Hello…My Name Is Jason

By: Jason Marcle

I thought it would be best to start telling you a little bit about myself. I’m not going to go into detail about everything I have experienced, but I am going to give everyone a brief overview. I guess it could be called painting a self-portrait.

Within 1 year and 6 days, I lost my father, my best friend, and my mother in that exact order. Seven months after losing my father and 3 months after losing my best friend, I experienced a nervous breakdown. It hit me like a truck. It was New Year’s Day 2022. I told Amy that something bad was going to happen again this year. On May 1, my mom called me and said she had tested positive for COVID 19. I knew that day that things were not going to be good. My best friend, Terry, also died of COVID 19 eight months prior. I felt like I was living in the Movie GroundHog Day. I felt like I was stuck in time. Once my mother got admitted to ICU, the same doctor that took care of my died before he died walked into the room. This really distorted my clarity of emotions.

That barely touches on the grief side as the mentioned above doesn’t paint the whole picture. There is much more I will discuss about my personal mental health journey in future posts. While going through all of this, I was also trying to remain sober. At the time of my father’s death, I was 3 years sober from alcohol. Yes, my name is Jason, and I am an alcoholic! Most people don’t know this about me as I am pretty good at living a double life. This made overcoming addiction extra challenging for me. There will be more about this in future posts as well.

I also work in the medical field. COVID really jacked everything up in our world. It changed the whole way we operated on a professional standpoint. I remember in the very beginning, seeing folks lying on their hospital bed on their stomachs in the ICU hooked up to a ventilator trying to survive. They were alone. They couldn’t communicate or have family beside them. It was very sad. It was sad that a lot of people died alone during COVID. It is sad that the government put rules in place that kept families from being with their dying loved ones. This caused a great deal of mental anxiety and PTSD for healthcare workers around the world. There wasn’t much anxiety support nor resources during this time due to everyone being afraid to be around others.

I felt very alone, isolated, even though there were many around me trying to help me. I couldn’t see it. I’m an only child, so after my mother died, it was just me. No brothers or sisters to help with the entire process. I felt like I had just become an orphan overnight. My head was filled with bad thoughts. My head was now a scary, dark place. I still had my wife and daughter with me, but that’s different. I also had my cousin, Stacy. Me and Stacy grew up together. Her dad and my dad are brothers. She is just like a sister to me. At the age of 42, I had already experienced losing both of my parents. They were both in their 60’s. My mother never experienced losing both of her parents. At the time of this writing, her mother and sister are still living.

I was with my mother’s father when he died. I saw everything that happened up close. I was 12 years old, and I watched the doctor try to bring my grandfather back with a defibrillator. My mother was performing CPR. My mother was a nurse. Once we arrived at the emergency room, I had to go get my mother and tell her that her dad was downstairs in the ER and that he was not doing well at all. He had turned blue before we arrived at the ER. I couldn’t tell my grandmother that while she was driving us to the ER in a hurry. She would ask me how he was doing and if he was breathing. I always said yes, he is breathing. He wasn’t though. That was a lot for a 12-year-old to experience. This happened on July 3rd, so I will also think about this every year during the July 4th holiday.

Whenever bad things happen, like this, the memory of losing my grandfather pops up in my head rent free. It messes with my emotional intelligence. I can’t wait to tell you the story behind titling this website “Rent-Free-Living.” When Stacy’s daughter died in a horrible car wreck, it brought back memories of the day I lost my grandfather. I had been sober for only 7 days when Alyssa got killed. I still don’t know how I remained sober. I do know. It was God. My Higher Power. I could not have done it without Him.

The night I thought I was having a heart attack at the age of 29 also brought back memories of my grandfather because that is how he died. The doctors said I experienced every symptom of a heart attack, but I was very lucky that i had no permanent scaring of my heart. My ejection fraction rate was measured at 23%. This was very low. It should have measured above 60%. At the age of 29 years old, I found out that I had chronic systolic heart failure. That is just a fancy name for congestive heart failure.

Like I said, I am just briefly touching on several different things I have already dealt with in life. This does not complete the list. I hope thousands of people will be able to benefit from our mental health blog. I hope this brings more awareness to mental health education and awareness.

Today July 1, 2023, I am still here. I have survived many things. I have watched my wife almost die three different times. I have watched my wife fight an eating disorder. I fight daily to remain sober. I try daily to restore my faith. That is still a work in progress that requires another story. Even though I feel like my faith has suffered severely over the last couple of years, God has still got my back. He has held me up. He has comforted me in ways I cannot imagine. I know He is always there for us, but I haven’t had the best experience trying to rebuild my faith. I am a work in progress. There are things my recovery program tells me to do daily. It had been hard for me to pray each morning to a God that has taken both of my parents, my best friend, a co-worker, another friend, and my niece (Stacy’s daughter) all within a 5-year timeframe.

Nobody from church really checked on me, other than two men that I call brothers. I call them brothers because we are like brothers inside and outside of church. We have really become good friends and I trust them both with my life. What is funny is both of them are named Carey. So other than my friends checking on me, that was about it. Other members did ask me how I was and if I needed anything, but not much help was provided in helping me to rebuild my faith. I went forward at church and told the minister that I was struggling and needed help. They said a prayer for me at that moment. Nothing else ever came from it. At church, as long as long as jobs were being filled like teaching class, leading singing, opening and closing prayers, and making sure the building was locked up, everyone was happy. Everyone except me. I never received the help or guidance I should have gotten from a church. All I got was, “can you do this? can you do that?” I had 1000 different things racing through my head. So no, my faith wasn’t where it should have been.

I fully intend to be honest in all my writings, as I want to continue to build resilience against anxiety. I am going to tell it like I see it in my head. This is part of how I cope with anxiety. If I tell these stories, others in this world will realize they are not alone in their battles. Maybe someone battling racing thoughts will see that they are not alone. Maybe someone will find mental health tips and advice that they can use. That guy with a loaded 9 mm pistol in his mouth will realize that they are not alone and will put their gun down. Yes, that was me one day as well. I have tasted the end of a 9 mm pistol. I believe with all my heart that if my best friend, Terry, had not called me at that exact moment, I wouldn’t be here typing this today. Terry is the friend of mine that died from COVID.

If you are reading this and are currently having thoughts of harming yourself, please seek help immediately. Calling 988 would be good start. You can’t do it on your own. It is OK to ask a licensed professional for help. I routinely see a counselor now. She has helped so much. You can reach out to us on our Facebook page, if you just need to chat or vent. We will listen, but we want to remind you that we are not licensed professionals. We will simply tell you our stories and what we have learned.

Welcome to Rent Free Living, where we choose who or what lives inside our heads.