sometimes they do. BUT they also have to do some of the hardest things. The things NO ONE want s to. Someone has to do it and they are taking the weight of every single tragic call. We often hear a tragic story and by the next week or two we are already onto another headline, but they carry that cross with them for the rest of their lives. The smells, the screams, the images will be engrained into their mind forever.
Being a first responder is such a beautiful calling, but it changes people and sometimes not always for the better.
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