A Difficult Adjustment

So I come back even more intense and even more focused which is an illusion of productivity. I would be on my hands and knees at home scrubbing until my knees bled because we had this hard floor and I would scrub until my knees bled. I would be angry at my children for toys left out and they’re kids. You know what I am saying? I would be driving and I have gotten out of cars because I was so quick now to violence because that’s what I know, its life and death. One time we thought, this is a fun story, we thought our camp was being attacked. There was all fire all around, there was ricochets off the roof so we set up. I was in the gym. I ran and got my kit on. We stacked up ready to go and I remember, I was praying. I will tell you this story because I told my social worker this story. And my friends that were with me there probably had the same feeling. I was praying for the horror to come through that front gate and I was so excited to engage and like here we go, mortal combat and I was excited to do this. And then it was the Afghan National Army, Afghan soccer team beat another team so everybody was just celebrating. So to go from that extreme let’s do this to then nothing, you know, it was total. How emotionally draining is that? So I came back to Canada and I was always quick to get the kit on so when dealing with people in grocery stores, when dealing with people across who either triggered me with their eyes because the eye contact overseas was so intense too because they truly did dislike Dane, not like us, whatever verb you want there. They would stare through us and I remember engaging in like a lot of intense eye contact battles while driving and the back end of a vehicle would be heavy so then there’s my like, battling indicators right there plus aggressive eye contact. We’ve had Afghan National Army personnel, just weird there’s such corruption. They would try and wrap us in barbwire, raising their weapons, we’re so confused, we get out of there, we do all the right things, we reported it in. But these are weird situations that are happening. And I’m back in Canada and I don’t know my brain is there. And it’s been this amazing journey of me just being aware now that I have emotional flashbacks. It’s not even flashbacks but its emotional flashbacks where I am so intense ready to destroy everything that everybody in my sight becomes my enemy.

Experiencing emotional flashbacks, Arthur shares the difficulty he faced in dealing with his family and community because of some horrific experiences overseas.

Arthur Larimee

Mr. Arthur Larimee was born January 23, 1986 in Edmonton, Alberta. Growing up in Alberta and being involved in sports, Arthur always understood the importance of camaraderie and with this, was drawn to the idea of joining the military. With the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, Arthur trained as door gunner. He was a weapons technician and deployed twice to Afghanistan. After his second deployment Arthur left the military and together with his spouse Brittany, a fellow PPCLI, fulfilled his aspirations of opening a gym with the desire to have a place for countless service men and women to come together for support both mentally and physically, maintaining that bond of friendship experienced during service time. He and his wife have opened a clothing line and are proud entrepreneurs of the Iron King Gym Ltd in Kingston, Ontario.