Prevention – The View from a Drawbridge

Running the Gauntlet to Get a Good Night’s Sleep

I actually wrote this blog post in my head a few weeks ago at 3 am when I should have been sleeping. I should have written it down, but instead I repeated it over and over again in hopes that I’d remember it, because I’m actually 5 blog posts behind in my queue, and that’s a personal record that has me stressed out beyond belief.

Yes, this is a self-imposed deadline, but not missing a post since I started this blog in December of 2012 puts a certain amount of self-imposed pressure on me, especially since I know that several people consider reading it a part of their routine. You’d think that when I switched a while back to only posting on even numbered days, rather than daily, it would have reduced the pressure by half, but no. Now my blogs seem to be longer and require more research than they once did. Again, that is self-imposed.

Since I knew that repeating posts in my head was part of the reason I could not sleep, this post is about the many things that can prevent me from sleeping. Most of them are thoughts. Some are noises.

My husband, and the vast majority of the men I know, won’t be able to relate to this at all. They can fall instantly to sleep and not wake up ‘til morning. I find this quite annoying, because they’ll say to me, “Why are you so tired? It sounds like we both went to bed at the same time.”

All I can do is tersely reply, “Well, we most definitely did not go to sleep at the same time.”

So here are the many challenges I have when it comes to getting a full night’s sleep.

My CPAP machine breaking its seal on my face and whistling loudly.
My CPAP machine breaking its seal on my face and blowing a jet of air that flutters my eyelashes.
My bladder.
Soreness in general.
My dogs, wanting breakfast at an ungodly hour, and therefore doing an impatient tap dance on the wooden floor.
The sun rising at freakin’ 5:11 in the morning and setting at 9:11 pm in the Seattle area around summer solstice.
The sun rising at freakin’ 7:57 in the morning and setting at 4:17 pm in the Seattle area around winter solstice.
My dog, snoring, and why I find it annoying sometimes and endearing other times.
Hearing a random, subtle sound coming from the other side of the house.
My dogs barking at the least sign of any sound.
Wondering if I remembered to lock all the doors.
How intensely I love my dogs.
My feet scratching on the sheets.
Funny things I forgot to tell Dear Husband.
Delightful conversations I had that day.
Negative conversations I had that week.
Young men with tiny little penises motorcycling or drag racing down our street at random hours.
Grown men with tiny little penises shooting guns or fireworks off in our neighborhood at random hours.
Things I’m looking forward to.
Things I’m dreading.
Am I forgetting anything?
The beeps of our computers or phones when one of us forgets to turn them off before bed.
Am I good at this marriage thing?
The things I do that I’m glad are not qualities that my Dear Husband possesses, and how lucky that makes me.
How much this blog post will upset DH, because he wants me to be able to be as positive, optimistic, and carefree as he is.
At what point did I lose all ability to keep things organized, and why is that?
What I need to do tomorrow.
Upcoming social obligations, and whether I’m dreading them or looking forward to them.
What I was supposed to do today but did not.
Health issues for myself and my loved ones.
The state of this country, and the state of the planet.
My next vacation, and how much of the world I still long to see.
Past vacations and how wonderful they were.
The many ways I feel I have fallen short.
The many ways people want me to change but I find myself incapable of doing so, despite my best efforts.
Did I remember to water the plants?
Do I have my lunch ready for work tomorrow?
Which drawbridge will I be working on?
Which shift will I be working on?
Work BS.
Am I forgetting anything?
How lucky I am, generally.
Potato chips.
My imposter syndrome.
Do people think I’m weird?
Why do I seem so much weirder than most other people?
How can I convince people that I’m not weird?
Why do I care what anyone thinks?
OH SHIT WHAT TIME IS IT? DID I OVERSLEEP?
My irritation that my eyesight is so poor that I can’t always reliably see what time it is without putting on my glasses.
My disappointment at not being able to read more books.
The many new and unsettling things I’ve learned about myself in the past few months.
How grateful I am that I can still learn new things.
Aging.
The future.
The past.
My understandable love of naps.
My bladder again, and whether I should hold it until the alarm goes off in an hour, or just admit I need to pee, get up and do it, and then return to bed and try to sleep for that last precious hour, knowing I won’t achieve REM sleep in that timeframe.
Am I forgetting anything?
Attempting to change positions as quietly as possible so as not to wake the dogs.
Cheese.
My desperate need to meditate before bedtime, which I never quite get around to doing.

Welcome to my brain.

After that, I usually remember to do a body part relaxation exercise, and I fall asleep for what little time I have left.

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People Really Do Care

You matter. Your life has value. Here’s proof.

On an undisclosed drawbridge in an undisclosed city at an undisclosed time (for privacy’s sake), the phone rang. It was the harbor patrol, asking me if I would be on the look out for any jumpers on the railing. They were en route to see for themselves. But no one was in sight at that time. The person in question was described as a teenage boy.

I saw the harbor patrol speeding toward my bridge, and wondered what the whole story was. Usually there was only this type of rush if the actual jumper was in sight (which happens more frequently than the general public knows), and in that case, it’s the bridgetender who calls the police, not the other way around.

I waited and worried and continually scanned the sidewalks, as the patrol boat searched the bay in a grid pattern and a half dozen police cars crossed the bridge. They gathered at the south end.

I could think of nothing else, and an hour later, an officer knocked on my door. I let him in, knowing he wanted to look at the camera footage before it disappeared. And that’s when more of the story came out.

The young man had left the house the night before, and a family member went looking for him. He was not answering his phone. That family member came upon his car. It was abandoned just south of the bridge.

But the worst part is that a 50 pound weight was missing from the house, and it was not in the car. When I heard that, my heart sank.

The officer and I scanned the camera footage from the time the young man left his house to the time the car was found, but they saw nothing. After the officer left, I thought, “You know, a jumper with a 50 pound weight would make one helluva splash.”

It was a horrible thought to have, but I wanted to help. I proceeded to scan the cameras that are directed toward the channel that flows under the bridge. I sat there, all alone in the tower, staring at the light playing on the dark water, praying that I would not see anything. That was a very long few hours, in which I was afraid to even blink for fear of missing something. Again, I saw nothing. I knew I’d probably never hear how that story ended.

For the rest of the shift, I could not get out of my mind the horrific idea that that young man was possibly very near me, but just out of reach, while people worried about him. Worst case scenario, he was beyond worry, but his family was distraught, I was heartbroken, and dozens of police officers were frantically trying to find him so they could bring him home.

Then I received an e-mail from a friend of the family, asking me to check my camera footage. Since I write this blog, I’m pretty easy to find. I cried a little as I told her I had already done so, and that I was so very sorry this was happening, and that I was keeping watch on the waterway, and that I hoped he’d be found safe and sound. I also requested that she let me know.

Days later, I saw divers in the channel. That’s never good. And then, one evening while cuddling with my husband in front of the television, I received an e-mail from the boy’s mother. She said his body was found beneath my bridge. She thanked me for keeping him safe. I burst into tears.

I wish I had kept him safe. I wish I could have done something, anything, to prevent this from happening. All I did was sit helpless in my tower, suspecting that my worst fears had been realized, and indeed they were. This young man will be forever in my memory.

Whenever I work the swing shift, I blow the horn at 8pm for the frontline workers who are having to deal with this pandemic. Now I will also be blowing it for this young man and others like him who are struggling to see their value in this precious world of ours. What a horrific loss.

I just wanted to say to anyone who may be reading this who is in despair, that people really do care. You’d be surprised at how many people care. First responders take the jobs that they’ve taken because they care. Total strangers like me who are drawn into the situation care. Family cares.

There are people who can help you. You are not alone. If you are feeling hopeless or helpless, visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, or call them at 1-800-273-8255.

You matter. Your life has value. You won’t always feel this way. I promise. Please don’t discard your potential. Stay with us.

Because no picture seemed appropriate for this post…

The Holidays Are Even Harder This Year

You aren’t alone.

Depression can be debilitating, especially in the wintertime when you can go weeks without seeing the sun. And it’s even worse this year, because this pandemic is isolating all of us. It almost seems like the final insult when there’s all this extra financial and emotional pressure during the holiday season. Everyone is expected to be constantly merry, and if you tend toward depression, that gives you this sense of failure on top of everything else. It can be draining.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a bridgetender and I love my job. Opening drawbridges is such a delight. I feel lucky that I’m someone who actually enjoys going to work.

But this job does have a dark side, and it is ramped up at this time of year. I get to see a lot of attempted suicides on my bridge and on other bridges nearby. Most of the ones I see have, thank God, been thwarted. First responders, in my experience, are very good at talking people off of railings. And some people make the jump and survive.

But there is a certain percentage who make good on their attempts, and it’s heartbreaking to bear witness to that. It happens a lot more often than the public realizes. These things often go unreported because the community doesn’t want to have copycats.

Jumpers are people in a great deal of pain, attempting to take control at a time when the rest of their lives seem so out of control. It’s sad to say that choosing whether or not to remain alive is the one power we all can exercise. These people, for whatever reason, cannot see beyond their despair, so they don’t realize the heartbreak and trauma they cause with their actions. Suicide doesn’t only impact the families and friends. It also impacts the first responders and everyone who gets to witness the suicide.

I know I’ve shed more than a few tears for people who have leapt off my bridge over the past 19 years. Tears flow for the jumper, for their family, and for me, because I couldn’t do anything to prevent the act. And also, selfishly, I shed tears because I know the image of those final moments will be forever etched in my mind. I carry many such images with me, and they feel like Marley’s chains in a Christmas Carol.

But I didn’t really intend to make this about me. What I wanted to say was that if you’re reading this and you’re in despair, there are people who can help you. You aren’t alone. If you are feeling hopeless or helpless, visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, or call them at 1-800-273-8255.

You matter. Your life has value. I promise.

I put some lights in my bridge tower window in the hopes that someone walking by on some cold, lonely winter night will look up and see that he or she is not alone.

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I Scared Someone

Imagine this: You are a woman, alone, jogging so early in the morning that the sun isn’t even awake yet. Heck, most of Seattle isn’t awake yet. It’s Saturday. You start to jog across a drawbridge when a car pulls into the bike lane behind you, a place where it has no business being. You look over your shoulder, feeling worried. The car slowly follows you.

Well, in this case, the jogger was in luck, because the driver was me. Driving slowly down the bike lane is the only way for me to get to my designated parking space when I work on this particular drawbridge. Of course, I couldn’t explain this to the jogger. By the time I got out of my car, she was long gone, as well she should have been. I’m sure I scared her half to death, and I feel terrible about that.

But at the same time, I thought, “Good on her for being hypervigilant.” In this crazy world, you need to err on the side of caution. Too much can go wrong.

I used to be offended, as a teenager, when security guards followed me in stores. I wasn’t a shoplifter, but how would they know that? Yeah, I was being profiled. But stores take a major financial hit because of shoplifters, so where does one draw the line?

Now I don’t take such things personally. I am actually grateful when someone puts me through an extra level of security, for their sake or for mine. Prevention is a good thing.

So, thank you, little old lady, for clutching your purse a little tighter when I walk past.

Thank you, cashier, for asking to see my I.D. when I want to pay by credit card.

Thank you, website, for making me answer security questions.

Thank you, neighbor, for using deadbolts on your doors.

Thank you, driver, for clicking your door locks when you see any human approaching your car.

Thank you, everyone, for taking safety seriously. If we do the little tiny things mentioned above, we’ll prevent crime. The less crime we have, the safer we will all feel.

It’s the propaganda put out by the NRA that we’re in a hyper-violent, Mad Max world that makes politicians find excuses to remove bans on silencers and semi-automatic weapons, and allows mentally ill people to stockpile an armory. It’s those fools who are getting us killed, not those of us who ask for I.D.

So in a strange way, being ever-so-slightly paranoid about your safety increases our safety in general, and reduces the insane belief that military-level weapons are a good idea for the general populous. Our world will never be 100 percent safe. If we own that and take minor precautions, we won’t have to take Mad Max-like ones in the future. Weird how that works.

So please keep clutching those purses! It’s not meant as an insult. I would argue that it’s actually a civic duty.

Stalked

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Not My Problem

I spent the first hour of my shift today with a battery operated leaf blower, cleaning off the sidewalks and the bike lanes of my bridge. A clean bridge is a happy bridge. At least that’s my motto. I take pride in showing this drawbridge in its very best light, and in my quarterly reviews it’s usually noted that this is the cleanest bridge in the system.

Leaf blowers are fun. They give you this sense of power that is normally beyond your reach. Out, damned spot! Out I say! You just have to be careful not to get so caught up in your own head trip that you get mowed down by a bicycle. Talk about a reality check.

The only down side to blowing leaves is that you’re not really getting rid of your problem, you’re just relocating it. Which is fine, if you follow through and bag them afterward. But I’ve seen many a landscaper just blow them down the street. “Not my problem anymore.”

Yeah it is. Because a certain percentage of them are going to blow back into your yard eventually. Count on it. And if everyone has your attitude, a whole lot more debris is going to be blown into your yard by the equally lazy people up the street.

This is also why most medical funding is not focused on prevention. Even though prevention has proven time and time again to give you a much better return on your investment, society in general is much more willing to deal with the problems that have already occurred, when there is no longer a choice.

It’s the same with the environment. Does it really surprise anyone that so many people are willing to ignore global climate change? We’re doing all right for the time being. We still can fill our bathtubs and eat our avocados out of season. Why make sacrifices? And I’m not just shaming the climate change deniers, here. I live in one of the most environmentally conscious cities in the entire country, and yet even as I write this I’m looking out on a highway that is so choked with vehicles that they can hardly move. And yes, I drove home to write this.

One of the few problems with short terms for politicians is that they, too, can blow their problematical leaves down the street. “Let someone else deal with the tricky stuff a decade from now, once I’ve retired.” We now find ourselves hip deep in a political leaf storm, people. Having fun?

Humanity has a lot of growing up to do. We have to start behaving like adults. We need to take responsibility. We need to act with integrity. We need to take society’s ills seriously even if we aren’t feeling particularly feverish as individuals.

It’s time to start bagging up our leaves.

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

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Learning to Fall

The other day at work I had Fall Prevention training. As a bridgetender, there will occasionally be moments where I’m called upon to work at a dangerous height, so this training is essential. The fact that I never received this type of instruction in my thirteen years as a bridgetender in Florida tells you everything you need to know about the difference in work culture here in Seattle. My current employer actually cares if I live or die. Yeah, yeah, part of that is due to litigation, I know, but I genuinely believe they value me much more than my former employer ever did. Heaven knows they pay me more.

The class was actually rather interesting. Not only did I learn how to properly inspect, wear and maintain my harness, but I learned some basic physics. To oversimplify things to an extreme degree, there’s no point in attaching your harness to a 60 foot rope if you’re standing on the edge of a 40 foot drop.

I also learned something rather fascinating. If you do fall and you’re dangling in a harness for more than a minute or two, expect to pass out cold when you are finally rescued. That harness is going to cut off the circulation to your legs, so your body will be taking all the oxygen out of the blood in the lower half of your body to survive. So when you finally stand up again, all that deoxygenated blood is going to rush to your head, and, basically, it’ll be lights out. You can count on it. They don’t show you that in the movies.

But of course, since I live in my head most of the time, I also learned a few philosophical truths along with everything else. Learning how to fall is important. If you do it right, you’ll survive. It’s okay, it’s even attractive, to be vulnerable, but it’s also critical to have contingency plans and put serious thought into everything that you do. Prevention is key, but plans are necessary, too.

It’s also about educated faith. Trust the equipment, but inspect it first. If you’re going to fall, make it a knowledgeable fall. If I had a coat of arms, I think that should be my motto.

[Image credit: mubi.com]

Modern Day Slavery

I just found out that here in the US it’s National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. I bet if someone were to take a poll, the vast majority of Americans would think that Slavery went out with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865. Not so much.

According to WGBH’s “Human Trafficking: Modern-Day Slavery in America” by Phillip Martin, “About 18,000 people are trafficked to the U.S. each year, according to the State Department. What do they have in common? Most are indebted to smugglers and traffickers. According to the Polaris Project, a national anti-human trafficking group, victims have also been pressed to work in factories, farms, strip clubs, begging and peddling rings and as domestic workers — for little or no money.“

Imagine coming to America, thinking that it’s the land of the free, where the streets are all paved with gold and all your dreams can come true, only to have your passport taken away and then be forced to work in the fields for 16 hours a day in the middle of nowhere so Americans can have cheap vegetables, or forced to service up to 30 men a day. Imagine being turned into a drug addict, dependent upon your captor for your next fix. Imagine being told if you try to get help, you will be killed and your family will never know what became of you. Imagine the shame, the pain, the fear, and the complete feeling of helplessness.

Human trafficking in the US is only the tip of the iceberg, of course. This is a world wide problem. Everyone should educate themselves on this topic. How to recognize it. How to stop it. How to prevent it. How to help. In addition to the Polaris Project mentioned above I urge you to go to Youtube and type in trafficking and you’ll be presented with a whole host of really good documentaries, both short and long, on the topic.

Here’s one that is less than 2 minutes long, and it will really make you think. It takes place in Amsterdam, in the red light district, and it renders a bunch of tourists, who think that place is all fun and games, speechless. It’s called Girls Going Wild in Red Light District. It’s a must see. Watch it until the very end to get the full message.