Brick by Brick

Written by Megan Hamilton, published February 16, 2021

When you are young and naïve, you begin to learn good from bad and pain from delight. You are taught not to touch the stove because it’s hot but to feel the cold snow because it’s fun. You are taught not to jump off the bed because it is not safe but to jump on a trampoline for sport. The same can be attributed to feelings, we are taught to feel certain things openly, like happiness, and to feel things internally, like sadness, because of social reactions.

So, you begin to build your walls. A little sadness here because your dog died, a little anger here because your friend was mean at lunch, and this continues through adulthood. You add brick after brick to your wall of shame because you are taught, we do not have outbursts in public, we handled ourselves like adults, but what happens when we cannot hold it in any longer? What happens when we decide to take a sledgehammer to our walls?

We handle call after call of what happens when these walls are destroyed. A domestic because the husband finally had enough of his wife nagging, a suicide threat because a young man could not take the sadness anymore, and a drunk driver because she drank away her problems. We are here to help these people day in and day out, but at the end of the day who is protecting our wall? What happens when we find that sledgehammer leaning against it?

We spend so much time helping other people that we do not even realize that while we listen to these stories, we are adding the cement in between our bricks. We drive home and carry that call on our shoulders. We are short with our partners, or even our kids because we have unintentionally added to our own wall by taking care of others, but what can we do?

You need to unbrick your wall. You apologize to your spouse and kids and you tell them you have had a bad day, you unwind in a bath, you go work out for an hour. In this industry we need to learn how to balance helping with the pain vs carrying the pain. When you go home and drink a whole bottle of wine because your last call was terrible, are you helping your caller, or are you adding a brick to your wall? We need to learn the difference between handling the job, and the job handling us.

There are healthy coping mechanisms and unhealthy coping mechanisms. Meeting with your therapist is healthy, going out Saturday night and drinking your weight in tequila, unhealthy. I have had to learn this the hard way. For the five years of being a dispatcher I have used alcohol as a coping mechanism, as have many other first responders. At the end of they day I would have a glass of wine, and another, and another and I would feel better and feel like I was handling my job well, but I was not. I was adding cement in my bricks, I was building my wall higher and higher. So, I decided, and we all need to make the decision. It’s time we decide to unbrick our wall and feel our feelings as they happen, no more holding it all in. If you have a bad call, lean on your coworkers for support, or even a supervisor. Take the time to breathe after a death and decompress.  There is so much help in this world for you, you must decide to take it.

I have started guided journaling this year, every day I wake up and I write three ways I can make today awesome, three things I am grateful for, and three things I can let go of. Everyday. I also quit drinking. I am making the decisions that are unbricking my wall. Instead of coming home and drinking that glass of wine I am reading a few chapters of a self help book a friend recommended. I am playing board games with my kids. I am not bricking my wall anymore; I am feeding my soul.

It is time we all fed our soul and stopped building our walls so high. At the end of the day, you must live with yourself, and its time to be proud of person you are becoming instead of hiding them behind a wall of feelings. It’s 2021, the year of you. The year of change. The year of feeding your soul.

Thank you, Megan for sharing your valuable perspective! If you are interested in writing a blog, please email 911derWomen@gmail.com. Sign up for our newsletter on our homepage to stay up to date with 911der Women programming, exclusive content and blog updates. Click here and scroll to the bottom!