Not A Simple Question

By CJ Knight

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash

“What I hope to achieve from writing?” That might seem like a straightforward question on the surface, but for me it isn’t. The best way I know how to answer, is for me, the most uncomfortable. It requires a reflection of the last decade of my life the really good and the really bad. A spiral compounded by choices and things out of my control. What follows will be perhaps the most open I’ve been with anyone not in my immediate personal circle. I will put my trust in my belief that this is a safe space. I’m going to write this all out before I lose my nerve.

There isn’t enough time to write everything. But first and foremost I want to thank all of the people I’ve met on Substack. I will make specific references where it makes sense, but omission is not meant to hurt. To everyone who’s left a comment, liked my work, or taken their time to read, thank you.

Perhaps this will go to far, but these are my experiences in their purest form. Some may think less of me after reading.

To answer the question of what I hope to achieve from writing we don’t need to delve into my childhood, just my former career. For 15 years I worked as a police officer. It was a career I fell into. After high school, and a short university stint that I despised, it was a high salary opportunity for someone who wasn’t quite 20 years old. After a rigorous application process I was ultimately accepted first try just after my 20th birthday. I celebrated my 21st birthday close to graduation in both a classroom and a tiny dorm room.

I was a person who blended to his surroundings. My instructors called me the ‘Grey Man’. The guy who’s name on a test paper was met with looks of people who couldn’t put a face to the name. The guy who completed everything correctly without fuss or memorability.

After graduation I was initially posted back to my home city. Policing is a sink or swim profession. You’re expected to know your shit from day 1, protect yourself, your co workers, and the public from harm. The lessons were unforgiving, brutal, and relentless.

I know the sound of the scream of a person in car wreck, and the cold silence that follows when they die before medical help arrives. The specific sound that escapes a mother’s throat when her child dies.

I have framed commendations rotting in a cupboard, where the glass covering them is shattered. I smashed them as reminders of a life I wish I forget. I received them for saving lives. Once for cutting down a woman who hung herself in time to save her life. She was young, and older man promised her the world and then treated her with cruelty. That woman made a full recovery, and as far as I know is happy 10 years on. I received another for a woman in a domestic violence situation. The law is inadequate at times, and for this woman it failed. She arrived at my one man country station in a panic. I did my best to reassure her, and try to help. When she left, it didn’t sit right with me. It was the look in her eyes when she left, like there was no way out. I got in my car and drove to her house 10 minutes after she left my station. The woman had ingested a pill bottle in a suicide attempt. I kicked the door in and kept her alive until paramedics arrived. 6 months later she came to see me. Thanked me for saving her life. She didn’t remember anything after leaving my station that day, but the hospital staff told her what happened.

It wasn’t long after that that I made detective in my mid to late 20’s. I traded in the trauma of fatal road accidents and domestic violence for a different kind of human evil.

One of the first people I met on Substack, and someone who’s supported me from day 1 is Mina Howell. On one episode of her very awesome Penny Dreadfuls podcast she complimented my ability to write a psychopath. I can honestly say it’s because I draw on the real ones I’ve dealt with. They all have doll’s eyes. It’s the only real tell. Everything else is built on their perfect ability to mimic reactions based on watching others. But their eyes, there’s no life behind them, no emotion, empathy, or sympathy. I’ve spoken to the man convicted of kicking someone to death with enough force to leave their shoe print on the person’s face, justify that action by saying the victim gave them a “smug” look. Psychopaths take all shapes and sizes, but their eyes are all the same.

A constant life of death and destruction caused by people took a toll I either didn’t see or refused to see. Over a two year period five of my work colleagues took their own lives due to PTSD. One of them was my friend, and I was the on call detective who was sent to the job. About the only thing I remember from that night is how he looked on the front lawn, and the plastic bag I used to pick up skull fragments off the dew covered grass. The anger I felt at him, my lack of understanding of what he was going through. But life has a sense of humour. What I was ignoring, was after years of attending high risk trauma incidents or critical incidents, I also had PTSD.

I changed, didn’t accept it, nor did I ask for help, or want to listen to anyone. PTSD is the real life equivalent of lycanthropy. Something hidden within, that cannot be controlled. They say a crazy person is the last one to know they’re crazy. I agree. Unlike my colleagues, I chose a different method of self harm. I didn’t end my life. I compartmentalised it into sections and killed them one at a time. My marriage, ended it, horribly. Just walked away. Next girlfriend, specifically picked someone the police would have a problem with. Someone I liked, but also got into trouble when I wasn’t around. It was just enough for me to never get into trouble but enough to torpedo my career. Friends, cut them off. If they made an effort I respected it, but I stopped seeking them out. Every aspect of my life, I killed it, still oblivious to what I was doing. It’s only through medically professionals that I now understand that my children saved my life. I’m told I stayed around for the 3 of them. I killed everything else, but remained a present and loving father. I’ve been told in o uncertain terms if they weren’t around someone would have been standing over my body on a dewy lawn holding a plastic bag.

It’s been about 7 years since I was diagnosed. A lots changed. I’m not the man I was before PTSD, nor am I the man suffering undiagnosed. I’m something different now, still being treated, still trying to rebuild. I still wake up from nightmares, still check the locks on the doors and windows, never sit with my back to an exit, constantly search for the threat in public spaces, suffer flashbacks and intrusive memories.

There are times, like right now, where I lose hours playing the original Tomb Raider trilogy. Searching for that time before everything, when I was 14, a boy who hadn’t seen the evil in the world. A boy unfamiliar with real world trouble. Sometimes it works. Times like that I think about Maryellen Brady 💗📚’s Minecraft builds with her children and smile in the knowledge that her children will carry those happy memories forever, and in times of worry will draw back on them and smile.

Bradley Ramsey interviewed me last year on an episode of the Saved as a Draft podcast. He actually asked me what I hope to achieve from writing. At the time I gave an honest answer. I said the dream was to make a living out of writing. I suppose it’s still true enough. But we also covered how I got into writing. It was the same career that almost destroyed me. All of those things I attended, I had to write those reports, write those court files, take those statements. A factual account of true horror. I have no formal writing education, only experience. I traded those real horrors in for fictional ones. So, I suppose the answer to the question, taking stock of my life, has evolved. I still hope I can one day make a living from writing, but I also hope the day comes where I write enough fictional horrors that the real ones leave me alone.

I’ll finish with a final story. When I was 12, I submitted a poem to a children’s writing competition. I won. It was featured in the local paper and my prize was a CD voucher. I’d forgotten about it until now. The CD I purchased was Roxette’s Greatest Hits, Don’t Bore Us, Get To The Chorus. I took that CD with me to the police academy, and I still have it now. Even subconsciously I always carried that little writing prize with me everywhere I’ve gone.

I haven’t edited this article, the temptation would be to water it down or make omissions. I guess it’s time I step out of the shadows, if only for a moment, and show a little bit of me.

Thank you all.

CJ