I can tell you with 100% certainty, I have lived my dream. I was a fire fighter. When I was a young child, I vividly remember seeing the fire engine go down the street and wanting nothing more than to be “one of them”. When I was 14, I was lucky enough to join the junior fire department in the town where I lived. All I cared about was the fire house. It was eat, live and breathe the fire house. It was a passion. As I got a little older, I lived at the fire house as much as I could. Whatever free time I had, more than likely I was at the fire house. After I finished my master’s degree, a friend called me and wanted me to go with him and take the entrance exam for a neighboring county that was starting to hire. The long story short is that I was hired and worked in the fire department as a career for almost 20 years. What could top that? We were respected. We were on calendars. People wanted to take pictures with us. Kids would wave to us and wanted us to blast the horn. We got all kinds of free stuff. What on earth could be better than that? How could that ever be a bad thing?
Throughout the years, I have met and befriended so many men and women who I can still call friends. If there is one thing that is true, it is a fraternity. As the old saying goes, “if you mess with one of us, you get us all.” However, there is a side to this dream job that is not advertised or talked about. The images that the public sees of us is often a façade. There is a side that many people do not see. There are shows that depict what we do but dramatize or glorify it, truly minimizing what really goes on behind the scenes. Sure, there is time for horseplay and gags. However, it is minimal. There is no replicating the job and what we are called to do. We are often interacting with people during one of the worst moments of their lives. In that moment of crisis, we are expected to do our job and do it well. What is not promoted in the job description is the risk to your emotional well-being. Not every incident is bad. For many of us though, when you multiply thousands of calls over the course of a career, there is a piece of you that is taken away. Then, you add in the other significant calls, combined with less than ideal working condition, rotating shift schedules, sleep deprivation and normal everyday life and you have the makings of a problem.
For me, this built up over the course of many years. It started with subtle personality changes. Looking back, I was more irritable than usual. I did not care for myself as well as I had before. As time went on, my interest in the job waned. In fact, there were times when I did not want to go to work. Over the years, it morphed into post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. What I did not understand is how this was happening to me. Feelings? We were not allowed to have them. Afterall, they just get in the way. I realized that this was the part of the job no one ever talked about. It was a sign of weakness. I was embarrassed by it all. So, I did what every fire fighter is taught to do: bury it as deep as you can and forget about it and chase it with a drink or two. There were so many questions. Who would I tell about what was going on? Who could I trust? Would they trust me anymore? On and on I went with the excuses, only to realize that I was just digging a hole. While it worked in the short-term, that was by far the worst advice that anyone could give. It made things so much worse in the long-term, it almost killed me. After a period of treatment and help, I am now in a position where I know it is not weakness, embarrassing, etc.
I spent so much time beating myself up about “why me”. After some time to discern, I realized that I have an obligation to my brothers and sisters in the fire service. I know that I will not and cannot prevent depression and PTSD from occurring in everyone. However, I can be open and honest about my journey, using it to open up the discussion about its prevalence and letting people know that help is out there. I want everyone to know that underneath it all, we are humans just like everyone else and we can have feelings.
I would never dissuade anyone from joining the fire department. As I said before, I have had a chance to live my dream. If you, your son or daughter, spouse, friend, etc., tell you that they are interested, please encourage them. It is imperative to understand and be aware of the realities of the job. That includes being aware of as many of the elements that are involved as you can to make a well-informed decision.