Tag Archives: liar

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Sterling

Mary and Nissa are at the fundraiser. Only $100 each!

“I am the man for the job,” says Joe. He is elegant in a suit and tie and crisp white shirt. “I don’t lie. I don’t break laws. I don’t even speed! I am a man of sterling character!”

Mary and Nissa enjoy the fundraiser very much. Nissa is driving Mary home afterwards.

“He’s so wonderful! And that meal! Did you see all the silver? He is the man for the job!”

Nissa turns the car into Mary’s driveway. She turns the car off and looks at Mary.

“What?” says Mary.

Nissa pulls a spoon out of her pocket.

“You stole a silver spoon?” says Mary, appalled.

Nissa breaks it in half. It splinters.

“Wood. With silver paint. Don’t be fooled, Mary.” Nissa hands Mary the two wooden halves and Mary stares at them. Nissa gets out to help Mary in to the house.

After she is situated, walker within reach, Mary says, “I may rethink that donation I was going to make. Thank you for coming with me, Nissa.”

Nissa smiles. “You are welcome. Thank you for taking me.”

__________________________

The woman in the picture is new to my home. She has a tag that reads “Chubby Purple Mama”. She was made by an artist in town, Karen Renee Page, who died in September. Many dolls were given for a fundraiser. This doll has crystals and a piece of wood in her belly. Without them she is not balanced. I added one of the chalcedony nodules that I find here on the beach.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sterling.

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Hello universe

You know what?

I want to get remarried. Add that, Beloved, to me wanting someone to love and to love someone.

Commit, damn it.

And that is what I now want. Thank you recent ex for showing me what I want.

I want to be myself from the start.

I want to notice bullshit and walk away before we get involved.

I don’t want to be controlled, I don’t want to control, I want a partner.

I don’t want to be enabled, I don’t want to enable, I want mutual respect and caring.

I am not your shrink, you are not my shrink, and if one of us needs a shrink, we should find one.

I want to notice lies and walk away before we get involved.

I want to speak up if you tell me lies, or I want to back away for good.

I want to be loved and I want to love. By the same person, damn it.

Hear my prayer, Beloved. Hello, universe. Here I am.

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website ethics and mine

Two days ago I wrote to the owner of the website that “separated” me for “not explicitly breaking the rules”.

I have not gotten an answer.

Doesn’t matter, you say. I disagree. I think our ethics matters and it matters on line. Isn’t that part of what we are fighting about?

Let’s drill down. The editors stated on this obscure not to be named site that they were tightening rules and removing write-ups that should be logs or are just not high enough quality, and letting the writers repost them as logs. So far they have removed over 250 of my writeups. Ironically, I was one of the two most prolific writers in the last year. Let’s kill the golden goose because she’s annoying, won’t we? The other writer has not been “separated”.

I note that they have removed my write up called “birth of ——–“. Now, this interests me. This was a well received write up, had up votes, and was the start of a category. The category was people explaining how they chose their on line name.

So: the editors are liars and abusing their power. They have removed a well received and well liked write up because they have personal animosity towards me. I have protested the removal of 250+ writeups and asked that they be reposted as logs. No answer.

The other writeups in the how I chose my name category are still there. So this is PERSONAL and the editors of the site are unethical.

Therefore, I hope the site dies. Or gets rid of those editors. I think I want it to die, even though it has writing by my sister. This does matter. As a species, we will either learn to be fair and human on line as well as off line, or we will end in conflagration. The site will certainly not be there if we start lobbing nuclear bombs at each other. The owner works for the US government. Why is he/she not paying attention to this obscure website that he/she owns?

Whether or not the world burns this month, if the editors are manifestly unfair on the site, the site will die and deserves to die. I wish that I could have my sister’s drafts before it shuts down.

I ended my email that is not answered with this: Good luck. I hope that ethics matters to both of us.

Thank you.

on line site name

_______________________

I will not name the site here or anywhere again, until and unless those editors are shut down and the site becomes ethical.

We are fighting this fight as a species, as humanity. We have to learn to be as ethical on line as we are in person. Well, you say, some people AREN’T ethical. Yes, that is true. As a rural physician, my goal is to take care of ANYONE WHO COMES IN. The emergency room physician cares for the family of four hit by the drunk and the drunk too, even if there is a dead child in the family of four. We set our judgement aside and do the best for each and every patient, regardless of the story. At least, that is the goal. It is the highest goal I know of.

Blessings and be your ethical self on line. As my children said to me when I threw their father out of the house once, “We don’t care what he does. We want you to be polite to dad no matter what.” And they were RIGHT! We answer to ourselves and to the Beloved and to our children.

Blessings.

The photo is me and my sister, dancing before my wedding in 1989. She died of cancer in 2012.

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abuse, enabler style

I am raised by a family of triangulating enablers and enablees.

The enablers are my mother and two uncles. They are very very smart. Let me qualify that: they are very very smart intellectually. Emotionally, not so much.

The two uncles have PhDs and are professors. They marry wives that are lessor in their view. One tells my mother that he wants a woman who is not as bright as he is. I don’t know if she is less bright, but she is a hella better athlete. I also have the impression that she had a time where she drank too much.

The other uncle marries a woman who tends to be a hypochondriac. He takes her to India, where she gets polio while pregnant. She is then a sick hypochondriac, which is very difficult. The ill can control their families by planning things and then getting sick at the last moment. On the other hand, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia are very real and we are on the edge of figuring them out. That uncle divorces his wife and I instantly like both of them better. They stop being a weird unit and are suddenly individuals.

My mother tells me, when I am in college, “I wondered if your father was an alcoholic when I married him.” I want to hit her. She won’t leave him, she won’t stop enabling him, they scream at each other at 2 am often. Now I wonder about that and conclude that either screaming at someone was something she needed or she was an alchoholic too.

After my mother dies, I ask my uncle, what about his parents? After all, the three of them learned enabling somewhere and it pretty much has to be at home.

My uncle tells me his parents had a PERFECT marriage and that my grandmother LOVED being the wife of a physician and professor.

Um, so, then, why did she pay my tuition to medical school, uncle?

And I think about my mother’s stories. Once, she says, your Uncle Jim bet his friend Dick that Dick was too chicken to shoot a cigarette out of Jim’s mother’s mouth. Ooooo. With a rubber band shooter. Yes, my grandmother. Bob took the bet and succeeded. My grandmother roared with anger and the two boys ran like hell and hid.

And someone in the family tells me: your grandfather helped your grandmother control her temper.

There it is. The enabler/enablee.

The enablers die first. My grandfather of cancer at 79, my mother of cancer at 62. The cousins are all angry at me because I won’t follow the family rules and triangulate in a satisfactory manner, and I don’t care any more. I am ignoring them. I got my father’s banjo back and I am done. The two cousins I own land with jointly are not the worst triangulators.

I have to remind myself: for them, this is love. For some people, controlling or being controlled is what functions as love and intimacy. Fighting and tears when person A talks to person C about person B and person C then lets person B know, that is how they feel close. It is not only families, but communities. Clay Shirky’s description of a group being it’s own worst enemy describes the same patterns: identify an enemy inside or outside the group and then everyone comes together against the enemy. The enemy says the wrong thing, doesn’t worship the right god/desses, wears different clothes, looks different. And the group feels safer once the scapegoat has been killed, the guy has been burned. It would be nice if we could burn a ritual guy instead of torching each other.

The real anger is in the enabler. They control it by having the enablee express it. Then it is not “theirs”. They can feel superior to the enablee who is out of control. Sadly, the problem is only fixed temporarily and they will need their anger expressed again and again and again.

The cycle can be broken. It is a lot of work.

Blessings.

______________________________________________

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Liars and the lying lies they tell

This blog post: hanging from a telephone wire intrigues me.

Why do the liars lie?

I disagree with Ms. Kennedy.

The liars lie for the same reason that addicts lie. They are not lying to you or to me. They are lying to themselves FIRST. They want to believe what they say.

“My marriage is perfect.”

“I love all my children the same.”

“I never make an error.”

“I talk to my mother every Sunday morning because we are so close and love each other so much.”

“I can see right in to your head.”

“I don’t care about anything.”

“I am happy all the time.”

Whew. A totally easy list to come up with and I could go on and on and on…. and so could you. When someone says something like this… I am always (fill in blank) or I never (fill in blank)… stop. Think. They want to believe it. They might like you to believe it too. They might even kind of know that it’s a lie and very convincing one but the best liars have convinced themselves.

I saw it in clinic all the time. Over and over and over.

It’s the glitter that gives it away. When they come in all glittery and sparkly and their eyes shine and they are too beautiful for words and they charm your socks right off…. check your wallet. They are an addict or a manipulator or they WANT SOMETHING FROM YOU. And there are people who just do it automatically. They lie all the time.

Whatever. When someone reminds me of my mother or my sister… or the other extremely well trained enablers on the maternal side of my stupid family…. ooooooo. The person has my full focused attention. Which thing is the lie? What do they want? What are they going to try to get out of me?

When I trained in buprenorphine treatment, the guy (enabler) that I was dating was horrified. “You can’t treat addicts!” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“They LIE.”

I laughed. “ALL patients lie. There are studies. They lie about whether they are taking their blood pressure medicine. They lie about how much salt they are eating. They lie about exercising. The first question I ask if someone’s blood pressure is too high, is “Are you taking the medicine?” More than half the time I get a sheepish, “Yeah, well, no, I ran out of it two weeks ago.” “Yeah, well, then I can’t tell if it’s working or not, can I? And you’ll have to redo the stupid labs once you have taken it for two weeks and come back for another check.” “Ok, ok, I get it.” If you lie to your doctor, well, you might get hurt. Tell them about the pills your friend gave you, tell them about the supplements, and that infected toe? Might help if you tell the truth about it. Even though it was when you um inserted well we were just, like he has an infected um. That is important information and changes which antibiotics I use plus now I want to check for chlamydia and gonorrhea and same sex male so we gotter talk about HIV prophylaxis and this is a 15 minute clinic visit? I am now running late and annoyed. You need another visit in 1-2 days or else I gonna hospitalize yo dumb self.

And WHY do people, and especially people in addiction, lie to themselves?

Damage. ACE scores. Adverse Childhood Experience Scores. They wish that they were that close to their mother. They long for a perfect marriage. They were beaten in secret by the perfect father. The famous man, their grandfather, sexually abused them. The list is endless.

And how do we help? The person I just stopped dating told me that his children said to him “My picker’s broke.” Our pickers are not really broken. We are attracted to the people who can teach us.

In the book Passionate Marriage, the author writes about how we are attracted to the people who have what we lack. What we want to learn. What we are afraid of. What we need to learn. I needed to learn how to really look at anyone I date with my full on intuition right away and also that it is seriously Not Nice of me to get curious, activate my inner scientist and stick around. I recognize the projection on me at some point and then the scientist in me is intrigued. Really? The most recent one said that inside me there is a sweet innocent joyous tiny girl.

Well, I thought. No, not really. There certainly is a baby. But it’s a baby honey badger or a baby Iron Bitch Alien Lizard. Don’t care what you call it. But it is about as sweet as a pissed off porcupine or skunk. Polecat. Octopoggles done got us! Squirting ink and sliding into an impossibly small space and escaping from the acquarium over and over until the captors let me go…..

And that was actually the moment I should have spoken up. Calmly. Kindly. “Um, no. I was never a sweet innocent joyous tiny girl. I was bathed in antibodies to tuberculosis in the womb and no doubt alcohol and my parents were newly married and I came out saying, “What is happening now? Some new torture? Augh! Bright lights! Is there food? I am really really hungry. Feed me or I will eat YOU.” And then I lost my mother for nine months so that I would not catch tuberculosis from her and die. I didn’t really understand it. I thought people kept giving me away and that you couldn’t trust those evil adults.

In the end this is all actually necessary, says the Passionate Marriage author. WHAT? WHAT? Well, in a truly loving relationship, both people will withdraw the projection. The projection is the “falling in love” where the person is golden, perfect, your true love. No, they aren’t. But you love that aspect of them that you want/need/can’t do. True love is when you withdraw the projection and you see the real person and you love them.

It isn’t easy. But people do it. Birds do it, squirrels do it, trees do it, even elementary bees do it… let’s do it… let’s fall in love.

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Game ball

Warning: this post contains some time out words.

How do I process the game you played?

I am the subject of the game.

Or the victim.

Or no, I refuse. It is your game. I was not playing. I am the honey badger, metabolism so fast that I have to run from one meal to the next or else I will starve. I eat whatever I can find: cobras, bees, anything. I eat or I die.

You have tethered a honey badger to oxygen by playing a game.

I am the football and you have been kicking me, throwing me, catching me, slamming me to the ground as hard as you can in the end zone.

And now that I am worn and damaged and torn, you’ll toss me away, not even notice me, and find a new ball.

You will need a new football. To play with.

I don’t envy that person.

The truth is, it will be one of you. The group will rest on their laurels, oh, we nearly killed her, wasn’t it great? We showed her. She is so stupid, took her what, 21 years to fucking figure it out? And she thinks she’s so smart.

I was looking for food because I am always hungry. The food insecurity goes back to infancy. Maybe to the womb: my mother says she was not to gain weight and spent the entire pregnancy longing for a gigantic ice cream Sunday. Think of being in a womb, attacked by antibodies to tuberculosis, and starving all the time. Might be a little bit worried when birth happens. Fuck, I am going through a tunnel, what horrors await me here? But maybe there will be more food.

Maybe someone will love me. Maybe there will be someone for me to love. And feed. We can give each other food.

My advice to you is don’t be the ball. I was the ball for 21 years. I was so hungry the whole time, for food and for love, that I kind of noticed but dismissed it as unimportant. Food and love were more important. Work and my patients were more important. You don’t matter and your games are trivial.

It will be the weakest one who will be the ball. You worry that you are the one. You should worry. You had better look strong right away. Post some horror. Write something really tough. Don’t show anyone any niggling doubts. Um, the ball is wearing oxygen. I am feeling a little bad about this. Are you feeling bad about this? The ball isn’t just crazy, it’s hurt. Actually crazy is an illness too: I know that you discriminate and think that cancer is a legitimate illness and that mania isn’t, but you are assholes. No, you’re too small and pathetic to be an asshole. You are a one celled animal that is clinging to a hair on an asshole and you get shat on daily. And you know, deep deep in your tiny shrunken heart, that you deserve it.

I am so glad I am not you.

I am tethered to oxygen. But I am healing. I don’t think you can. You are locked in your small sick pathetic triangulation competition and pretending that it’s a game that it’s ok that you are just playing.

Ick.

Meanwhile, the oxygen is portable.

I have food and I have love and I have work to do that lifts me on wings. I will go too near the sun and light on fire and fall burning, but that’s ok. I’ve done it before. The ocean heals me, always. It is so much fun to fly!

This is in memory of my mother, my father and my sister. I miss all three and I love them and they love me. Today is the day my mother died. The longer we live, the more days are days when someone that we love died. But they are still here. They are in the rocks and the sky and the trees and the coffee cup. They are not in sugary donuts or foods that cause heart attacks. But they are all around us, cradle us, still love us. Joy to you and the memories of your loved ones who have gone on. Blessings.

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alternative medicine

Ok, I got this picture off Facebutt. I CONFESS. But I really want a doctor kit like this: so I can practice alternative medicine. I am disabled from Family Practice and I have to apply for disability payments (miles of paperwork) and I hear that even as a contractee I can apply for unemployment (miles more paperwork) and I see my hospital bill on line for the ER visit where I had chest pain and shortness of breath and the ER doc didn’t even give me an aspirin, so I want to know why I should pay them $900 and I am going to apply for reduced payments because last year I made 42 K, less then the nurses at Jefferson Healthcare (EVEN MORE PAPERWORK FOR THE REDUCED PAYMENTS) and really, it all sounds rather exhausting and I’d rather let the paranoia rise and hide under the bed. Where the OCD and ADHD will make me arrange the dust bunnies and dust elephants by size.

So this looks like a great doctor kit. If the patient sees me and doesn’t do a darn thing that I say, I shoot them with the gun in the forehead. If they do a little but not really very much, I set up the bowling pins and shoot them with the gun while I talk about how irritating it is to have patients use MY TAX DOLLARS though MEDICARE MEDICAID ACTIVE MILITARY DUTY AND THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION NOT TO MENTION SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY to get advice and not follow it.

If they are merely disrespectful and tell me what Dr. Google says, I say “Duck.” and throw one at them. If they say, “I don’t take any farmasuiticals.” and bring a bag with the 12 supplement and vitamin pills they take daily, I give them the plastic pills to replace all their stupid supplements. “Here, take this. If it doesn’t work, I have suppositories, but they are four times this size so some people complain that they are uncomfortable.”

I am not sure WHAT the thing in the lower right corner is. A hair dryer? A fentenyl lollipop? Part of an old fashioned telephone?

Anyhow, someone find me one of these kits and send it to me. Pretty please. I am not allowed to do Family Medicine any more and really want to get started on Alternative Medicine.

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broken

I wrote this poem in 2014. Sometimes you know things without knowing them. Or you know them before you are ready to know them and so…. you forget.

broken

I think you said
“Break her.”

And you told them how.

You told them my weaknesses
and my strengths.

You told them that I twisted your words.

You said, “You twist my words.”
K said, “You twist my words.”
S said, “You twist my words.”
Ko said, “You twist my words.”

and on everything2
they, too, twist my words.

Twist
twisted
fisted.

When the outer is charming and perfect
the damage is inside.

I wear my spikes on the outside.


No one, to date, has been allowed more then
visitation rights
inside.

No one except
you
and my children
and all children.

Only they are allowed inside.

Twist
twisted
fisted.

I am broken.

But I was always broken and knew it.

I hope that no one cut their hands
when they tried to smash me.

Pretty on the outside
deadly on the inside.

Yet I think a spark in you said,
“Break her.”

What you didn’t tell them
is that I don’t bother to lie
because no one listens anyhow
no one ever listened
and so I can always tell the truth
until they stop listening.

because they don’t believe me

but you knew

I tell the truth

And I was already broken.

8/22/14

And this should connect to this: https://drkottaway.com/2014/11/

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out of minutes

I just read your email

my phone was out of minutes

the internet was down

I was really busy working

I didn’t hear the phone

I forgot I turned it down

 

and you are out of minutes

 

The photograph is from 2007. The dunes collapse, sometimes whole sections with trees. It’s not a safe space to play.
I am choosing this for the Daily Prompt: flames.

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Look longing

This is for Ronovanwrites weekly haiku challenge #75: the words are charm and look. The prompt includes that the first two lines should make a sentence with the opposite meaning of the sentence made by the second two lines…..

you gift a young girl
I see your charm, look longing
see you lie to me

I took the photo across the street from my clinic just a few days ago.