So You're Dating A Firefighter.

How did that happen? Wonderful question.
Have you ever met someone and when you first start talking you just know that you want that person in your life. Like, no matter how they're in it, they just need to be in it for you to keep your mind.
Well that happened.

Then you find our they're a firefighter. At first sight, it sounds wonderful. So cool and you get all this cute stuff that says "firefighter's girlfriend" or "my heart belongs to my firefighter". Trust me...there's a lot of cute stuff like that out there. Then it sounds amazing because you're talking to a hero, someone who saves people, someone that people look up too. It's all so over whelming you don't realize what comes with it.

The fear, every time he's at work, the stress, which is brought on by the fear, the PTSD, from everything he's seen.
By the time you realize all the stresses you're already pulled in to deep. You look into his eyes and see the future and it's so bright and happy. One can only wonder how someone who has seen so much have so much light in their eyes.
You want to become close to someone, but because of their past they might pull away. This can happen to the best of us, but a lot of us get over it. We heal and move on from the past, from the people who hurt us or the time we hurt ourselves, but what happens if we couldn't heal? If we couldn't stop the pain. If we had triggers, if we had smells or sights that would stop you and place you back into a time when things weren't so good?

Think of it this way, an ex boyfriend, they had a hoodie you loved to steal from them, it smelled like them, it made you so happy and safe...then you break up. You slowly move on and get over and you may even find someone else who makes you happier than your ex. Then one day you walk by someone and they smell like he did, the scent of what use to be your favorite hoodie surrounds you, it over takes you. It brings back him and what he did. Now think about that, but watching someone die, watching their house burn into ashes. (or sometimes PTSD is sexual assault). Take that smells of your ex boyfriend and amplify by ten....ten hundred, ten thousand, ten million! You can't..you may think you understand how bad it is, but you can't unless you were there with them

How are you suppose to love and support someone through something you can hardly understand? It pushes them way from you. It can cause so many stresses on every day life and your relationship and yet you look at them and you just feel like everything is alright because it's a good day.

It's scary. It's hard. It's not all sunshine and rainbows and it's something that is going to take time. I might complain. I might have a bad day trying to deal with everything. I might want to give up, but I can't. I know he will need me, even if it's to get his mind off of things, even if he doesn't want to talk or open up. So the next time I say "My boyfriend is a firefighter", I will say it with a smile, but don't think it's because I think it's the coolest thing in the world or because I get all the cute little "firefighter's girlfriend" stuff, it's because at the end of the day we will be stronger than ever because we have a bond. We have a bond that will hold us together until the ends of time if we let it, because he has shared with me, I have listened and I still don't treat him differently. He is a person. He's much more than a firefighter and much more than PTSD.