Choose Your Hard.

When the pager goes off, you're expected to get to your station, put on all the bunker gear I have on in this image except for the air tank, drive that rig with all that gear on it, and get to the scene within 10 minutes. The bunker gear weighs roughly 70 lbs.

I was also expected to carry some of those tools pictured here, and a hose charged with water that is 150 feet long? I was expected to know how everything worked on that rig, where it was stored, and take care of it weekly, including the vehicle itself.

Even at 2 AM. And then going to work the next day.

It was hard.

On top of life I also had to keep learning new things about the profession, which in the end paid me about 27￠ an hour for 16 years of 24/7 response. I gained a bit over a dozen certifications, including a few required FEMA IC certs, and then some like Confined Space Rescue (200 feet up a buried drain pipe), and completing the FEMA Professional Development Course for Emergency Management.

It was hard.

On top of that life of going to work, responding to calls, and family, I had to deal with not being able to talk to anyone outside of the department about the calls I went to. The local professor who accidently killed himself with autoerotic asphyxiation. Or the local Tai Chi instructor (mine) who decided to hang themselves on what would have been their wedding anniversary, dressed in their wedding finery. Or the gunshot suicide, the vulgar messes that life presents in car accidents that kill people you know.

What was hard got a lot harder.

I eventually broke under the hardness. I had to ask for help, and I needed a lot of it. Learning to take risk was hard. Discipline was hard. The discipline to train every day to earn my Krav Maga Instructor certifications. Dealing with the weight of the unidentified trauma of life was very hard, and healing it required doing the work with discipline because it doesn't heal in a two weeks. It doesn't heal in two years. And it doesn't take a life time. It might not be comfortable.

It does get easier.

It get's easier to execute the discipline even when there is no motivation, no inspiration. Easier to feel joy, and easier to smile. It gets easier to do what is hard because I get to put it down when it's over, rather than add that weight to my life.

It gets easier to break the cycles.

And then life is good.

You can heal your trauma once and for all. Your body keeps the score, and it can not only even the score, it can win the game.

It might be hard. It can get easier. Living with trauma is hard, and over time get's harder.

What will you choose?