“Rosa La Rouge,” was her name.

Rosa La Rouge

“Rosa La Rouge,” was her name.

I stared at her in the thrift shop.  I was being thrifty after all and had several other items I’d put into my basket from the art room.

I almost put the picture back.

As I write, over a year later, I remain captured by the painting.

Sometimes I take it down and look closely, trying to understand what it is that I feel when I look at her,  but I cannot say.  I guess it’s just a feeling.

My sister came to visit me one day and remarked about the painting.  “She looks just like you,” she said.  “Exactly.”

I was not surprised, which kind of surprised me.  Looking again I could see the resemblance, but it remains more a feeling than her physical features that reminds me of myself.

Having learned that Rosa La Rouge was a French prostitute evoked in me a stronger searching into what it is I feel looking at the painting.

The artsy late night coffee houses in Paris are where she is said to have been a patron. Before I learned about Rosa la Rouge, I had imagined her as possibly being a woman living the life of a share cropper’s wife.  I saw a woman trapped in a life of obligation.

Perhaps it is a certain loneliness in her that I see.    An alienation from the world of nine-to-fivers, the regular people who get up at the same time and go to the same place every day.  Regular people with regular jobs and regular relationships.

I imagine being a prostitute would call one to give up a part of her self.  How could you not?  How could you remain completely whole if you let a stranger enter your body?  And if this giving up is true, then what happens to that part of yourself?

I gave up a part of myself.  It was not in the name of money, but for love.  In the end, the result might be the same.  In fact, I think being a prostitute would be easier than whatever it is called when you abandon yourself so you can make room for someone not only to enter your body but your life and truly, become a part of who you are.

I gave up a part of myself to a person who did not see me as an individual or a whole person.

In my abandonment there he was — arms wide open.

I get glimpses of what I left behind –  so I know I’m still here.  I feel it the same, probably more, as I feel the elusive searching when I gaze into the painting of  Rosa La Rouge.

I didn’t realize how much of myself I had abandoned until now, as I am searching, once again in life, not only to find this part of myself, but to hold onto it forever.

An American girl took those apples.

I wish laptops grew on trees, like the apples did on the tree in the old lady’s yard near our house when I was around thirteen years old.  I had to be at least that age, because my dad bought me a ten-speed bicycle for my 13th birthday and that’s what I was on when I took, I mean, stole the apples from the old lady’s yard.

Of course I’d been told about stealing and the Ten Commandments.  I had also been specifically instructed, perhaps too many times for my rebellious nature, not to take, I mean steal, apples from that lady’s yard.

“She’s stingy and mean,” my mother would say.  “She would probably come out and hit you with a stick or something.  There’s no telling what she would do.”

The lady’s house was the last house on the road and beside of it was the dirt road the town used to drive to the, “sewer.”  The lady lived on “Sewer road.”

About twenty or thirty feet from the curve, where Sewer road went straight ahead and our road took a sharp right, with her house then on my left, I would smell the odor.  None of the children in the neighborhood would play on that corner of the block, which is what our neighborhood was, one big block in a small rural town.  I guess the old lady was glad the smell kept us away, but I was curious and had a bicycle.

I’m not sure what it was that drew me to wanting those apples.  The old lady I suppose.  Why she wouldn’t come outside, be nice and give a person an apple was curious to me.

I’d ride my bike around the block and every time I passed her house I secretly hoped to get a glance at her.  Sometimes I’d see her raking leaves and I would slow down, but she wouldn’t even look at the road.

There was another lady, who had an apple tree in our neighborhood.  She was younger but still kind of old in my eyes.  She was married and lived closer to the main road.  Her apple tree was right there at her front door.

The lady’s house down by the sewer sat further back into the woods, leaving her unattended apple tree to a curious girl like me.

I would put on a bra belonging to one of my older sisters.  I could get up to three of four apples in each cup.   I only tried it twice — how many I could get in there.  Usually, I took two apples and sometimes only one.

I guess, well obviously, I did not understand — no wait — I did understand that it was stealing.  I don’t know why I did it.  I thought she was greedy and maybe I found this equal to me taking, I mean, stealing her apples.  I was thirteen and bored and I cannot truly recall what I was thinking.

I cannot say this writing of the memory is 100% correct either.  I remember what I remember, and that is all.  I do remember that I took the apples though.  I got that part correct.

My friends would dare me too.  They couldn’t believe I was so brave.  Most of them wouldn’t even walk that way, because of the smell, and most of them did not have a bicycle.  I often rode alone.

I had been taught that the best apples were the ones that had already fallen, but not yet eaten by worms.  Plus, I was told, picking from the ground was simply the right thing to do.  My dad’s folks said that leaving the good ones on the ground, and that meant ones without worms or with only one or two wormholes, was being wasteful.

The old lady’s tree was quite abundant.  I don’t think she ever even used her apples!   Wasn’t she being wasteful?

My friends and I did enjoy eating the apples, if that matters any.  It should.

My mom said that the other lady was stingy too, but that if I knocked on her door and asked politely, that she might give me an apple.  So I did.  I never wore out my welcome, which was at best tentative.

“Yes, I guess you can have one, but take it from the ground and only one,” she would say.  “I’m going to be making jam soon.”

Well I knew that I would never taste her jam.

For some reason, I liked more the apples from the old lady’s tree down by the sewer.  Both trees produced red and crispy apples.  I guess hers were better because I didn’t have to deal with her like I did with the other woman.  I mean neither one of them were pleasant people.

We didn’t have much to do in the town I lived in.  My grandmother always said, “Idled hands are the Devil’s workshop.”  I guess she was right.

Much laughter occurred when my friends saw me returning, apples bobbing around on my flat chest.  Sometimes one in each pocket of my shorts.   I couldn’t see how that lady ever missed any of her neglected apples.

I guess I shouldn’t have taken, I mean, stolen those apples, but I did, and much fun was had.

I wish laptops grew on trees.  If someone just let them hang and fall without making use of them and the laptop tree was hidden in the woods, neglected,  like the old lady’s apple tree, would you take one?

Just to make things clear here. An image of a laptop tree came to  mind and I remembered the apple tree.  I do want a laptop, but I would not take, I mean, steal one, under any circumstances.  Just having some fun writing.

by Dogkisses.

Fibromyalgia TV commercial made me cry too.

“That commercial is about me,” I told my dog, kidding with her.  “There’s a commercial about you and me now!” I added. She looks just like a dog on a commercial who is in a cage and needs a new owner. I wiped the few tears from my face.  I’m used to tears.

I think I write to try and find things out about myself, like why I cried both times I saw the television commercial about the pain of fibromyalgia.

I can’t write too much on the subject because of fibromyalgia.

I wonder where the tears were really coming from?  I thought of my family.  I wondered if any of them had seen the commercial.  I wondered if they would think of me.

I do not want pity.  I really do not.

Was I crying for myself?  It was like looking into a mirror.

I’m crying now, suddenly, as I write, and even shaking a little.  I don’t know why.

Is it because I want so much for my family to believe that the pain I experience, (and having written just now I cry again ???) –  what’s up here!

Let me start over.

Is it because I want my family to believe that the pain I experience is so severe, that if any of them had this kind of pain they would not be able to live with it without some serious form of treatment?

Sigh…  I believe the tears must have something to do with this.

It’s hard to hear people say things like they have to work even though they feel pain.

It’s hard when people don’t understand when I cannot drive and come visit them.

It’s hard when I cannot clean up my house enough because of pain and fatigue.  These are times when I would actually really love to have one of my sisters or my mom or all of them come visit me.

I have two dogs who are my family too.  This means dog hairs.  Fortunately, I have a bamboo floor in my living room and tile in the kitchen — but I do have a rug — and vacuuming this rug is probably the hardest of chores.  Pushing the vacuum cleaner!  I think it weighs more than I do.

All my house chores are hard.  And I mean hard as in painful!

Bending over is painful.  Reaching up is painful.  Using my hands to scrub is painful.

When you have fibromyalgia and you get a day where you have enough energy to do chores, or perhaps more accurately, a day when you can do A chore — just one, such as vacuuming, and you do it, the pain doesn’t end when the chore is over.

I planted five plants in my yard this year.  I will never plant another plant in this yard, ever!  Not one!

I paid dearly for using a shovel.  I cannot recall how long I was in pain.  I ended up once again in physical therapy over it.

One time I went to visit my mom.  My sisters do a lot for her.  They live close by and I don’t get to visit as often, nor can I assist with physical chores.  So there I was visiting, feeling alright.  I noticed Mother’s bathroom needed cleaning and decided to clean it for her because she just had surgery.

Huge Huge Mistake!

Mother kept calling out to me from the kitchen, where she was cooking, asking me if I was still cleaning.  She asked me to stop and I should have listened to my mother! But alas, I did not.  I wanted her bathroom to be sparkling.  And when I finished it was.

I was in the physical therapist’s office within about three or four weeks. I stayed in severe pain before I finally went, having thought the pain would pass until one night my neck got completetly stuck in one position.

This has happened to me before.  A severe neck spasm.  This requires immediate medical attention.

I haven’t offered to clean anyone’s bathroom since then.  Cleaning my own is a challenge.  I try not to bend over and get all twisted up but how can you clean a toilet, behind it and all around it, esp., in a small size bathroom without bending and twisting?

I’m glad the commercial about fibromyalgia is running.

It is real.  Their tears are authentic. There is a look in a person’s eyes when they know constant severe pain.  If you see this commercial, you might see what I’m talking about.  Maybe.

I don’t know how people without fibromyalgia view the commercial or what they see on the crying faces.

Maybe the commercial will help.  Maybe people, at least some people, will see it and feel a bit more empathy if they happen to know or love someone who has fibromyalgia.

Empathy and understanding is not pity.  I don’t want any pity.  I do want to be understood and validated.

I used to be one of the most active people I knew!  I raised a son alone.  Every day I was there.  Playing right beside of him.  Roller-blading, bicycling, swimming, hiking, and one of our favorite activities, throwing a frisbee.

I am going to go as far and speak for many, not just myself by saying most people don’t want to be in pain.

We do not want to be too fatigued to live our lives but often we are!

We do not want pain so severe — so constant and severe that we wake up literally crying out in the middle of the night hurting all over!

We do not want to take pain pills but some of us must!

I know there are people who have fibromyalgia and do not have to take pain medication.  I was one of those people for many years, the last three of which were full of pain and not much else in life, just pain.

I’m not speaking for the people who are well but for those of us who are managing severe pain 24/7.  We do have to take medication to control PAIN!

Treating fibromyalgia pain is a sign of intelligence!

Not treating it, well, that is bad.

I hear horror stories sometimes.  Someone will say to me how he or she knows a person, usually it is a relative who has been told she has fibromyalgia.  I will ask if the person has a doctor and the horror stories are when I hear that the person is not seeing a doctor.

One person said about her mother,  “She just lays in the bed all the time doing nothing.  Says she can’t because she is too tired.  She says she hurts all over.   I tell her she needs to get out and exercise.”

That is a horror story to me.

One more quickie and I gotta go.  I dated one man let’s see, I think one time.  He was telling me about his mother, how she had fibromyalgia.  She had been in a wheel chair for a long time.

He began telling me and then went into this big spill about how the entire family is upset because she cannot cook or do their laundry anymore.  Several strong men living in the house with her and they were angry.

My date said, “She doesn’t even fry chicken on Sundays anymore.”

I did share my opinion with him, but we never saw each other again.

Love or Abuse?

magic bike

Ending an unhealthy relationship is a lot easier than the aftermath when you might forget why you had to end it.  It is a very hard thing to love a person whom you discovered is not who you thought he was.

A man who is putting on a front to impress you can only do it for so long.   You will meet the real person behind the public persona, and it isn’t pretty.

Edited on Nov 20, 2009

We all know there are different kinds of unhealthy relationships.  I can say I now know what a narcissist is, though spelling it is harder than understanding it.  Having words to describe experiences is very important to me.  I need this.  I need to be able to describe something before I can understand it and then deal with it.

Narcissism I have learned, is a serious problem if it is an actual personality disorder.  Abuse is abuse, but sometimes abuse comes in a deceiving disguise and isn’t as easy to recognize as perhaps a bruise or a cut to the flesh.

I understood the behavior of a narcissist only I didn’t know it was actually a serious personality disorder. I learned this on a great site I found.  It is a great place to learn and get advice from wise women who have much to share and many women in the throws of the aftermath of loving a narcissist, which is a certain kind of hell on earth.

Check it out at http://www.lisaescott.com/ (“It’s All About Him”).

We all have heard the saying love hurts.  I wonder how much it is really supposed to hurt.  It should not hurt all the while you are in a relationship, that is for sure.  That cannot be love.

Leaving a person who, you found out — so to speak, does get easier the more you are around people and much easier to get over once you are either dating or involved with a healthy person.  Having a relationship is one of the best ways to get over a bad one!  Really!

It takes a bit more time for me to grieve than for some people, probably because I have clinical depression, but I know from having read other women’s stories that this kind of relationship can do a great deal of harm in many ways. It can be and usually is quite serious.

Depression can cause you to forget that you deserve the best and to take care of yourself because low self-esteem and/or self-blame is part of it’s game.   Add to that a person who has the ability to slowly, little by little, have control over your mind, so that he can rip apart your self-esteem, your independence and assertiveness and there is a recipe for a great deal of emotional pain.

Love is an elusive subject.  One thing I know is what love is not.  It is not controlling another person.  It is not using another person for sex or money.  It is not making another person hurt to make yourself feel better.  Love is not a commodity.

My guy was Mr. Charmer at first, which by the way is a huge red flag.  He just couldn’t stop telling me how wonderful I was and how he adored everything about me.  Another red flag.  If a man cannot talk about things besides how great you are, then you should stop and think about things.  Flattery is always nice, but when this is all a man ever does watch out!

When a man puts a woman on a pedal stool, constantly praising her, telling her how awesome and wonderful she is, she should BEWARE.

First of all we should already know this about ourselves if we are awesome.  I mean let’s say you feel like you are a good mother.  You don’t need someone telling you every ten minutes what a good mother you are right?  Let’s say you help your family member who is sick.  This comes natural to you.  Of course it is good to get support from our friends about the things we do in life, especially hard things.  Sometimes it really makes a difference when someone says, “You are doing a really good job at this and it must be very hard,” or, “I am proud of you for what you are doing.”  This is normal that we need support and encouragement from others.

But be warned that if your new guy is all about constantly flattering you, gazing into your eyes– all the time,  nearly drooling over whatever it is he is focusing on about you;  your intelligence, your compassion, your empathy, your abilities, your physical beauty, your one of a kind sexual ability and on and on and on — this is a bad sign.

I’m not talking about real love or the wonderful sensations of falling in love.  I’m not talking about the kind of love that grows out of mutual respect and sincere interest in getting to know each other.   I’m talking about a person who is lying, pretending and putting on a show for you with all the doting and drooling over you.  One day this will turn and you will hear just the opposite.   It is all part of a game.    It is a pathological game.

Another early warning can be lots of gifts.  Gifts will tell you a lot about him, because guess what?  When you are dealing with someone who is like a young child in the sense that the world revolves around him, the gifts will always be what he likes or wants you to have so he can enjoy them with you.

They don’t usually give personal gifts such as a necklace or something that speaks to you as an individual or even to a relationship.  My guy loved buying expensive roses.  He never asked if I liked roses.   Of course most of us loves roses, but he never asked what flowers I really wanted.  I would have chosen some old time flowers, with huge petals and strong fragrance that reminds me of being a child in the country.

He sent by UPS large quantities of cookies that I liked for about one minute.  I began giving them away.  I had cases!  My mother liked them, but mostly he liked them.  Of course.  They were his favorite cookies, not mine.  He has no clue what mine are, which are Pims, by Lu, orange or raspberry, yummy.

He gave me a couple of huge boxes of energy bars.  So many they would have molded with one person eating on them.   I shared them with my sick mother who lives on a fixed low-income and guess what?  The guy, who was always throwing money around to impress people, got upset when he discovered I had shared them.  I also shared some with my son.  Once the jerk (another name for a narcissist), said to me, “Okay, these are for you and you can’t give them away.”

I told him I would give my mother and son anything I wanted to give them.  I should have known then that coming near would be the end.  He was a control freak and a very sick person.  He could never handle an independent woman with her own opinions and ideas.  This alone greatly compromises the  fragile illusion he has about who he is in the world.

He was terribly threatened by my having a few normal friends and a family.  A month-old email he sent me marks the death of a sweetness I felt with him, about him and for him.  He put down my family and me for being part of it.  I could not believe it.  I was so shocked when I read the paragraph that I couldn’t read anymore of the message.  I became nauseated and literally felt that my throat was closing in as if I was being choked and it was not a panic attack.  I have those.  I know what those are.  This was more like getting sick from contaminated food.

My family and I were always nice and respectful to this man.  My mother truly believed that he was a good man.  In one way this hurts me more than how much it hurts that he treated me poorly.

It hurts me to know that I brought a person into my mother’s home who sat and looked at family photos of her recently passed mother and who she believed was a good man and good for me.  She said I looked better and sounded happier.  I was surprised at how much my happiness was recognized and acknowledged by my family.  It was a sign that they loved me.  Everyone said so when I first fell in love with the man.  But my mother — whom I love with all of my heart and soul and then some –  having been exposed to such a lie hurts me.  I told her he was a narcissist.   She rolled her eyes.  I don’t think she had ever heard the word and with strong conviction she said he was just a pure asshole.

Looking back I can see where I asserted myself quite a few times.  I believe that he counted each time, waiting to get me back because my assertiveness to him was something that deserved revenge.

I thought I had already learned this lesson in life.  I had been in a relationship twelve years earlier with a man who also changed into an abusive manipulator.  I never thought I’d let this happen again, but I did.   Both times  I could feel deceit as clearly and easily as I can hear the rain drops falling onto my deck as I write.

Both times I went against my strong intuition.  I think I did it because both times I was depressed,  lonely and sad.   I was also broke and both times I was offered jobs making more than reasonable amounts of money.

There is something the Native Americans call, The Circle of Life.  I believe we keep returning to the same place only with more knowledge and wisdom.  Apparently, I didn’t fully get it the first time I went against my gut and so I did it again.  My only saving grace was that I had learned about men who play head games and lie.  I could see it coming and was able to leave the relationship before the damage was too great.   Bad things always happen when I go against my gut.

I had one person whom I confided in before I got involved with this man.   He is wise.  He told me to never see this man again.  He said I would get hurt.  He knew, just like I did, that this man was not an honest person and that there was something about him that we couldn’t see but we could definitely feel.   I did not listen.

I also confided in two other people, whom I love a great deal and whose opinions matter to me.  Unfortunately, they encouraged me and said my gut was only my inability to trust.  You see, this man, he came into our lives.  He met my mother and my sister and my son, and he told them how much he thought of me.  My mother especially doesn’t understand why he would have come and declared such strong love for me if he didn’t mean it.  He is after all a man with some years behind him.  He has not been a boy for a very long time.

I felt a bit resentful to my family members who told me to trust this man because he was so nice and treating me so well.  I finally came to terms with this realizing he had portrayed what he calls, “his public face,” and has told me since how hard he works at keeping it up.

My family had no reason to think this man was acting and lying.  Most of us don’t think that way.  Most of us take people for who they say they are. We can judge them by how they act around us and treat us, along with listening to how they speak of other people.

People who prey on others to get control of their minds are a unique sort of predator. Some of them are narcissists and have the personality disorder.  They need to be treated as though they are the grandest of all people.  They need constant reminding of their grandiosity.  Their need to feel important is pathological.   If anyone threatens this illusory but passionately cultivated false sense of who they are, then that person becomes an immediate and usually permanent enemy.

Predators like people who are nice, giving, caring, understanding, loving and kind –and it is easy to get to these nice people when they are going through a difficult time.  They like to come in and look like a hero, rescuing you and then, once they get you believing that they care and love you, they begin their plan to bring you down.

I’m talking about a person who for whatever reasons has a damaged character and personality.  This person will portray a public image that truly has nothing to do with who he or she really is, but this is for the public and it is not what you will see behind closed doors.

You will see on the outside a confident and outgoing person, seemingly quite concerned for others’ well-being, a social butterfly even — but on the inside is an entirely different story.  There is a person without any substance and sadly, he knows it.

I loved a pretend man.  An illusion.  Truly an impostor.  The man I loved was sweet, innocent, giving, caring and compassionate.  He thought the world of me and I loved being loved that much.  This was not the real person though.

The real person who I got to know — after the first time I expressed my needs to have a healthy relationship — is a man who cannot think of other people’s feelings.  He is a man I don’ t recognize.  The man I loved has disappeared.

When you love someone like this he will freak out inside when he sees you assert your independence and express your individual ideas and your personal beliefs.   It hurts when you share your heart felt desires for a healthy relationship, thinking you will get a normal response; communication, but instead he runs like a chicken with his head cut off.

Have you ever seen that?  I have.  It isn’t very pretty — but later it is kind of funny.

Still, there is nothing funny about loving someone who turns out to be a totally different person than you thought. This hurts!  But this is not love. Yeah, the love you felt and feel is real, but it isn’t the love that hurts.  It is  the shock when the person you love disappears, along with the relationship you thought you had.  It hurts when you meet the real person who has been hidden from you.

Any person can fall prey to someone who manipulates others this way.  Many women who fall in love with men like this are educated, attractive, and independent women.   Anyone can be a victim of this kind of abuse.

A true narcissist cannot stand feeling that he is not absolutely and altogether the most important person above everyone else in your life, including children, elderly parents, your hobbies and even your career.  He must feel above all of those things.

He needs to feel like he is the most special and greatest human being you’ve ever known too, while in reality, he is a person who does not deserve your time of day.

He is a person who lies, cheats, and doesn’t have any remorse or compassion for the people who are hurt by his actions.  He is a damaged individual. Usually he will have an excuse for his lack of empathy or remorse, which will often be something that happened in his childhood.  He will remind you of whatever happened when you confront him about anything at all.

I understand mental illness.   I understand things about childhood trauma.   I do not understand choosing not to do anything about it when you hurt someone.  I do not understand choosing to abuse someone and choosing to walk away afterward.   I understand these are the symptoms of narcissism but maybe you gotta be one to understand one.

I can only imagine what people feel who have given ten, twenty or thirty years to this kind of a relationship.  That must feel like you wasted your life.  I believe though that if you have a day left to live, only one day, then live it without the person who will not stop abusing you.

Take a chance and go out into the world, with a weekly appointment for counseling of course, and live one day free.

Sometimes we do not know what is happening to us until we discover that there are actually words to describe exactly what we are experiencing.   Knowledge really is freedom.

If you are in a relationship where you feel confused, like anything that goes wrong is your fault, and you begin to feel badly about yourself, like you just aren’t good enough, all the while you hear someone say how much he or she loves you.  ??? Red Flags.

It takes two to tango remember?  Feeling like everything is your fault or always feeling confused during or after your interactions  are classic signs of an emotionally abusive relationship.    Love does not make you feel torture.  Love makes you feel good.

Good luck, many blessings and much courage to you!

I wrote, “An Ode to a narcissist.”  I enjoyed writing it and loved emailing it to him!

http://dogkisses.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/an-ode-to-a-narcissist/

Dogkisses is mad!

I’m Dogkisses and I’m mad!  Mad as in angry, more than a bit peeved, seething, and any other word that fits, besides insane, which I may be that too!

I’m mad that I simply don’t know what to do to help my son. I’m really mad about this.  I’ve been working so hard for years and I’m so tired!  I’m mad because all my ideas are hard to put into place unless he is on the same boat as I am and apparently, that is not the case, not at all.

Because he isn’t on the same boat as I am then when his illness gets worse, which at times it does, I must rely on psychiatrists.  It’s like eating beans and rice when you know good and well there are plenty other kinds of food, much tastier and much healthier right there for the eating, but you can’t get to them.

I’m mad about a lot of things and have been for a long time.  I don’t know which way to turn.  If I had money I’d get a dog sitter and go to some tropical island and consider things.  But alas, I do not,  so here I am, in my apartment wondering what the hell to do — besides write that is.

I’m  mad that this thing called fibromyalgia and maybe even worse, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, along with a virus I have bringing with it weakness and  days of nausea, all just keep on keeping on!

It is hard to help my son or anyone, including my dogs when I’m too tired to think!  I simply hate it.

My grandmother told me when I was a little girl that certain words were  not good to use.  Like the word hate.  First of all, she said it was a sin to hate.   She also said it would make you sick and would not do anything to the object of your hatred.

I used to be a new-ager in the 1980’s.  Perhaps I would have given my fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue a mental hug and embraced the great teachings I gain each day as a result of having pain and being exhausted all the time.

Well, it is 2009 and I’m not hugging either damn one!

My grandmother told me not to swear either but I can’t get everything right.  I did once swear in front of her, but only once.  I don’t know what kind of soap she used but believe me it really really tasted bad! It kind of got stuck on my tongue and she stood and watched while I,  “washed my mouth out because I said a dirty word.”

I wish she was alive now so I could go talk to her.  I don’t know what in the world she would say though.  I imagine she would tell me to turn to God.  She would probably tell me that it was out of my hands, all of it, and give it all to God, specifically to Jesus Christ, since she was a Baptist.

What would she think about modern psychiatrists!  My grandmother didn’t get angry like I do.  She did know what hard decisions were though.

I just found out recently that she had to seek commitment papers on my father more than once.  He was an alcoholic and would drink until he would get so sick he would be nearly dead.  He would drink, “rubbing alcohol,” when family members poured his beer or liquor down the drain in the kitchen sink, the latter of which as a young child, I blamed on the former.  I thought it much better to leave the liquor because I’d seen what happened when he drank the, “rubbing alcohol,” that was kept in the bathroom.

Back then the only place for him to go to detox was the state’s mental institution.  I also learned he escaped from there, which today is unheard of.  My mom told me that my grandmother helped in his escape.  They had it all planned.  My dad had his suitcase outside of the place, hidden behind some trees.  My grandmother told my mom they were just going to visit him.  My mom was the driver.  The next thing my mom knew after pulling into the parking lot my dad was in the back seat of the car saying, “Hurry up, let’s get out of here.”

So she had to commit him and then help him escape afterwards.  Sounds about like what I do.  Escaping looks a lot different but basically that is what you do when you get “discharged.”   You have successfully and legally escaped.

I get pretty worked up about commitment papers and trying to save someone from a disease that is treated more like an alien and the patient, like a host under lock and key.

I am way more than frustrated with what is offered to him as, “treatment,” and a great deal of the time, what is taken away from him.

I’m mad because The Literacy Council in the town he lives in just dumped him.  They have a Basic Skills Development Center, which offers many different educational services and programs.  They set my son up with a tutor only a couple of months ago.

Getting him interested in something enough that he will actually make a commitment is challenging, but he absolutely loved going to see this tutor each week.

He usually sleeps late yet every tutoring day he would call me early, knowing that I rise early to write, to make sure he knew the right time.  He usually walked there because he doesn’t have a car.

I’m too mad to write about it!  I should ask for a letter from them as to why they dumped him.

“He has a problem with memory,” one of the staff members said when she called to tell me they had decided, on their own, without consulting anyone about it, to immediately stop offering my son services.

He has a thought disorder, causing disorganized thinking and YES, HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH HIS MEMORY!  Duh!

Anyone ever heard of the working memory at this institution for education.  Somehow I doubt it.

Didn’t they totally go against The American’s with Disabilities Act?”

I’m mad because I don’t know this law up and down.  I should.

I believe this organization gets money from our government, along with other private sponsors, so why are they immune to dismissing a student due to his or her disability, which is exactly what they told me they did?

I asked two people, one is the executive director, if I was clear about why they stopped serving my son and went as far as to ask if there was something I did not know, some other reason besides his memory problem, that had brought about this decision and she said no.

So I’m mad!

I’m mad at the people who think without knowing that this town’s reputation is in some ways a fairy tale.  It is a place reputable for being a progressive town, with all kinds of different community services and of course the best of the best when it comes to any type of medical care because there are two of the best medical schools in the country here.

Much of it is true but when people who are in positions of power assume a service is available just because well, because they think it is drives me nuts!

As I was pleading with the Literacy Council not to dump my son telling her how much he loved it, how it stimulated his mind, how it gave him something to think about and talk about, how he was always there and excited to learn — she said, “Well, I’m sure there is a service around here offering…” and I cut her off.

“No.  There is not,” I said firmly.  I had told them when he started receiving their services that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t known about these services before.  We’ve been here six long and hard years and finally, finally he got somebody who would sit with him for an hour and a half!!!

Finally someone was going to spend some time with him.   Finally someone would treat him like a human being instead of a person who what?  A person who you cannot expect to learn?  A person who made A’s and B’s in school, who is intelligent, but because of  a thought disorder, a thinking disorder causing disorganized thinking — hello! — because of this — I nor anyone else should expect him to learn?

Unless of course he takes a fat dose of a mind body altering chemical!  Then, he probably won’t learn, but at least his behavior will be socially acceptable and freaaaaking pleasing!!!

Well, now it is night, which beckons me to relax.

I could trash this post but I think not.  I will instead click Publish.

“Meteor Tips” make Good Living Tips.

“Meteor Tips” make Good Living Tips.

Stay up late: Meteor showers peak between midnight and dawn. Nap early if you must.

Get out of town: Go far away from city lights and haze.

Get comfortable: Bring a lounge chair or blanket.

Be patient: It takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust to the dark.

Look around: Meteors may radiate from one point, but they can flash anywhere in sky.

source:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33891078/ns/technology_and_science-space/?GT1=43001

Fibromyalgia HURTS!

As I write, the only part of my body that doesn’t hurt seems to be my nose.   I guess my female organs aren’t hurting, but they might be if I was having sex, which obviously I’m not, since I’m sitting here at my Dell writing in this blog — about pain.

“How often do you wake up in pain,” my good nurse practitioner asked during our most recent visit, over a month ago now.

I took a deep breath.  “Pretty much every day lately,” I told her.

This question was the first thing that came to my mind today as I was waking up.  I lied there for the first few minutes,  as my brain processed how much pain I was feeling.  I thought about my pain pills and how they were only steps away.

Having overslept, I was an hour late with my dose so when I woke up there it was.  Pain.  Staring me in the face like the sun shining through my window, the latter of which made me feel some better.

It’s hard to know how much pain to accept or tolerate or live with when you live in a certain amount of pain all the time.  It’s also hard to recognize when pain has worsened until I get out of pain only to look back and think wow — I was really hurting a lot.

I decided about three years ago to take medication for widespread ongoing pain.   “Pain and Living,” is one of my posts here, which is about the time I decided that enough was enough because I could only tolerate so much pain.  I had met my limit.

I decided a year and a half ago to go on a narcotic because I wanted a chance at living a little.  I began to notice a difference in the quality of my life right away.  The narcotic has many less side-effects and doesn’t have the potential for organ damage as did the “non-narcotic,” I was taking for pain had.  It also treats the pain much better, which is a big plus.

So, I was doing okay with my pain medication.  This means the level of pain I was experiencing was much lower and at times, managed well enough by the medication that I couldn’t feel the pain.

Things were going pretty good and then came life.

Regular ordinary life. For me, regular ordinary life includes intermittent crises, usually around my son’s health issues and sometimes my mother’s.  When it is the latter then dealing with family becomes a crisis in itself.

Stress triggers fibromyalgia and fibromyalgia is stressful.

My most recent stress is that I took a hard fall from my magic bike.   Within a ten day span, I went from having a very sore elbow, shoulder and back, respectively, to waking up with severe back pain and finally feeling pain in every place in my body that has tissue.

Fibromyalgia covers a lot of ground.

Yesterday I was able to do some house chores.  Some days I wake up and realize I’m able.  I know I’m supposed to pace myself but when I get these able days I try to catch up on things, especially dishes and bathroom chores.  Things that you must tend to for a sanitary environment.

I focused on my dishes and laundry yesterday.  Laundry is the hardest because of all the picking up of clothes, out of the washer – into the dryer – out of the dryer – then folding them.  I felt pain in my shoulders but did it anyway.

My sweet dog, a great insect hunter, barely brushed against my femur bone when I lied down after my chores and it felt like I got kicked in an already bruised spot.  (Note it is not bruised.  Fibromyalgia sometimes feels like my whole body is bruised.)

My insect hunter, along with our other 4legged relative have been lying as close to my body as they can get over the past two weeks since I fell.  They’ve literally had me locked down on the sofa a couple of times.  The big one lying across my feet and the little one, only 45 pounds, likes to get anywhere she can and if that means on top of a leg or an arm then that is where she gets.

Last night, after my day of chores, I woke up about 9pm on the sofa.  Both dogs around me.  My body was hurting all over.  Moving was a struggle.  I budged one of the dogs and she didn’t move.  They were sleeping good.

I had overdone it with the laundry for sure!  I finally got the dogs to get off the sofa so I could pull myself up.  I have about four pills for breakthrough pain.  I took a half of one.  I needed a whole one, but I guess I’m saving them.

My doctor said he trusted I would use them conservatively, which is true, but it’s hard to know how much pain to accept.

By the end of today I cried some.  I had walked the dogs.  Not as far as they needed to be walked but some and we got a little sunshine.  I let them smell where their little noses wanted to go.  Lots of people just walk their dogs, but I let mine stop and smell.  I once read where it is good for a dog’s olfactory bulb to smell things every day.  That made sense to me and I like things that make sense.

Dogs have what the native Americans call good medicine.  Their medicine is loyalty.  They give.  This is what they do.  They give.  They are wonderful nurses!

I got through the day.  I don’t know if I would have had a better day had I taken a little more medication.  I might have felt better.  The tears came after I struggled to get my sweat shirt off.  It just plain hurt.  I’d gone several hours  finding myself rubbing my shoulder a lot, or my leg, or my hand or my chest.  Mostly my shoulder.

I guess it wore me out.  Pain is stressful.  It is tiring.  Living with it all the time is depressing.  It just is.

“How often do you wake up in pain?”  My nurse’s question lingers in my mind.

How often is too often?

My magic bell and fibromyalgia

my magic bike's bell

My magic bell ♣ was the first thought I had after I hit the wet pavement.  Did it break I wondered?

As you can see from the picture here, it did not break!  Nor did my head which is good ’cause I didn’t have a helmet on.

“You know how it is with you.  Because of fibromyalgia when you get a localized injury it spreads to other areas,” my doctor said.

“Well, umm, how long do you think my back will hurt?”  I knew the question was one he couldn’t answer.  I don’t know why I asked. He just looked at me.  I don’t remember if he said anything.  I think he simply nodded his head to communicate that he didn’t have a clue.

It was my elbow that got cut open.  My shoulder hurt and my knee,  but after a few days the rest of my body began to hurt.  I was in a great deal of pain as I sat there with my family doctor.

I know you can’t see any bruises I told my doctor, but my body really does hurt.

With a tender tone that was much appreciated he said, “I believe you,” and I knew he did.  He believes me when I tell him I am in pain. This is a blessing when you have an illness that is not only misunderstood but also denied by some as being a true medical entity.

Fibromyalgia.  I think I am mad at this word!  This medical entity!  If I was superstitious or believed in demons possessing one’s body and soul, then I would sure be having an exorcism performed!  But I don’t believe in that, nor do I believe, at least in my rational mind, that I am being punished by God.

Having been brought up in the south with a strong Southern Baptist influence, I must admit that I do actually think and sometimes feel that I am being punished, which I believe is a direct result of what I learned about God and Jesus.

My grandmother told me that Jesus was watching me all the time and that he knew every single thing I did.  Well, that right there shaped and formed a large part of my world view.    I think this must get in a person’s brain forever, these things we learn as children.

When I am in severe pain or have been too fatigued to do anything for days on end, even think, sometimes I find myself lying in my bed, crying out to God and apologizing for all my sins.  I ask why and how am I supposed to do anything if I have this illness that at times renders me totally useless!

My rational mind tells me I’m not being punished and that I am a human being who is not immune to diseases or illnesses.   The pain I live with, the fatigue and the depression because of it all,  is part of the human condition.

I didn’t feel my elbow for the first minute or so.  I hadn’t felt it yet when my son said, “Mom, uhh, you did something to your elbow.”

I lifted my head attempting to get up.  “Mom just lie there.  Did you hit your head?”  I wasn’t seeing stars but walking back home with my son walking behind me with our bikes I couldn’t move my arm.

“I think there is a rock in there,” my son said and that’s when I felt dizzy.  A rock in my elbow.  The thought of it was nauseating to me.  I’m used to pain but not this kind of pain.

My doctor who is gentle and understanding was on vacation when I went to get my stitch out.  The doctor I saw was not like him at all!  I think she thought I wanted pain pills but I told her I had plenty.  I wanted to know if I had hurt my back because it was hurting.  I asked her to examine it, which she did.

“I think this is fibromyalgia.  It’s definitely tissue related.  You’re thin and when you have a traumatic fall like this, with fibromyalgia,  it can…”  I don’t remember how she worded the rest but I didn’t need to hear the words.   They are all the same.

If pain is due to fibromyalgia then basically this means it can behave any way it wants to.  It might be there a week or six months.  It might be localized or widespread.

Sometimes I guess I wish the doctors would say — oh this is something we can fix — and give me a time frame as to when I will be feeling better or recovered.

My Magic Streamers

An Ode to a Narcissist

horses butts

“Some women can fake an orgasm. But some men can fake an entire relationship!” – Sharon Stone

I will tell you…

I will tell you I love you. I will tell you I am in love with you.
I will tell you over and over and over again and again.
I will tell you until you believe me.

I will always open doors for you, so you may think
I am a true gentleman.
I will run in the rain to my shiny car for an umbrella,
just for you, my sweet angel.

I will tell you how special you are. I will tell you again and again.
I will tell you how I am absolutely without a doubt sure that you are the one for me.
I will tell you this until you believe me.

I will give you nice gifts. I will tell you it is because you have lived without for so long,
I will tell you how it makes me happy
to see you enjoy these things in life.

I will tell you how I want to help you. I will tell you this
again and again.
I will tell you things that will make you dream of a better future.

I will tell you all the things that I can think of to make you give up on that other man,
the one who treats you with too much love.

I will do all I can to make you think you are the one for me,
that my love is known to me and real.

I will tell you who loves you when nobody else is there for you.

I will tell you not to worry if my love is real my dear,
again and again, over and over, I will tell.

I will tell you your doubts are to be abandoned,
I will tell you this each time you doubt my love.

I will tell you I can help you,
make your life easier.

I will tell you how I want to declare my love for you to your family,
“I will tell them how awesome you are.”

I will tell you how I will exclaim my love for you,
In the future, when I don’t have to hide you.

I will tell you I like your son and family,
I know they are so important to you.

I will tell you it is the truth once you finally start to believe,
all that I tell.

I will work hard to win your heart,
I can, I am very smart.

I will tell you I am doing fine, after that first time.

That first time when I feel like you are going to hurt me.

This — sweet angel — is when everything changes.

I will tell you a first lie,
a second, a third and more.

I will tell you and you will believe me,
then my sweet angel, it will be near the end.

I will tell you little things,
designed to burn a bit and sting.

I will tell you I feel mistreated,
hoping you may not see that it is you being played.

I will use this lie to leave you,
the telling has changed.

I will tell you I am leaving town.
I will tell you not to bother calling.
I will tell you more lies.

I will tell you the truth only when I think it might hurt you.

I will tell you that I almost had an encounter,
I will say that I had to stop because I thought of you.

I will think you must be a dumb little slow-talking country girl.
I can tell you anything and you will believe it!

You, however, will know, what I tell, is a lie, and you will hurt.
I forgot to tell you,
I am detached from my heart.
I am capable of not feeling.

I will tell you I do not feel important enough.
I will tell you how I feel second.

I will tell you how I fucked her.
I will tell you I got hard when I looked at her body.

I will tell you even when you start to cry.
I will tell you how you don’t like for me to lie.

I will tell you I enjoyed it.
I will tell you how I came inside of her.
I will tell you I came there, thinking of you.

You will be stunned.
I will feel like a stud.
I will tell you anything I feel like telling to make myself feel better.

I will tell you all about me because that is what this whole thing with you was,
about me.

I will not tell you that I used you.
I will not tell you how many lies I told to you.

I will tell you I am sorry,
as I walk away at 4 am, no plans to make amends.

I will tell you I probably assassinated one of your plants,
living plants you nurture and love.
I will tell you I had nothing to do with it, of course.

I will leave the broken pieces behind,
for you to pick up alone, after I am gone.

I must hurry to the church!
I will tell God I am there to help.

I wonder if God believes as easily as you,
my sweet angel?

by dogkisses, 2009

Narcissists leave dirty wounds

Having learned what a narcissist is doesn’t set well with me.  If I didn’t know the word or what it means I guess I would think about my ex-lover more like my mom does.   She says, “he’s just a pure asshole.”

She’s 74 years old.  She usually tells it like it is and doesn’t need any books or medical terms to explain her impression of someone or what she thinks of that person.

She said this man, “sure had me fooled,” and for this I feel guilty.  I am sorry I introduced this man to close members of my family.

I deeply regret getting involved with a man whom I learned lies and feels completely okay about it.  I was wrong because I was fully aware of one lie he was telling and suspected that many more had come before.

The reason I feel guilty is because I went against my gut by entering into the relationship, which brought harm to me and a fairly serious, though temporary, interruption in my ability to carry out my responsibilities as a mother, a daughter and just about every other role I have in life.

I went against what I think and believe is right.  I abandoned my values. I told the man I was involved with that I was abandoning these very important things and he argued their validity.   I knew this wasn’t a good sign.

He once lied to my son in front of me over dinner and I couldn’t eat anymore.  He called my son a Puritan when I told him my son said that he believed it was wrong for married people to lie and cheat.

My son has a brain disorder but he has  integrity.  The man I got involved with has none.  He is a liar.  It is simple.  He also does not care about other people.  That is simple too.

I hurt in a way that is at times unbearable.  All I can do is lie down and cry.  It hurts worse than the cut I recently got from having fallen off my magic bike.

I got a, “dirty wound,” the emergency room doctors called it.

A dirty wound is what I’d call the aftermath of the relationship I had with this man. 

I developed strong feelings for him. I guess I fell in love with him.  I felt a strong bond and eventually, believed we had a partnership developing.  This is what he wanted me to believe.

I asked him recently, even though our love affair is over,  if he would step up and be the man he had been — the one who had begged  me when I doubted him, to believe that he loved me with all of his heart; the man who had told me that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.   I asked him if he could be this man because I wanted to talk about my feelings.

This was foolish. This man I loved is this man who vanished when he felt rejection and from that point on he remains uninterested in communicating with me about anything at all concerning feelings.

He felt rejected one day and ever since has treated me like a stranger.  That’s what narcissists do. It’s amazing how much alike they all are.

Narcissist or Pure Asshole?  Either way you end up with a dirty wound.

Time heals.  I get my one stitch out today.  Yep!  Just one stitch but let me tell ya, there was a big dirty gap in my elbow, with some gravel in it and the doctors were worried more stitches would cause infection.  I’ll have myself a scar, even though I do not need reminding not to take curves fast, especially on wet pavement, and most especially without my helmet.

My little magic bike is fine and soon, I will be too.

My friend is coming to tweak the brakes a bit.  They were thrown out of balance by the fall, kind of like my mind and emotions after loving what the books call a narcissist, or in southern slang terms, “a pure asshole.”

Brainwashing failed.

It’s hard to accept that the months he spent telling me that he loved me was an attempt at brainwashing me.   It sure does hurt to think this.   I’m not completely sure that it was all a brainwashing, but then maybe that is part of the deal.  If you really get brainwashed then can you ever be completely sure of what was real and what was staged?

My saving grace is that I had already been exposed to a great manipulator.  I learned from the best.

I didn’t immediately recognize his first attempts to change the way I view myself and feel about myself.  The familiarity came on kind of slow.  Little things he did that reminded me of my former abuser, such as putting other people down and slowly revealing a general contempt for humanity.  Sometimes, freakishly, they even looked alike.

Outwardly, I ignored his subtle remarks that I recognized as being designed to make me feel something bad about myself, either physically or intellectually.   I took mental notes and most certainly took the attempts seriously.

A quick description of the first abuser I fell for would be to tell of how he explained the craziness I had endured after the relationship ended.

“You were a challenge,” he told me.  “The first time I saw you I thought to myself I have to fuck that woman before I die.  Then after I got to fuck you,  I realized what a wild and free spirit you had; like a wild horse.  I wanted to break you.”  I was in shock.

When I left this man I definitely felt broken.  I felt shattered.  I left the town trying to get as far away as I could hoping to get rid of what had become an obsession that he apologize to me.  I wanted him to recognize all he had done wrong.  Huge mistake!  Futile!

Once I got to Texas where my friend lived I was walking through the horse pastures and came upon one of the most beautiful sights I’d ever seen.  A field of wildflowers.  Having never traveled west before I was in awe.

I remember walking up and touching one of the flowers.  How beautiful,  I thought to myself and immediately, in less than a second, I questioned myself.   How would you know what is beautiful?

I was taken a back.  I realized right then that I was an empty shell.  The man had convinced me that I could not believe my own thoughts and feelings.

I have come a long way since that day in Texas.  At least I thought I had.  It took me a long time to put the pieces of myself back together and some of them wouldn’t fit.  I had to create myself again. I had literally allowed another person to break me down to a level of emptiness.  Not the kind that the Buddhist might praise you for, but more a kin to being a zombie.  A robot.  A computer without any programs.  Nothing more than a hollow shell.

I am once again recovering from having become intimately involved with and loving a man who manipulates his world.  They were both narcissists and believe me — I would have gone to my grave not having known what this word meant if I had not had to learn what happened to me.

One element common in both men is that they hated it when I bucked.  And I do buck.  I’m a country girl raised in the rural south by a country woman.

I don’t know who to thank, my strong mother, God, or my former abuser for me having the awareness so as never to allow this man the inhumane privilege of tearing me apart, literally, and have me depend on him to determine my worthiness as a woman and a human being.

I am sure I am a grave disappointment to the man.  He didn’t come close to achieving this goal with me.  The few times we talked since the relationship ended I noticed him saying things like, “I still think you are nice, funny, bright,”  and blah blah blah.

“So what!” I said to him.  “I don’t need you to tell me that I am a nice or funny person.”  Then he did it again the last time I spoke to him, or he tried.  I interrupted quickly.  “Why do you keep on saying those things?” I asked.

“Well, you said you needed to talk about things.”

In his sick mind he thinks this means I need him to tell me who I am.  Yeah –  Right!  His attempts to brainwash me failed.

He did hurt me.  It hurts a great deal to love somebody, believing the person loves you and then suddenly have him act like he barely knows you.

For many months he was here telling me how much he loved me, telling me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and literally, the next day, he was gone.

He says he didn’t feel important enough.  He is 63 years old yet said he felt second to me as a result of my time and attention with and toward my adult son, who unfortunately has a brain disorder, along with time I spent helping my elderly mother when she was sick.

I spent a hell of a lot more time with this man than I should have and at times felt guilty for the long weekends with him because I really needed to be doing other things too.  Sure I wanted to spend time with him.  He was being really sweet and nice to me and my family at the time.  I still had other obligations and needs though but when he was here I really couldn’t do anything other than attend to him and rest.  Attending to him wore my butt out!

He also said he had felt that he needed permission to see me, which is completely unacceptable to him.

I often felt that he was interviewing me.  I felt interrogated about my past as if he was trying to find out something about me that I was ashamed of.  Several times we sat by my window in the morning sun light while I had my coffee and he would ask the same questions over and over.

“Have you ever done this,” and “have you ever done that,” and he would ask about the same things as if he hadn’t heard my answers the times he’d already asked.

He got me to tell him about things from my childhood that bothered me.  He discovered a trauma I had and later, he brought it up several times out of the blue as if that was okay.  I never did this to him.  He too had a childhood trauma and I did consider putting it in his face as he had done to me, but my heart told me that would be cruel, which it is.

He tried to discover something to degrade me with and when this failed he went for my family.  He is estranged from his family so he set out to put mine down.  I guess he wanted me to feel like I didn’t have anyone, like he felt, and hoped I would turn only to him.

His description of what was wrong about my family was exactly the description of his own family, except for the part where he put me down for having helped my son or mother when they were sick.   He wasn’t helping anyone in his family.

Unfortunately, I thought this was a nice man for twenty-five years before I became personally and intimately involved with him.  I feel a great sense of loss.  We had this crush on each other for those twenty-five years.  A sweetness we both felt when we would have occasion to see one another.

That is definitely gone.

I cannot say I think anything positive about the man.   Instead I know, as he has admitted, that his life is all a facade.  He is the ultimate impostor.

“You have no idea what lies behind my public face,” one of his emails read.

Well, I do now!

I guess you could say what he attempted to do with me he ended up doing to himself.

He wanted me to feel badly about myself, but instead I only feel badly about who he is.   He is the one who has lived a lie his entire adult life.  He lies to people and says he does not feel one bit of remorse.  He does not exclude his own family from his attempts to make people feel less than he is.

Yes, my heart is broken and that may indeed give him satisfaction, but he did not define me.

——————————————————

I wonder if life is all about going back.  I thought I was going forward and that it would always feel that way.   Often times I feel like I am only going back.  Back to where I came from in the beginning.

My dad used to say, “Don’t get above your raising.”

The first time he said this to me was on a weekend when I had come home from college to visit.  During  dinner, or as my dad would say, supper, because dinner happened at noon and there wasn’t any such thing as lunch,  I corrected his grammar.

He didn’t get angry but he looked disappointed.  I really wanted him to be proud of me but I got it right then and there that correcting my dad’s grammar was not the way to make him proud.

I went back to college where I became fascinated with the different ways people talk.  It is part of what makes us unique or certainly interesting.

Studying marketing we discussed communication.  I took to the notion that what was most important in using language to communicate is that you get your intended message across or that you and your partner in conversation can understand each other.  This way it is possible to communicate with people from any part of the world, in many different arenas, for all sorts of reasons and even folks in your hometown.

You see, there I go again,  back in time.  Maybe my daddy was right and it is best for me not to get above my raising.  I was raised to know right from wrong.  I know that this man who claimed such extreme love for me has done what I believe to be wrong.

Knowing this doesn’t always help.  It just plain hurts.  I loved him and he suddenly disappeared.  This hurts a lot!

Then there are days like today, when the sun is shining warmly through my kitchen windows, casting shadows on the walls and I can remember.  I can remember who I am and where I came from and this soothes some the harshness of grief.

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it–always.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Fibromyalgia, rude attitudes and accepting your new life

Well, didn’t mean to upload the pics of the horses butts, but kind of goes with some of the comments I quoted.

Fibromyalgia, as with many serious chronic illnesses can truly take away the life you knew before, especially if it gets severe.  You may have to give up many things you used to do.  The only way I know how to deal with this is to find other things.

I had the pleasure of knowing a young woman with Cystic Fibrosis.  She had started a foundation:  a pet hospice.  When my dog got cancer she raised money for us to get my girl treatment.  I learned a lot from this young woman about illness.

She helped me to learn that you do have to say goodbye to things you once loved doing before you got sick with a chronic, painful and debilitating illness, such as fibromyalgia.

I’ve also read where you might need to physically do that somehow, either by writing down the things you cannot do anymore and then writing things you might like to do that you actually can do now.  I know it sucks but for me, it is simply how it is.

I was once a firefighter, a gardener who could work beside of any man, (okay many men), a single mother who worked hard, and yep, I burned the candle at both ends so to speak.

An expert in fibromyalgia, Dr. John B. Winfield, MD, told me that is the case with many people who have fibromyalgia.  We never were the kind of folks who sat around all day doing nothing.  Just the opposite for most of us.  We were athletic and go-getters so to speak.

It is really really hard to meet your new life.  For me, I finally had to do this and sometimes it is still very depressing.

I recently got a bicycle. A magic bike.

my magic bike

If I can only ride on a flat surface for three minutes, then I feel lucky to have that three minutes of freedom in my mind.  Sometimes even this is impossible, but some basic PT exercises helped me get to where I could ride about 15 minutes.

Then, I had a set back in life about 6 weeks ago and did not continue with my PT so now I start over!

The one thing — besides of course all the crazy pain and disabling fatigue, that I do not like about my “new life,”  is being lonely.  It is a lonely disease.  I live near two medical schools and have not found a support group close enough for me to drive due to fatigue or pain.

If you have someone in your life who is there for you then be grateful.  I am grateful for a friend I have, who calls often to ask how I am, for my mother who knows I’m telling the truth, and for my awesome canine companions.

Sometimes when people say is there anything I can do I’d like to say yeah, will you come over and help me do the dishes or vacuum.  Then there are even harder things like cleaning the windows or taking down the blinds to clean.

My family members are pretty much clean freaks and I grew up in a very orderly and clean house, which is how I prefer things, but I’ve had to give up many of my preferences.

I hear all kinds of things from people, perhaps with good intentions but still upsetting from time to time.  What are we supposed to think when we hear people tell us things like this:

“I could not stand not having clean windows.”

“I work in my yard (all day) because I have to,”

“I have to work everyday b/c I don’t have a choice.”

“You are as fortunate as we are because you have health insurance.”  This was a comment by a person with an income, some cash flow, a couple of houses, savings, a retirement plan and health insurance to boot, and who is not disabled.

“I wish I could get paid for feeling bad.”  This was a quote from a former neighbor.  She was a school teacher, living rent free and with a trust fund but apparently she could not see how blessed she was and thought that because I didn’t go to a job each day — even though I was a single mother, widowed so truly without a partner to help raise my son.  I told her all she had to do was to get really sick and depressed, cry for a few years, lose about twenty pounds that you really needed, lose your new vehicle, lose most of your friends because people simply do not understand something they cannot see, and if she could do all of that then she too could get about $500.00 per month!

“All you do is suck air.”  Now this comment hurt!  This came from a blood family member who obviously does not have any compassion for anyone.

“You just get worse and worse don’t you.”

“You sure do stay sick a lot.”

“I just do what I have to do, I can’t just not do things because I’m tired or in pain.”

“I have to clean my house all day on Saturday because I work during the week.”

These kinds of comments and remarks all imply that people with invisible illnesses are faking it.  And, some of them are just plain mean.  People think we want to be sick or that we are faking it so we can do what?  Stay home in bed alone.  Yeah, that is a lot of fun!

We all know these rude remarks are not true, but they still hurt.  Not only do they hurt but they also cause us to withdraw into isolation.  We become alienated from family and friends because so often, they do not even try to understand our illness.  Sure we can do things on a good day, which causes some people to think we are just making up this thing called fibromyalgia, but boy do we pay for doing our chores or trying to have some fun on a good day!

I wish I had more friends who understand.  Invisible disability and illnesses are lonely diseases. I remain lonely for humans but acceptance is part of life every day.  I try to accept each day what my life is like.  I try to accept that people do not really want to be around a sick person.  At least not a young person who is sick but doesn’t look sick.

Speaking of horses’ butts:

It is the medical professionals’ ignorant and misinformed comments that are the most difficult to accept.
My former doctor– yeah, I fired her, seemed at first to be understanding and even educated about fibromyalgia.  I stayed with her over one year, but when the medicines made me too sick to take them and she didn’t know how to help me, then she became frustrated and frankly, took it out on me, the patient.

Her nurse was horrible too!!!  One day I walked in there feeling like I was dying, kind of like the past few months.  The nurse took my blood pressure and asked, “So what do you think is wrong?”

I wondered if she forgot who the hell I was or something.  “I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” I reminded her.

“Well, I guess you need to get rid of that then don’t you,” she remarked.

Many times she had said to me when I had come to see my doctor that she too was tired.  As if I was simply tired.  Being tired from working a full-time job is definitely not the same as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome!  I began to think she was not too bright.  I still think that.

The doctor got a real attitude with me when I could no longer tolerate a drug she was giving me. It was not taking away the pain from fibromyalgia and was making me sick, along with rotting my teeth!

The day she said, “I have tried everything except a narcotic and I think that is a bad road to get on.”

Hmmm… I thought.  Isn’t the road I’m on now pretty bad!  I sure couldn’t have stayed on that road much longer.

She looked at me with a contempt or something a kin to it and I’d never seen that look on her face before so I was surprised.
“You need to go see the fibromyalgia doctor you saw before,” she said.
“Yes.  I would like that but he moved four hours away.  I’m not able to drive four hours and my car would need some repairs before I could drive that far.  I would also have to get a hotel room because I certainly couldn’t drive there, see the doctor, and drive home all in the same day,” I told her.

“You look just fine to me.  You look perfectly capable of driving four hours,” and I thought to myself you B_ _ _ _!  But it was not anger that settled in me.  It was a deep depression from being untrusted and disbelieved by my doctor.

I saw her once or twice after that but both times she was a B_ _ _ _ !

She looked me up and down and then in a demeaning tone, asked, “Where do you hurt!”  It was more of a statement than it was a question.  I didn’t know what to say.  Then, as her eyes went up and down my body again, which made me feel like a piece of shit, she asked, “Can you show me where it hurts?”

I was stunned for a moment and then I said, “Well, my nose doesn’t hurt.”

She referred me once to a doctor for a serious stomach problem I was having.  He was ancient to begin with.  He looked to old to be practicing medicine and  when I told him about the fibro doctor moving four hours away and that I hadn’t been able to drive that far he remarked, “You look perfectly capable of driving four hours to me.”

I just wanted to get the hell out of there.  He didn’t stop there though.

“Did you walk here from the parking lot?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said trying not to cry but failing.

“Well then you could drive four hours if you walked from the parking deck, and why are you crying?”

I had forgotten that I was too tired to walk and had actually rode the minibus, which had taken me to the front door from the parking lot.

Shortly after I fired Dr. B_ _ _ _, I went back to a former doctor, who understands fibromyalgia and who began treating my pain.  He asked me to try and see the fibro specialist when I could.

I finally got my car repaired and went to see the specialist.  A good friend offered to pay for me to get a room so that I could spend the night and drive back the next day, which I did.

I told the fibromyalgia doctor that my family physician wanted his advice and he said, “Well I don’t know what to tell him other than he is doing the right thing by you to treat your pain.  It isn’t your fault that the drugs, such as Lyrica and Cymbalta make you so sick.  Some patients cannot handle those drugs.  Some patients simply need pain pills, the old–but tried and true ones.”

“Narcotics are not our first choice, but we cannot expect you and should not expect you to live in so much pain while we have medicine to treat it.  It is neglect for us not to treat your pain.”

I told him about the remarks from my former doctors and nurses.  “Stay away from those people if you can,” he said in an irritated tone.  “They are bad for fibromyalgia patients.”

It’s 2009 now and much research has been done on fibromyalgia.  Still, there are many uneducated doctors and other medical professionals who will say just about anything other than, fibromyalgia hurts!

They will say things like, “It is a label you do not want.  It is what they tell you that you have when they cannot figure out what is wrong.”

I think many people do get wrongly diagnosed.  I’ve met a couple of people who said things like, “I had fibromyalgia for about three months.”

A friend recently called me to tell me about a woman she met who, “had fibromyalgia but is well now.”

“How did she get well?” I asked.

“She was taking a medication to prevent osteoporosis, which is when her symptoms began.  She was hurting in her bones.” (No shit Sherlock)  “She went off of that drug and now she does not have any symptoms.”

I wondered why my friend couldn’t think about this for at least one minute.

“It sounds like this woman never had fibromyalgia, but instead side-effects from the medication she was on.”

It is hard to meet “your new life.”  I’m still working on it, but at least I can say that I do not take what people say as personally anymore.  I can say that I have a few things I enjoy doing.

Aside from the pain and fatigue, I believe feeling alienated and being isolated is one of the most difficult challenges people with fibromyalgia face.

How do we get out and make friends when we are so incredibly fatigued?  I still have many obstacles around this illness to meet and hopefully either come to terms with or overcome.

I refuse to accept peoples’ harsh judgements.  I just leave those people alone now, even if they are family.  I refuse to be called a liar, a fake, and weak in character.

The picture of the horses’ butts above is a view from the back seat of a horse and buggy that my son and I did to celebrate his twenty-fifth birthday.

All I had to do was sit in the back and enjoy the ride.  We went pretty slow so it didn’t hurt at all!  This tour was with Eustace Conway at Turtle Island Preserve, Boone, NC.

Quote:

“Illness is a journey like no other. One thing I know now is that I am not illness.
When I see pictures of myself from the past, I see sickness moving through my body.

I can also see that the person inside remains the same.”

-Tiffany Christensen
You can visit her site at: http://sickgirlspeaks

Thanks for reading!  If you have fibromyalgia — I promise you that you are not alone in your pain.  Also, the FMA has a place on Face Book now.  Over ten thousand people with fibromyalgia on there to offer support and a huge amount of information.

With empathy and compassion here is a dogkiss for U.

“I Love You” a very short post…

beauty and blessings

He called to say, “I love you.”   On a dreary sad day, a long year it has been, he called just to say, “I love you,” to me, his one and only and “favorite,” mom!

This is not top news.  This is no current event.  Not a story.  Just a short post.

For me it is a blessing.  It has lifted my spirits enough that I think I’ll wash my dishes!  And nurture my body with some food.

I’ve read some blogs.  I think being sad and having your one and only son call just to say he loves you is worth posting!

by dogkisses♥

Santa Clause and Schizophrenia

“Sir,” I said to the Lieutenant, as my heart raced, “I called because I’m scared your officers are going to hurt my son on the way to the emergency room.  You will be getting a commitment order in a few minutes and… well,”  I had to take a breath, trying to keep my cool, but it didn’t work.  I began crying.  I didn’t care though.  It was my son’s life I was scared for.  I didn’t care what he thought of my tears.

“I don’t want my son to get killed on the way to the emergency room,” I went on.  I could feel the rising up of emotions as I spoke, mostly fear but some anger too.  The officer really did make me feel safe expressing my emotions.

“The last time he was escorted by your officers you only sent two men and one was not in good enough shape to run.  I don’t understand,” I said, still desperate but able to get my words out clearly.

” Why don’t you have enough men on your police force as strong and fast as my son is?” though it was more a statement or an outcry than a question.   I went on, “I mean why can’t you just send enough strong men over without having to resort to a gun or a Taser?”

The Lieutenant was quiet.  At least he wasn’t getting arrogant or irritated with me, which I was well aware of.  I didn’t want to make him angry.  I knew that wouldn’t help the situation.  I just wanted someone in charge to hear me and I guess, to care.

I’m pretty good at reading people and it felt like this officer was making a sincere attempt to hear me.

“I’m scared to ask for help.  I’m scared to call anyone when we need help.  I’m scared to dial 911!  I’m scared he’ll run and one of your officers will either shoot him or Taser him.  I just don’t understand why you have to use weapons,” I said, still crying in between my words.

“Mam,” the officer said calmly, “Sometimes force does more damage than a Taser gun.”

Images of my childhood in the 1970’s went through my mind.  There were police incidents and psychiatric situations, but there weren’t any Tasers involved and unless you were a serious criminal running away there weren’t any guns involved.

“Taser guns kill people right?” I asked the Lieutenant.

“Yes,” he said, remaining calm.  “Yes they do.”

He went on to mention that in most cases, people who had bad reactions to having been Tasered, (such as death), were usually people who were on medication(s) or had some type of health problem.  He said something about toxins in the body, such as alcohol or drugs and how this might cause some reaction.

My head kind of spun around inside, making me dizzy, as it does now thinking about this business of Tasers, specifically as they are used in psychiatric crises.

Most people do not realize that law enforcement plays one of the most crucial roles in the process of getting help for an individual suffering from a brain disorder, or mental illness– it really doesn’t matter which you call it, either way it is a physical illness the same as any other kind of illness.

We hear all about community and ways we serve or plan to serve our citizens who suffer with a serious brain disorder.  We have programs such as group homes, non-profits offering both medical and vocational services, club houses and low-income housing opportunities.   These services and programs are extremely important, but much of the time, the first place a person must go in the community, when he or she is seeking help for a person in a mental health emergency, is law enforcement.

“My son is taking a medication right now, in fact several and he is taking them because he has some health problems,” I told the officer.

“Mam.  Is there somebody that could take him to the hospital?  Somebody who could talk him into going?  Would he ride with you?”

“No Sir,” I answered quickly and he didn’t ask again.  In less than a second, I realized I didn’t have anyone in my life to be there to help in a crisis.

“I don’t want my son Tasered.  I want you to send enough men over there to handle him.  Or, even better, men who could actually talk to him and stay calm,  get him to go peacefully with them to the hospital.”

This officer was very nice to me.  He said when the order came in he would personally be there, which he was.  He said he would make sure his officers did everything they could to prevent using any force.

“The man that brought me here looked like Santa Clause Mom,” my son said as he sat contently in the hospital’s emergency room bed.  Santa Clause is his favorite character, or person, I guess however you want to look at it.

“He was jolly and nice.  If anyone could be Santa Clause it could have been him,” he said smiling.  He was eating a chocolate eclair I’d brought him from the local market, the same market we’ve gone to for many years and now, the one he was kicked off the property of less than one week ago.

He apparently asked someone on the sidewalk for fifty cents.  He wanted a cup of coffee.  The security officer saw him and told him he could never come back.

I went there on my way to the emergency room feeling that it might be my last time there.  We will have to move I thought, as I sat there in my car with the rain coming down, a little too cold for the season.  We will have to find a new home.  This is the center of town and he has been asked to leave every other place for the same reason.

I tried finding a sense of community in this town.   I tried to get others to help before it was too late.

But where can we move now I wondered.   And will there be a Santa Clause on the police force in a different town?  Doubtful I thought.

Why does she let him abuse her?

Some people say that us humans are smarter than any other animal, although I think the intelligence of Dolphins have yet to be fully discovered.                      I remain skeptical.

Intent Matters

the beauty of being free

Sometimes the most confusing things we are troubled by are in reality simple.  Being in a relationship with a person who blames you for every single thing that has ever gone wrong or might ever go wrong in the future, can bring about a great deal of confusion and if you stay in it long enough, you will have more than confusion on your hands!

Sometimes we love a person and the person changes drastically.  It is easy to see but extremely difficult to understand.  The person suddenly changes from being kind and loving to being rude, demeaning and truly cruel.  A heart that you thought held a warm place for you becomes a ruthlessly cold heart.  There may be a place left for you but it is a place of contempt that has no end.

The shock and confusion a person experiences from this change can cause her or him to stay in what has become an abusive and toxic relationship.

I recall talking with my girlfriends about my experiences when I was in an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship.  My stories gave us all much entertainment.  We would laugh to no end!

The stories I had were so incredibly absurd and bazaar; all the things this man could come up with trying to either make me feel badly about myself or confuse me about things I had seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, that it gave us enough content to laugh for hours!

The laughter helped.  Their advice helped.  It helped me to see what was so simple and easy to see.   It was simple to see that I was being mistreated.  It was simple to see that I was being hurt more each day and every day that I stayed,  I lost a little more of myself.

I guess, the shock and confusion was stronger than my friends and our laughter and what was obvious to all of us.

Sometimes the simple things aren’t always the easiest things to deal with in life.

If you believe that every thing wrong is your fault, then you will spend all of your time trying to fix these things.  Every time you initiate a discussion with your blaming partner about what you are trying to fix, you will find yourself very confused, possibly having forgotten why you even started a discussion.

Feeling confused every time you try to talk to a partner is a strong sign that you are in an emotionally abusive relationship.  Simple questions you ask might get a response, but it will not be a normal healthy response.

You will find yourself being questioned.  The person you are trying to work something out with will point out things that have nothing to do with the subject.  He or she may correct your grammar or repeat the question back to you, with a few words omitted and a few more added in, as if you had said it that way.

You might find yourself going in circles until you cannot remember what it was that you were upset about in the first place and you end up walking away, wondering what is wrong with you.  You might feel selfish for having insulted  the person you love — because you questioned his or her behavior.

If you do succeed at communicating to the person that his behavior was wrong, hurtful or completely inappropriate, he will always, ALWAYS, say that none of these consequences were his intentions.  This is important to remember.

Those of us who are not abusers and expert manipulators simply do not think the same way.  We do not have to go around telling people it was not our intention to hurt them because we don’t go around hurting people.  I’m not talking about normal life and normal relationship problems.  We all make mistakes.  We all do things that sometimes hurts other people.  But nice people try to make amends.  Healthy people try to make amends.  We do not like to see those we love hurt, especially by something we did or said.

It is not like that with a person who thinks only of himself.  He will hurt people by saying and doing things that healthy-minded individuals know would cause pain for the other person.  The abusive manipulative person will forever feel justified no matter what they say or do.

You tell this kind of person that what he or she did to hurt you and you will ALWAYS get the same response, which is, “I HAD NO INTENTION OF HURTING YOU.”  In his or her world this means that if you are hurt, then that is your CHOICE, which by the way, is complete and total BULLSHIT!

Some people manipulate the hell out of other people.  Some of these people are intelligent, which makes it even worse.  They are manipulation experts!  Manipulation is the main ingredient in emotionally and verbally abusive relationships.  One person manipulates the other to the point of breaking down the other person’s personality, literally.

Emotional and verbal abuse is as serious and damaging as physical abuse.  People are left shocked, confused, and often numb.  It is as if you have no self left; as if you are an empty shell and everything that defines you comes from another person.

You question what you see with your own eyes.  You question what you hear with your own ears.  You do not believe what you see and hear because you’ve been told so many times that your eyes and ears apparently lie to you.  Sadly, you believe this.

You think when the person hurts you that it is your fault and that is exactly what you will be told in some form or fashion.  You will be blamed for being mistreated, cheated on, lied to, stood up, and you will be blamed over and over.  Once this cycle has begun it doesn’t stop until you get the hell out!

There is not another way out except to leave.

Once you realize that you are being manipulated by someone you love, the awareness of it is the first step to healing.  The next step is educating yourself.  Read books on abusive relationships.  Go online and learn.  Learn all you can.  Knowledge truly is power and will eventually set you free, but it is hard to leave someone you love.  It is hard.

It seems like most people do not understand why a person who is being abused stays with his or her abuser.  I didn’t understand it until I found myself in those shoes.  I think this is true for most things in life.  We understand once we walk in those shoes.  Some people have the ability to empathize with others,  even though they have not been in that particular position, but in my experience this is rare.

The best help to get is from those who have walked before you and found a way out.  You need a place where people will truly understand the dynamics of such a dreadful and damaging experience as being emotionally abused is to a person.

I remember thinking at times, while I was involved with an abusive man, that it would be easier to take a punch in the gut than what he was dealing out to me.  He would say terrible things about me.  One day I would be a, “princess,” or, “an angel,”  and the next, ” a slut and a whore.”

One day I went to visit the man I loved.  We were going to have lunch and then sex.  He was beginning to show his true colors by this time.  So, we ate lunch and I thought we were having a pleasant day.  I was anyway.  Something I had said though during our lunch had threatened him, though of course, I would not know this until later, after he would take revenge upon me and then tell me why.

We took our clothes off and slipped underneath the sheets.  Then suddenly his eyes turned from soft to hard.  He had touched me.  He asked in a tone I was not yet familiar with, but would later learn well, “Were you already wet or did I have anything to do with it?”

This man was literally threatened by the fact that my vagina was not dry!  It became a problem.  The wetter I was the more threatened the man felt!  At first of course this is something he adored and loved about me, but after he had me reeled in so to speak, he turned it into something to use to put me down.

He said I was not a normal woman.  He said normal women didn’t want sex as much as men did.  He said maybe I had extra testosterone that explained why I was not a normal woman.  He became obsessed about me having orgasms.

Right before I would almost have one, he would stop whatever he was doing.  Once during sex, which was near the end of our relationship, thank God!, all was going well right?  Suddenly, as I was having an orgasm, he fell to the side of me on the bed and pretended to be asleep!  He also literally pretended snoring!

He was a sick man.  He said women shouldn’t have orgasms every time they had sex like a man should.

I was way late in the game.  I knew he was nuts but I was in an abusive cycle.  I was in deep!  Once you are in it is hard to get out!

My saving grace was probably two things:  I was a mother and did not want my son exposed to this man or to see his mother as a weak woman who let men abuse her, and the second thing was my temper.  I began losing it and these kind of abusers do not tolerate a temper from their victim.

I’m also a little bit of a redneck so a couple of times I called him an asshole.  Like the day he fell to snoring!  I was so mad I got up out of the bed.  The sheet came with me.  I threw it back on the bed as I got dressed telling him how I couldn’t handle his crazyness anymore!

A few days later he called and said he couldn’t walk because the sheet had landed on his knee, which he had injured at age 19!  He was almost sixty years old at the time and had never mentioned having any problems with his knee until that day.  I had to laugh.  He got even angrier and said I had been violent throwing that sheet at him.

The last time we had sex he set me up for humiliation.  It has been many years now, so I can speak of it, but not without my heart beating faster.

I wanted to go into the bedroom and for the first time he didn’t and said he wanted to stay on the sofa.   I could feel something inside of me, maybe like you would feel if you were home alone at night and saw a shadow pass by your window, but then you put it off to the reflection of the moon and the wind blowing a tree branch.

The sex that night was different than it ever had been.  He didn’t kiss me and made strange remarks using what sounded like a calculated tone of contempt.  Something wasn’t right.  Then it began.

“Is this what you wanted?” he asked.  We were having very simple intercourse; no special techniques; no special positions.

We’d been lovers long enough to know each other and what we enjoyed.  So it seemed that even though we were on the sofa, he was trying to please me and I thought was enjoying it.   The more he held me the way I liked, the more he touched me the way I liked, the stronger the feeling became that something was wrong.  Then he laughed,  “Is that what you want?”  he asked again and again, I heard contempt.  He began to make fun of me for enjoying it.  I thought he was joking around at first.  Then he made fun of me for being wet.  “Do you need a wash cloth to dry off?” and he laughed like something from  a freaking horror movie or something!  I was in shock.  In the end he said, “Do you feel better now?”  He got up and went into the bathroom.  He was fully dressed when he returned.  He stood before me and asked me to leave.  I thought he had gone in there to get me  a wash cloth and we would cuddle as we always had.  He said he had phone calls to make.  It was about midnight on a Saturday night.  That was the last time we had sex.

I had a nervous break down because of this relationship.  He said two of his ex-wives had left him and gone, “straight to the mental institutions.”

I finally got out!  I did not live with this man.  More often than not during my two years with him I was withdrawing from him, seeking counseling and trying to get out of it but he would charm me right back in.  Two years may not sound like a long time but it is long enough to do a great deal of harm.

I have PTSD from it.  I get better with time, but I’m unsure if it will ever go away completely.  Things trigger the symptoms of PTSD.  Sometimes it is such small things;  a smell or even the color of the sky.  It is like the brain has a place where it holds the memory of an abusive event.  A place where at the time it happened, maybe you were cooking greens or something and the scent got attached to the memory.

There are other triggers that are more obvious, such as a sarcastic remark that reminds you of your former abuser, but the worst trigger is a new abuser!  One would think that after a person got away from an abuser that she or he would never do it again.  This is not always the case.

Personally, I thought I would never ever find myself in the shoes of an emotionally and mentally abused woman after having gone through it once, but alas… I did.

The second time I became involved in a relationship with a man who is an emotional and mental manipulator and truly a toxic person, (this is when I learned what Narcissistic Personality Disorder is… sigh) –I did get plenty of red flags and warnings, but I did not realize I was walking into the same kind of abuse.  If I had not been through it before, then I guess I would not have been able to stop seeing the man relatively early on, though not early enough to prevent the grief and anguish that comes with the aftermath of this type of trauma.

The second time it happened and it did happen, kind of like a hit and run, I did not let the man define me, which he tried.  I did become more distant from my friends.  I always felt a level of deceit with this man, which in a way protected me.  I was also 12 years wiser the second time around.  I knew more about what I wanted in life.   When I asked him what his goals for the future were he said, “you.”  I knew this wasn’t a good sign!

Recovering the second time however,  seems nearly as hard.   I fell in love.  I tried hard not to but I did.  I kept saying it was too soon.  I tried to get to know him, but all he wanted to talk about was how much he loved me and how much he feared that I would not love him back.  I told him how we needed a proper courtship before discussing living together and he responded with an argument for his case, which was that I was wrong.

He told my mother and sister how special I was to him.  He begged me to believe him when I doubted him.  He told me that he knew; that he was absolutely sure I was the one for him and that he wanted to spend his life with me.  This was probably the day I began to believe him.

I believed he loved me. I felt it and for a while.  It was a good feeling.  It gave me strength.  My walk was a little lighter and my hopes much brighter.   I felt beautiful when he looked at me.  I felt loved when he held my hand.  I felt loved when he sat all night in the emergency room with me waiting for my son to be seen.  I felt loved when he sat with me all night again at an emergency room while waiting to find out what was wrong with my sick mother.  He let me fall asleep on his shoulder.

He did many things that made me feel loved.  And then it was over.  In the snap of a finger.  He disappeared.

I do believe he loved me and I also believe that when a person is protecting a hidden deeply-seated self-loathing and its buddy — fear of being discovered, that anything which threatens this being revealed will be discarded.

People who are being abused often believe that they are creating it.  It is part of the cycle.  Some women (I think many) blame themselves for relationships not working out.  We fall for a person who pretends to be a decent person.  Most of us aren’t living life thinking every time a person says something that he is lying.  We take people for their word and why shouldn’t we?

Once the cycle of abuse has begun it is hard to recognize, much less get yourself out of it.  When a woman loves someone who has the skills  to convince her that anything wrong in the relationship is  surely 100% her fault, well, it works.  There are many reasons why people remain in abusive relationships, but self blame is definitely a part of the cycle that keeps the victim continuing to try and fix things.

Then, of course there is love.  Love is powerful.  Loving someone who suddenly changes, who becomes a cruel person you don’t even recognize, it can break you down to your core being and is absolutely devastating.  It is a death.

Sometimes I have imaginary conversations with my late father.  I asked him recently, (in my mind), what he thought about this man I had fallen in love with.  It was so easy to get his answer.  It was also sad.

I imagined us sitting on the front porch at my grandma’s house, probably both of us in the rocker.  He’d be smoking a Winston.  He would have cried if I told him I was allowing a man to treat me without respect.  He would cry and this image made me not want to see this man again.

My father would want me to have dignity; to think highly of myself and never let a man treat me poorly.

He once told me while we were rocking in that swing on the front porch, not to sell myself short.  I asked him what he meant.   “You deserve better than what you realize,” he said.

I dreamed of my father a few years ago.  He told me in my dream that,

Warriors cry too.

Pain and Living

camping and talking to dogs

Pain, how much is humane?

It’s 5:30 AM!  A heck of a time to be awake.  There is also a nice hard rain coming down.  Back in the day, before fibromyalgia changed me and my life, I would have been snoozing right along with the rain.  I would also be in the mountains camping about this time, since it is August, because it is so crazy hot where I live!  No more camping trips for me though.  Not until I have someone to go with me and help with all the things I used to be able to do alone — before fibromyalgia.

I miss my mountain camping trips as much as anything I used to be able to do.   I took my two dogs to Doughton Park, one of my favorite places on the planet, about three years ago.  My adult son has an illness preventing him from going with me and I thought I could go at it alone.  Boy was I wrong!

I’d been through hell for quite a long time up until that weekend at Doughton Park.  I had become disabled by clinical depression ten years earlier and then, in 2003, my son was struck with an awful brain disorder — and here – I am lost for the words.  My hands have frozen.  Remembering that year — yes… my fingers suddenly feel frozen in time — just barely touching the keys as the memories flood my entire being.

The memory of Doughton Park came to mind today because when I woke up at 3 AM, I  realized I had forgotten to take my pain medication before going to bed.  I was groggy and sleepy but by the time I went to pee, trying not to wake my brain up too much, I felt it.  I felt the pain like I imagine one would feel the heat if standing too close to an erupting Volcano.  Maybe it was five minutes, or only two, I cannot remember, but it wasn’t long before I was crying and wishing I was, well… dead.

I took an added medication, an anti-inflammatory with the analgesic I use because I knew the pain had gone way pass a tolerable level and I was having what is called break-through pain.  Basically it means you’re up shit creek until the medicines get into your system.

The weekend at Doughton Park was a marked time in my life with fibromyalgia pain.  I had a bottle of pain pills with me while I was there but was afraid of pills, especially pain pills.  I was afraid I would throw up and then pass out, which is what most medications like that did to me.  I was not a person to take pills.  I don’t think I took an aspirin until I was thirty years old.

The pill bottle remained unopened as I sat in the tent on my second night camping, with the two dogs beside of me, loving me and needing me, and attempted to come to terms with what I thought I would have to do.

I would go back and inform my family that I could not live in that kind of pain.  I would have to die.  I would take as much time as necessary to say good-bye.  I certainly didn’t want to leave my family and at such a young age.  I am a mother and a daughter so I am needed on this earth.

The pain was completely altogether unbearable though.  My entire body hurt.  My muscles, nerves, bones and even my hair.  My hair literally hurt.  I sat there for a couple of hours, crying and talking to my dogs.

One thing that was on my mind too, was that not long before my camping trip that weekend,  I had to have my most beloved four-legged companion and my very best friend in the world put to rest, due to bone cancer in her leg.

Choosing her day had been an awful time.  Finally I had to let her go.  If I knew then what I know now about Pain, I may have even chosen that day earlier, but mostly I would have asked her fancy and expensive doctors, whom neither she nor I really liked, to put her on a strong, tried and true analgesic.  She took Tramadol.  Thirty per day in the end!  Crazy!

I guess having chosen this day for my best friend had given me a different perspective on life, and death.  While I sat in my tent at Doughton Park, I didn’t think it was humane for people to expect me to live in the pain I was experiencing.  I guess I wanted the same compassion that the vet who we did like and the people who loved my girl had for her when she was in pain.

People who think that fibromyalgia is something that either people are lying about or doctors have made up so as to make money, (as if all the doctors and their pharmaceutical buddies had some secret convention where they went and designed fibromyalgia to make money on), are simply ignorant.  They are unlearned on the subject.  They only know what they made up in their own minds from who knows what sources.

In the case of medical professionals who do not understand it, they truly have incorrect and insufficient information resulting in sometimes absurd notions about fibromyalgia.

“I thought I gave you some pain medication,” my doctor said when I returned from my Doughton Park camping trip.

“Yes.  You did.  I still have the bottle,” I told her.

She glanced over at me, a bit bewildered and asked if I had taken any of them.

“No,”  I told her.  “I was afraid I’d get sick and not be able to take care of my dogs or drive.”

“I don’t think you will get sick.  I’ve given you the kind without the additives.  You need to get out of pain and sleep for a little while.  I suggest you go home and take one.  Take one every four to six hours and I’ll see you next week.”

Having taken the doctor’s advice, I didn’t have to ask my family to do for me what I had done for my dog.

My good dog who had loved me for nearly 13 years gave me a lot.  She gave me her love and also a great deal of wisdom about what to do in the hardest of times. She was the greatest teacher on living!

She believed in going outside as much as possible.  She believed that this was my good therapy — taking her for fun walks and swims.

I promised her that when she had to go that I would be okay.  I promised her too that I would find another 4legged companion, which I did.  This is her picture.  She is an insect hunter, and now, my best friend in the world!

little creatures saving lives

Ask for help and you might get Tasered.

Scary? It should be.

Police_issue_X26_TASER-white

This blog entry was difficult to begin, I guess for a couple of reasons, the best of which may be due to the high emotional intensity I feel, as I recall the moment I saw the officer’s hand stick the TASER gun to my son’s thigh. As a result there are grammatical errors and gaps that need to be filled.

I will continue to work on this entry, with the main purpose being to hopefully start a positive conversation about ways we can better deal with helping persons in a mental health crisis.

The Day we asked for help.

“I don’t care if I live,” my son said.  “I don’t care.  I don’t care if I die.”  And he kept on saying it.  I was here alone with him.  We had been alone for a few days, with two dogs of course, which is probably what keeps us as sane as we are, but we had not had much contact with the outside world.

Our extended family involvement consist mostly of phone contact with my mother and once in a while, my son and I attend a family gathering, but not too often anymore, I guess because of my own health issues, one of which is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

My son does have an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), team, which I hope gives him some sense of belonging to a community, or at least a connection to the world.  Unfortunately, they don’t come visit him when he comes to my home, which is basically the only place he has where he might get some regularity, such as with daily meals and actually going to bed at night.  The ACT team and I do make attempts at working together to help him, but there seem to be times when communication between us fails.

The ACT team will help by seeking an order from the magistrate for the police to escort a person to the local emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation, which is to see whether or not the doctor on call believes the person should be hospitalized, but the team members do not come around while the papers are being served.

I was alone the day I watched my son get Tasered.

I know what it feels like when you don’t feel like you can keep on going.  I know what severe depression and grief is.  I know what it feels like to say the things my son was saying that day.  I know too that our mental health system can only do so much and the longer I am involved in it, the less I trust that my family will be helped in an emergency.

If I seek out commitment papers, then the magistrate, who plays a crucial role in the jungle of people you must go through to get emergency help for a person with a mental illness, asks me to give my son’s social workers names and numbers and also wants to know where the doctor is.

Several times during a crisis, my son’s psychiatrist has been gone fishing. Being a country girl myself, I have absolutely nothing against fishing.  My mother happens to be one of the best fisher-persons ever!  The bad thing about my son’s psychiatrist going fishing is that there isn’t anyone to take her place while she is gone.

One time I went to the magistrate to ask for help and he ask where the doctor was.  I had to tell him she was on vacation.  “Well doesn’t she have a cell phone where we can reach her?”

“No.”  She’s fishing.  She cannot get a signal,” I told him.

“I would go and camp out at her front door,” he replied.  “I ‘d stay there until she comes home.”

“I don’t know where she lives and she is gone fishing,” I continue and the tears start flowing.  I know this will not help the situation but how can I camp on the psychiatrist’s front door step when my son is sick and I’m there begging for someone to help us?

Sometimes I think I should go ahead and get a degree myself in Social Work.  I imagine it would be a relatively easy thing to do with all of my personal life experience if I wasn’t sick.  Maybe then people would believe that I know as well or better than anyone what is going on with my son.  Being his mother, being educated about mental illness and being the one who has been with him prior to the crisis doesn’t always give me credibility.

This world is very small to my son and I.  It is a huge and scary place to live.  If I ask for help the police will come, but if my son does not want the help, then I have no control over what might happen next.

Yes, they will kill him if necessary in order to get him to the emergency room, for having said that he didn’t care if he lives.

Right here in a community known to the locals as, “The Paris of the Piedmont,” where open-minded, indiviual thinking people congregate and celebrate diversity, innovation, progressive ideas and programs; yet when my son says he doesn’t feel like living, the first person on the scene to help us is a police officer, who seems to be a pleasant enough person, but who is obviously not in the greatest physical condition — nor has he or any other officer on the force had any special education or training in dealing with psychiatric crises.  I later learned that this officer is one of the few on the force who has the authority to use a TASER gun.

“We have to have it done to us in order to be able to do it to someone else,” he tells me, after I witnessed them stick the gun into my son’s leg causing his arms and legs to go limp.

I had screamed while watching.  It seemed like an eternity to me, even though it was probably only a few seconds.  I cried.  “Stop it,” I screamed.  I had enough time to say it at least three times while the TASER gun remained in my son’s thigh.

Then suddenly nothing.  His arms went down.  He dropped his head a bit.  His eyes looked strange.  My mouth just hung open.  The officers handcuffed him easily.  They put him in the back seat of the car.  He looked at me, dazed and God, along with any other mother who has ever stood in those shoes I was in that day, only knows what this felt like.

I had told that he wanted to die and the police, being ordered to take him to a hospital, would have killed him if they had to in the name of doing their job.

I was so scared watching and then I was so angry afterwards.  I was angry at my son for not just going with them.  I cried and screamed out something else.  I have fibromyalgia and I could feel sharp shooting pains in my legs and I realized I had been stomping one of them on the ground as I had stood alone on the side of that road, watching.

It was the same road that where I had watched my son as a child, teach other kids in the neighborhood how to roller-blade.  It was the same street I had walked along with him, when he was about nine or ten,  letting him hold  onto my shoulder as he learned how to ride a unicycle.  It was even the same road where I had once fallen in-love.

This little town, this, “Paris of the Piedmont,” had been a fairy tale town to me when I first came upon her.  Now she holds more painful memories as she does fond ones.

The officer who used the gun on my son also told me after the other officer drove away with my son dazed in the backseat, that he had the TASER gun set at half of it’s power.   I wonder what would have happened if it had been at full power?

Ten minutes before my son’s arms and and head went down, he was walking along the sidewalk listening to his MP3 player.  I knew the police would be there soon and for a moment everything was surreal.  The pretty little houses with flowers in the yards.  People riding their bicycles.  A woman walking her dog.  A quiet lovely little town.

“He has his MP3 player on and he can’t hear you!”

I was afraid the officer was going to shoot when he had called out and my son didn’t turn around.   “He doesn’t have any weapons,” I screamed again.  “He doesn’t carry a weapon!”

The officer ran and caught up with my son.  My son had become  upset when he learned only moments before that yet another commitment paper had been taken out on him and unfortunately he walked away instead of staying home and waiting for them to arrive.

He doesn’t understand why when police arrive with these papers that they must, by law, escort him to the local emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation, even if they can see that he is not a danger to others.  He hadn’t threatened suicide, but his statements about not caring if he lived were scary to me and his ACT team.

In Chapel Hill, Monday through Fridays between 9-5, they have a special team of police officers who have been educated and attended training on how to respond to psychiatric emergencies.  I witnessed this team in action once.  I was most impressed.

My son was having a really rough time.  His dog had had an operation and wasn’t doing so well.  My son was in worse shape than the dog though.

We were in the parking lot of a local organization where we are both members.  I was in the car with the dog and my son decided since it was his dog that he was taking him with him.  He was going to have to walk a long way and the dog could not handle this walk in his condition.

We got into an argument in the parking lot and the manager came out.  He knows my son has a mental illness.  He likes my son.  Still, the argument was getting out of hand so the manager dialed 911.

This team of officers from Chapel Hill came to the scene.  Two men asked politely if they could talk to my son.  They shook his hand and introduced themselves.  Wow, I remember thinking.

A female officer came over to me.  She was polite and asked me to tell her what was happening.  I watched my son talking to the male officers.  He looked as if he was calming down.  The female officer and I finished talking.  She went over to my son and the male officers came over to me.  They told us the other’s side and asked if we could come to a reasonable agreement.

We did.  My son agreed that he had not been thinking clearly to think that his dog could walk in that condition.  I was willing to take the dog back home and let my son take the bus to his apartment.

Maybe people think this is a waste of money to have such a team of police officers.  I know from experience that it saves money.  The county jail is certainly not set up to handle psychiatric cases.  Much time and resources go into getting a person medical help for a mental illness.

I believe this community is being denied a progressive environment by not training officers to deal with a situation that they must deal with on a regualar basis.  It is their job — so why not equip them with the necessary resources to do their job in a more humane and civil manner?

In, “The Paris of the Piedmont,” I’ve been told the police department cannot afford to send any officers for this type of training.  I don’t understand why.   We have so many people who live in this community who suffer from a mental illness and yet not one officer has special training to deal with a psychiatric emergency!  This is a place where almost everyone has a higher education.  A place where living expenses are high, including city and county taxes.

I’m scared to dial 911.  I’m scared of my son not getting help.  What is a mother or anyone who loves a person with a serious and chronic mental illness supposed to do in a crisis?

Is hoping the police will not kill my son for saying no, and refusing to go to the hospital worth me asking for help?

I do not know the answers.  I do know that I am much less likely to ask for help after witnessing what happens when I do.

If he does make it safely to the ER, and thank God so far he has, then he and I must endure a long round of different people coming and going, some act professionally, others do not, and this can take anywhere from several hours to days of sleeping on the floor or a plastic sofa in the small glassed in locked corner of the ER.

We wait as we slowly find out if they are going to help him and then, if so, then where will they send him?

If he is well-behaved then they might keep him at the local hospital.  If he does anything to offend anyone in the least even with a comment that is unwelcome, he will be sent to a state psychiatric institution.

The most recent time they sent him there he got caught smoking a cigarette.  This was at our newest facility, Central Regional Hospital in Butner, North Carolina.   My son was made to strip down, completely nude while about five large men watched and then searched him.

This hospital doesn’t have any electronic entrances.  Anyone could bring a gun or drugs in there and get away with it easily.  I would like to know why they did not include this when they spent all that money building such a fancy facility.

They do not search people.  The only thing searched is food brought by visitors to a patient and anything in a bag.  They do not search people’s pockets and frankly, I think they should.  A person could put many things in his or her pockets, Including a cigarette!

My son complained to an advocate who came to see him and they reported the search of my son to the Department of Health and Human Services who found the incident to be substantial, which meant a warning to the hospital.

My son didn’t tell me at first but only later after he had been discharged.  He is so used to being treated without respect by medical professionals, specifically in a hospital setting, that he simply thought it was normal.  He had not realized when he spoke to the advocate that she would take his words seriously and report the incident.

I realize there is a lot more to this subject than what is written on this page, which is after all, “just another WordPress blog.”

Protected: Invasive memories.

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