Tag Archives: gossip

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Unweighted

Words behind my back
damaging
hurtful
gossip and lies
I forgive
I wait

I wait

I wait, wait, weight

Weighted 13 years
For them to speak to me
Instead of about me
At last waiting makes me angry
I have forgiven
tried to connect
some of them say they love me
this is not love
waiting
weight of hurt and anger

And I let go
of the wait
of the weight

I forgive myself
I am free
I rise
I let them go
they are forgiven
but they may not enter my life
again
not ever

I forgive myself
I am free
I rise

unweighted

________________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompts: weight and chopper. My heart is what is chopped, and the abandoning friends and family wielded the choppers.

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Surreal failure

I am still thinking about Friday’s Ragtag Daily Prompt: failure. Now that I am middle aged (by my clinic definition, which put over 90 as older), I think the biggest failure of my generation is a peaceful world. For me, a peaceful extended family. I am good friends with my father’s family and my ex-husband’s family. But the maternal family, well. I have thought about that for the last two days: could I have changed that?

Yes, but at what cost? My sister followed the “family rules” on that side. She is dead from cancer. My mother also followed the rules and died younger than me from cancer. I can’t say that the rules cause cancer. But doesn’t our culture say over and over, be yourself? To fit in the family diaspora, I would have to play the triangulation game and gossip about others as they have gossiped about me. No, thank you, no. I don’t want to. They seem to need a family member to hate and have chosen me and labelled me and call me angry. I think they are silly and emotionally immature. At the very least, I would have had to keep my mouth shut and accept them gossiping about me.

The family failure and untrue gossip, with no one ever asking for my viewpoint, mirrors the US culture. Split and needing someone to hate. At this rate, we’ll need the hippies back, with flowers and joy and counter culture and dropping out. Someone fun, at least until the drugs wear off. Someone to say, we need joy back, we need friends, we need love.

It’s not just my failure though. The family failed. They make cruel choices and target people. It happened in my generation, my mother’s, my grandparents. I wonder if it is happening in my adult children’s generation. Who is the next target? Who will refuse to counter-gossip and fight with each source? My adult children are not part of it at all, because I had less and less interest in spending time with mean gossips and I did not want to expose my children.

Lies and drama and meanness and gossip. I hope my adult children’s generation does better. We went to Wicked on Thursday. I did not like it much. Too much drama. Why do we want drama? The world seems more and more surreal. Give me the lovely hike we did on Friday instead, Echo Canyon.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompts: failure and surreal.

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Intimacy

What IS intimacy? And what is love? And are they the same thing? Do you have to be intimate to love someone? Not meaning sex, but what level of intimacy is “normal” and “appropriate”?

I am thinking of my mother. When I was just starting college, she started talking to me about my father and about his drinking. I became more and more uncomfortable and finally asked her to find a counselor or someone other than me. The thing is, she refused to DO anything about his drinking and in fact, covered it up. The two of them would scream at each other at 2 am and fight when I was in high school. It would wake me up and I would think, I wish they wouldn’t, because I have school tomorrow. But I certainly didn’t go say anything because then they would have screamed at me. And as I got older, I wondered if my mother was drinking heavily too. Because why would she argue with someone drunk at 2 am, that makes no sense. Unless she either was drunk or loved to argue or both.

It is clear that she was drinking heavily at that time from her journals. Over and over she writes, I drank too much last night. Hard to blame her for not intervening with my father if she is drunk too. But she was using him as her cover up. Her family blamed him. My grandmother, her mother, didn’t blame him. She loved them both.

When we had guests, my mother would turn on the charm. She could mesmerize a room and entertain people with stories. My sister and I and others would be the butt of the stories. My father too. After the guest left, she would often talk about them. Analyze them. Talk about their faults and weaknesses. I was fascinated but a bit horrified too. She seemed to like these people so much and to charm them and invite them back, but was talking about them behind their backs. Ick.

So intimacy interests me. I wonder how to do it “right”. Maybe right is not the best word. How to do it “functionally”. I really don’t know what normal is, my maternal family certainly did not model healthy intimacy. My generation still gossips about each other. I quit that at age 19 and refused to be part of it. I don’t think anyone saw my rebellion except my maternal grandmother. She did not say a word but I knew that I had her respect. She did not play the family game with me.

I don’t think that gossip and triangulation are a good form of intimacy or love. Person A talks to person C about person B. Word gets around and sometimes it is person D that says something to person B and person B gets upset when they realize where this came from. And how twisted and one sided the story is. And aren’t we seeing this play out on a national level? All these people saying that THEY KNOW the status of the President’s memory. I don’t. I can’t judge it from a debate. And frankly, if we are going to do a psychiatric evaluation of one, I think we have to do BOTH. Stop following stupid rumors. Why not require a neuropsychiatric evaluation on every candidate for President and Senate and House of Representatives and the Supreme Court. And make them public. That would cause some chaos, wouldn’t it? And how do you decide who is “sane” enough to govern?

I think that gossip and triangulation is a dysfunctional form of intimacy. People feel closer when someone is whispering a secret to them. I don’t think it’s healthy. It might be normal for our culture, though. Normal does not mean healthy, after all. What do you think?

This election is like a bad hallucination. Why do we accept candidates that behave badly? Are we so addicted to television and movie drama that we want it to happen in our government? I don’t. How about you?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: hallucination.

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Tea and talk

Tea and talk and tittle tattle
exchange of views among some boomers
solving problems as ideas rattle
or spreading nasty damaging rumors?
Talk of science and books and space
are the words mean or kind?
whispers about someone’s face?
Rumors about someone’s mind?
It’s hard to fight a rumor mill
people talking behind your back
the poison seeps and spreads and spills
a deadly dagger in your back
Time passes and people find
sometimes it’s the accuser who lost his mind

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: tittle tattle.

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Hunted

I am having an internal argument.

It’s about shacks on a lake in Ontario. My grandparents and family built the shacks and I’ve been going there since I was under a year old.

However, my sister died of cancer in 2012 and there was a horrific family battle over my niece. My mother had already died. My father died 13 months after my sister and left the same will as my mother. Unfortunately it was written when I was a minor. I cried when I read it because I was the only person named in it who was still alive. I knew what my father wanted, or remembered what he told me. A will is a will though. I took it to an attorney and followed her interpretation.

Then I was sued by family regarding the niece.

I knew what my father wanted but he had not done it. So I decided not to fight it and handed over half the estate. Because even though my father wanted me to watch over his granddaughter, he had not left me the tools. And she did not want me.

So back to the shacks. It’s the side of the family that brought in all the lawsuits. I have not felt welcomed there nor loved since my sister died.

Part of me is furious that I am being hunted out, unwelcomed, wants our grandparents to curse them.

The other part points out that I have already been hunted out, effectively. I stopped trying to take my children there because I couldn’t tell who in the family was “neutral” (basically not talking to me) or “gossiping” — the rumors re me trying to harm my niece were incredibly painful. I had to let her go.

After my father died I dream that I am issued a huge SUV, black. I am to go pick up three children. When I arrive, two are teens: my two. The third is a toddler. My niece is really the same age as my daughter, but not in the dream. In the dream, they tell me, “You can’t take the toddler. You don’t have a car seat.”

I say, “Can I go get one and come back?”

“No.” they say.

I say, “Please, can I borrow one? I didn’t know I needed it! I was issued the SUV!”

“No.” they say. “You can only take the two teens.

So I took the two teens and left, crying.

I woke up and thought: my father’s will is not my fault. I did the best I could. I followed an attorney’s advice and I tried to do what my father wished. I did not have the tools I needed.

Now my children and I may get an offer to buy our share of the land. My children are ready to be bought out.

I do not know if I am. I feel like this is the last connection with that side of my family, not only the living, but the dead. I love the land far more than the silent living and the cruel living. Why are families so cruel and why do they need enemies so badly? Gossip is a sin, truly, and hurts. Selling my share is saying goodbye to my sister, my mother, my father, my grandmother, my grandfather, my two uncles, my aunt. I don’t mind saying goodbye to the cruel living nearly as much as to my dead.

And that too makes me sad.

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Reconcile

I have been thinking about family a lot this week. My mother’s family has been gossiping about me now for a decade and not one of them has ever talked to me directly about my father’s will. They have a story. They never checked it. It stars me as a villain. They seem to think I controlled attorneys, which is laughable.

I forgive them.

However, I think a decade is enough. I forgive them but I no longer want to reconcile. For ten years I hoped that they would talk to me. I have asked them to, more than one person, more than once. They say that they want to believe what they want to believe. I offered to send copies of bank statements to back up what I said. No. And a cousin silenced me by saying, “Don’t make me hate my sister.” The message is that I can be part of the family for some of them, as long as I remain silent as a tomb on this topic.

No. I won’t. And it’s just like all the silencing that goes on over the world. People say they would not stand by while someone is hurt, but my family sure seems to enjoy having me be the silenced gossiped about villain. I am sick of it. They can go to where ever it is that karma will take them: gossip, after all, is a sin.

And so I am reconciled. I am reconciled after a decade to adding these people to my list of dead. Our friendship is dead, my family feeling towards them is dead, I am not asking or waiting or hoping any more.

Forgiveness is a solo job. We forgive others.

Forgiveness is NOT reconciliation. You should not take an abuser back. You should not let someone treat you badly and refuse to listen to you and refuse to apologize. I know one person whose apologies run something like “I am sorry that you took offense to what I said/did.” Um. That is not an apology. That is putting it on me, it’s my fault for taking offense. The person has no intention of changing and does not actually care how I feel. I am not okay with that. The person is forgiven but there has not been a reconciliation.

With my maternal family, I am letting it go. I would like there to be more peace in the world but as long as people cling to having villains, to believing gossip, to perpetuating gossip and hatred and meanness, I do not think we will have peace in the world.

But in letting this go, I have peace in my heart.

Peace you and please peace me.

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rural doctoring

I read Grampa’s Solo Visits this am and it makes me laugh.

Since I have been a family doctor in my town of 9000 for 22 years, the grocery store and coffee shops can be interesting. When I moved here, my daughter was two and my son was seven. We have three grocery stores. I usually go to the one 7 blocks from my house. I would see patients. My diabetics would sometimes look guilty and scurry away when they saw me. Another patient comes to peer in my cart.

“I want to know if YOU are eating healthy food.” he says.

I laugh.

“I don’t see any vegetables.” he says.

“I am in a CSA,” I say. “I get a box from the farm once a week.”

He frowns. “Do you get to choose?”

“No,” I say. “But since I hate throwing vegetables out, we eat more vegetables. Also, we eat ones that are unfamiliar. The first time I got celery root, I had to look it up. I didn’t know what it was.”

He nods. “Hmmm. Ok. We want to be sure you practice what you preach.”

I laugh again. “I sneak in to get the ice cream at midnight, ok? And where is YOUR cart?”

“My wife has it,” he says. “You don’t get to see it.”

“Ok, then. Have a great day.”

When we were first in town, occasionally someone would come start talking about their health in a store.

“I can’t discuss your health in front of my children. HIPAA.”

“Oh,” they’d say, “Uh, yeah. I should call the clinic Monday?”

“Yes, please.”

We had a coffee shop that made the best pastries that I’ve had since I was an exchange student in Denmark. I wished they’d make tiny pastries, bite size, for the diabetic folks. Those folks would slide a newspaper over their plate when I walked in with my family. They looked terribly guilty. I might nod, but I wouldn’t say anything. Sometimes they would confess at the next visit.

There are lots of jobs in small towns where people are very much public figures. Not just doctors, but the people who work for the city and the county, the ones who redo the taxes for homes, the realtors, all sorts.

After I was divorced, another doc at the hospital asks, “Dating someone new?”

I frown, “How do you know?”

She grins, “He lives on my street. I saw you.”

Dang it. The rumor mill is very very efficient and can often be fabulously wrong. That time it was correct, though I don’t think she passed it around. Other people live on the street.

A few days ago someone that looked familiar walks by me. “What are you doing with so-and-so?”

I laugh. “Rumors abound.” I say. “You would not believe the rumors!”

I took the photograph of the coyote yesterday, driving home. Stopped dead in my lane, no one else on the road. People will be stopped in the road here, talking to each other in two cars going opposite directions, or talking to a friend on foot.

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playing telephone

If they whisper from one end to the other, does it get garbled before it reaches the other end?

Isn’t gossip a sin?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: chaos.

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released like stars

I have had strep A sepsis and pneumonia twice. It was terrifying and I ended up having to take care of myself. I would be dead if I was not a physician.

Not to be named obscure website helped to sustain me, because it was a place I could go while I was alone, terrified and very very ill. The bout in 2014 took me out of clinic for six months and then I was barely able to work seeing half my usual number of patients. My local hospital refused to help me, but other people did. I am deeply deeply grateful to the people who did help me, including people on everything2.com that I have never met.

I wrote this in June 2014.

released like stars

________________

My sister used to tell me

β€œEverything2 is like a brain.

That’s what attracted me.

All the nodes, like neurons

Connected to each other more and more.”

Or something like that.


Isn’t it annoying?

Now that I’ve taken that memory out

Dusted it off

Embellished it

Who knows what she really said


Flashes of light now

And some where I blank out entirely

For just a moment

Only when I’ve eaten

I’m still avoiding carbs


Could be absence seizures

But she said seizures hurt

These do not hurt

And are accompanied by muscle twitches

Or muscles rolling gently across my frame


I am scared at first

Because I think they are neurons

Bursting into brain flame

And burning out

Brief candles


But I don’t think that’s right either

I think it is plaques

Deposits of antibody

Small pushpins in the wrong place

Being released like stars

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people being people

There is a fascinating essay on an obscure unethical website, titled Online Community Dynamics. I keep thinking about it. It inspires today’s poem.

people being people

people being people
they are often scared
huddle
in groups
it’s safest if a leader
identifies an enemy
so that everyone can come together
in hate

the leader
tells the group
who to hate
and why
whether it is true or not

I started out writing
under the title
mean stupid people

but that isn’t right
and anyhow I’d rather find a way
to forgive
again
and again
and again

so I started again
with the title
people being people

maybe we will mature as a species
some day

who do you hate?

now look in the mirror
and ask

who have you forgiven
today?