First, my family did not understand. Over and above what I went through for my country, my family judged me and rejected me. I was engaged to a wonderful woman for nine years. She even shared my passion for serving my country. She went to Afghanistan with the reserve. She came back with full-blown PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. Though I was very familiar with it and though I supported her as best I could, we went to the base hospital at Longue-Pointe a number of times and she did not get adequate care. I had to leave her in emergency because she was suicidal. She tried to commit suicide several times because she was not getting adequate care. At the civilian hospital, they left her unattended.
One morning, when I went to visit her, I found her on the floor in the middle of the emergency room area. She had empty pill containers in her hands. I took her in my arms and said “Come with me, sweetheart, I am going to take you home and keep looking after you.” I told her that even though I was in no longer in any condition to do so. She lifted her hands and I saw that she had tried to take her own life. My poor darling had to be resuscitated. When I came back to see her after she had been revived, I asked her: “Why, sweetie?” She said: “Because I am fighting this all alone”.
I managed to get her a bed in the hospital in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue. They stuffed her full of pills. Instead of helping her illness, they drugged it up. At the end, we had to break up because we were no longer able to take care of each other. We only had each other in the world. We were killing each other. We were too demanding with each other and we did not understand it ourselves. When we asked for help, we were told to take some pills and stop bothering people. This is just a big despair factory that almost cost myself and my fiancée our lives. That is the help we got.