The Man of Love: Who I am
My name is Brian Vincent Darling. I was born in the 80's. My mom was 16 years old when I was born and we did not live at her parents' house. My dad left when I was around one. My mom found someone else and at two and a half I had a little brother David. My upbringing was pretty normal for the '80s and '90s. My brother and I ate my mother out of house and home and we fought like, well, brothers. I was a couple of years older and we started to drift apart when I turned 8 or 9. I loved one thing at that age. My bicycle. I also loved to sing and perform. I was by all definitions a bit of a class clown. I loved to be the center of attention (I still do) and was always quick to joke, smile, or laugh. That continued for much of my formative years. I learned how to read music and started to perform in music festivals. I still remember the first Kiwanis Music Festival song I ever performed. The Skye Boat Song. In middle school, I started playing the baritone saxophone. I fell in love with the saxophone. I have played them all, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, and even bass! I also played a lot of lacrosse and loved long-distance running. I enjoyed school, and excelled at any subject I worked hard on. High school was OK. I had trouble socially in high school. I am not a very anxious person but women used to short-circuit my brain. The other social integration problem I had was that I did not think the same as others. Now, that being said I did get along with everyone, but when it came time to 'identify' with one group or another, I just didn't quite fit. My mind works in tangents and abstracts that even still surprise me today. I finished OAC (grade 13 still existed then) and went to study Criminology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. That's when I met the love of my life. My soulmate. My partner in crime. My other half. Candace. She is a fiery French, redhead, that will absolutely tell you what she thinks. I met her October of 1999 and we started dating in April of 2000. The rest is his history as they say. 24 years later and we have 3 kids, good careers, a nice house and financial stability. I am getting ahead of myself though. We had our first child Hannah, in September of 2002. Unfortunately my partner had to drop out of school because the baby was making her sick, so sick she couldn't even work. I was still at Carleton trying to finish my degree in Criminology. It was a struggle financially, but we survived on Love. I would change nothing. I finished my degree and tried to get a job. It wasn't until 2006 that I got the first big break of my life. Acceptance into the Correctional Training Program with the Correctional Service of Canada. I was going to become a federal Correctional Officer. In September of 2006, I started as a Correctional Officer at Kingston Penitentiary. Nothing in my life prepared me for what I saw behind the walls. Luckily, I am a strong of will and had managed to learn a bit of common sense over the years. Life as a CO is filled with anxiety, confrontation, attention, focus, and lots of downtime. To me, managing my downtime was the hardest part. I went from a job where you were busy every second of your shift, to maintaining awareness of the inmates and monitoring things for hours on end. The job of a CO is by far the hardest position in the jail though. We have a tremendous amount of responsibility to maintain the safety and security of our areas. In addition, we also take on a huge amount of accountability for every single action we take. Lastly, we take most of the risk as well. The years went by as they do and, we had our 2nd child in 2013, and most recently in 2020, we had our youngest. I have now been a CO for almost 18 years. Its easy to write that number, but with it comes a huge amount of emotional turmoil. The job of CO has been hard on me over those 18 years. Unfortunately, I had a serious mental injury in June of 2019, because, of the emotional turmoil my job had caused. I took some time off work, was diagnosed and treated for PTSD, and went back to work the following June. That lasted until December of 2023. I thought I had things under control. I was doing really well, or so I thought. The problem was, I wasn't sleeping right, and I was tired all the time. I just blamed it on this and that and snuck in naps when I could. That September, I had a sleep study done. The results were interesting. I thought I had sleep apnea. Turns out that during my 6 hours of recorded sleep they recorded zero minutes of REM sleep. That's bad. If you don't get REM sleep, your brain doesn't work right. That's when I had another mental injury. I got sent home from work and told not to come back until i was better. I wasn't sure what to do. After putting some of the dots together I surmised that my medication might actually be the culprit. I immediately stopped taking the prescription medication I was on, and went from there. Now, that being said, I DONT recommend people throw away their medication right away. In most cases the doctor is right. Once I stopped taking the meds it only took a couple of days to start sleeping and dreaming again. In January, I started new medication and wow. The only thing that even comes close to describing the change in my mind is the song "I Can See Clearly Now The Rain is Gone". I truly feel like a new man. I started walking daily, I cut down on my caffeine to 1 cup a day, I don't consume more that 2 alcoholic drinks a week and and use all my experience and knowledge of my mental health battle to keep my passion and dreams alive now. Today, as I write this, my dreams and passion have been rekindled and I work everyday at realizing them. I was in the dark for so long. I feel so much more connected to my children, my wife, my family, nature, animals, and most importantly MYSELF. No longer am I a slave to my emotions. I will not salivate like Pavlov's dogs when I have an emotional trigger. I am completely in control of my emotions and therefore in control of myself. The sky is the limit, and I am just about to break through the stratosphere. This website and idea of Seeds of Love are alive because of my Love, but in order to keep going we need YOUR Love too. If you wish to learn more of my journey to treat and manage my PTSD buy my Limbic Story on the Buy Stuff page or the Limbic Story link on The Coalition of Hope page.
Love,
Brian Vincent Darling
Love,
Brian Vincent Darling