Gabriel Mizrahi

It was so small.

And I had the thought, I might prefer to sleep on a park bench than in this room.

I'm going to look into this in case I ever get stuck again.

Dear Jordan and Gabe, I've been married for almost 10 years.

At first, it seemed like a happy marriage.

We were in love and we went through so many struggles together.

I lost my job, moved in with my in-laws and saw firsthand what it's like to be raised by narcissists.

I found another job and watched my wife graduate college.

We survived and worked through the pandemic.

She was in the medical field and I work in law enforcement.

Wow, two of the hardest jobs to do during the pandemic.

That must have been really intense.

For a long time, things seemed good.

We fought sometimes, got some fur babies, agreed not to have kids for a while, and were genuinely happy.

Through my job, I learned to really come out of my shell.

I became more comfortable with confrontation, with standing up for myself.

I grew as a person and learned to handle situations and people better.

As I promoted and took more training with my department, I honed some amazing clinical skills such as active listening, de-escalation, and crisis response.

I learned how to teach mental health classes like anger management, identifying implicit bias in communication.

As I learned these skills and taught this material, I applied it to my life at home.