When is it evil to be quiet? When you are witnessing bullying or injustice or someone being harmed. Have you witnessed bullying and stood by and does it bother you?
I am at a dinner, invited. It turns out that the agenda is to talk a partner into staying, because she has quit. Partner one wants partner two to stay. Partner three and I are horrified and don’t want her to stay, but we do not want to say that to her. We frankly can’t wait for her to leave.
The dinner turns in to partner one and two bullying partner three. I am the newest and don’t know what to do. The next day I am ashamed and think, why didn’t I take partner three and leave? What is the matter with me?
Part of it is that I revert to childhood. I survived a complex household with people who were loving sometimes and horrid and drunk at others. Clamming up and being quiet was how I survived. But I am an adult now and I can leave. I can also speak up and say, “Stop. This is not fair. This is an ambush.”
Today’s watercolor is flowers. My mother loved flowers, had a wild and delightful garden, and painted them often. This is a small watercolor, 7 by 10 inches, no date.
I am thinking about the latest shootings. Aren’t we supposed to welcome strangers, for they may be angels in disguise? What did you stock up on during the pandemic? A gun didn’t occur to me. I bought more water filters and wished I could buy for the whole county. I bought seeds. I bought rice and beans. You can’t eat bullets and they aren’t good toilet paper either. I studied local edible plants. What did you buy? So many people are so afraid.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: nothing. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
“amongst those who treat addicts of any kind generally agree that anger and shame help no one and is actively counter-productive.”*
Wait.
I have to think about that statement.
I do not agree at all.
Ok, for the physician/ARNP/PAC, anger at the patient and shaming the patient are not good practice, don’t work, and could make them worse. BUT anger and shame come up.
In many patients.
Sometimes it goes like this with opioid overuse: the person shows up, gets on buprenorphine, and is clean.
It may be a long time since they have been “clean”.
One young man wants to know WHY I am treating him as an opioid overuse patient. “Why are you treating me like an addict?”
I try to be patient. I recommended that he go inpatient, because I don’t think we will cut through the denial outpatient. Very high risk of relapse. “You have been buying oxycodone on the street for more than ten years.”
“I’ve been buying it for back pain, not to party.”
“Did you ever see a doctor about the back pain?”
“Well, no.”
“Buying it illegally is one of the criteria of opiate overuse.”
“But I’m not an addict! I’ve never tried heroin! I have never used needles!”
“We can go through the criteria again.”
He shakes his head.
He is in denial. He is fine. He doesn’t need inpatient. He is super confident, gets work again, is super proud.
And then angry. “My family still won’t talk to me!”
“Um, yes.”
“I’m clean. I’m going to the stupid AA/NA groups! Though I don’t need to. I’m fine!”
“What have you noticed at the groups?”
“What a bunch of liars!” he says, angry. “There are people court ordered there and they are still using! I can tell. They are lying through their teeth!”
“Obvious, huh?”
“Yeah!”
“Did you ever lie while you were taking the oxycodone?”
Now he ducks his head and looks down. “Well, maybe. A little.”
“Do you think your family and friends could tell?”
He glances up at me and away. “Maybe.”
“Your family may be angry and may have trouble trusting you for a while.”
“But I’ve been clean for four months!”
“How many years did you tell untruths?”
“Well.”
Shame and anger. Anger from the family and old friends, who have heard the story before, who are not inclined to trust, who are hurt and sad. The first hurdle is getting clean, but that is only the first one. Repairing relationships takes time and some people may refuse and they have that right! Sometimes patients are shocked that now that they are clean, a relationship can’t be repaired. Or that it may take years to repair. My overuse folks are not exactly used to being patient. And sometimes as they realize how upset the family and friends are, they are very ashamed. And some are very sad, at years lost, and friendships, and loved ones. I have had at least one person disappear, to relapse, after describing introducing someone else to heroin. He died about two years later, in his forties.
Shame and anger definitely come up in overuse illness.
The above is not a single patient, but cobbled together from more than one.
______________________
*from an essay titled “F—ing yes, I’m a fatphobe” on everything2.com. Today there are two with that title. The quotation is from the second essay.
I am oppositional defiant. I have been for as long as I can remember. I ALWAYS want to argue when someone tells me to do something or gives me advice. BUT, I have learned to work with it.
I work with it by arguing with myself.
Give me a topic. Or advice. I will promptly argue the opposite, internally or externally. Then I will argue the original side. Then my demon fights my angel until they are both tired and decide to go have a beer. Somewhere along the way I will make a decision and also I will laugh, because it’s funny.
B has figured this out. “You argue with EVERYTHING.” he says.
“Yes, and if there is no one around, I argue with myself. All the time.”
However, he is also oppositional defiant. He is smart too, and doing some self examination.
“I am thinking about my life. I think ALL of my important decisions were oppositional defiant ones.”
“Someone told you you couldn’t do that?
“Yes.”
He’s chewing on that. Heh. He accuses ME of overthinking. I replied that I am making up for his underthinking, heh. He suggests that I STOP overthinking and I say, “You want to DESTROY the SOURCE of my poetry?” Double heh.
The point is, some of us are oppositional defiant, but really, we don’t want that to run our lives EITHER. We don’t want ANYTHING or ANYONE to tell us what to do.
B says, “I think that everyone refusing the vaccine is oppositional defiant.” He has a lot of friends, both liberal and conservative.
“That is interesting.” I say. And I wonder if it is worth dying for, to be oppositional defiant. Not if it’s running your life, right? I don’t want ANYTHING to run my life except ME.
So then I spend a bunch of time arguing with myself about the causes of refusing the vaccine. And I have not reached a conclusion. Yet.
I took the photograph at the Bellevue Mall on Monday. A three story waterfall. Really? Isn’t there enough rain in Seattle? We should have a three story sun instead.
Why are the roses caged, you ask? What did they do? Nothing, they are being protected. I found that rose and transplanted it years ago, but our deer eat the buds every year. This is the first time that it has bloomed in the 21 years I have lived in this hours. Isn’t it beautiful?
I am listening to this:
I wrote this poem today. This is one of the poems where I have no idea where it will go when I start writing it. I start writing about judgement and it never ever goes where I expect. The poems go where I want to go in my deepest heart, in my soul. I am never where the poem is, the poems show me the way….. Then I try to go there. And it can take years….
I am being judged and watched
I have no issue with the Beloved
it’s the humans I don’t like
I twist people’s words but not with malice
when the antibodies are up it is hard to communicate hard to explain it is hard just to survive and I might be focused on survival first and comforting the people around me second
can you blame me?
how near to death have you passed? and how often?
first pneumonia heart rate 135 when I stood up
my doctor and I could not understand it
my doctor partners thought I was lying in 2003
second pneumonia after my sister’s death which was bad enough but the legal morass that she had set up with her daughter as the center
pitting me and her daughter’s birth father and my father against all the PhDs in the maternal family smart, smart, smart yet emotionally stupid
my niece is not an inheritance to be passed to whom my sister wants
she reluctantly came home and the myth endures that this is an injustice
third pneumonia one year after I find my father dead triggered by grief and the outdated will and the mess he leaves
and I don’t even get sued about the will for another year
I do not care if you want to believe what you want to believe it isn’t true and it hurt
and I learn to let go
with the fourth pneumonia
I see the liars surrounding me downvoting yes, it does matter except that one that I trusted that mentored me
has lied all along
that hurts too
let it go let it go let it go
and I let it go
each pneumonia is a time of change creativity I am lonely and sick and not trusting
as I improve slowly, slowly
I wander garage sales estate sales
and find things things that are beautiful things that enhance my joy
at the start of covid I was so down I was so sad I wanted to lie in the street and give up
the Beloved sent a spirit he says he is no angel
I see angels bright and dark after all they all fall
just as humans do
we all fall we all fall down
try to look perfect try to look virtuous tell yourself that you are good
that is the biggest lie of all
the bad parts of your spirit locked in the basement of your soul howl howl and want to be freed
and if one gets out and you reject her or him
he will return with nine friends yes that is what the bible says
she will return with nine friends
he/she MONSTER will free the others
and you will do bad things you will be terrible you will hurt people while you try to contain while you try to lock away while you try to chain your monsters your evil your self
let them go let the monsters go they are howling I hear them all the time when I meet you when I speak to you the monsters howl at me begging to be loved
yes, they want to be loved and I love them
but if I mention them
you get that look of horror
someone sees me someone sees my evil someone sees what I hide
I can’t help it raised in alcohol neglect and lies on my own as soon as I can walk
but I can’t walk away at nine months
so I find other escapes words songs books poetry rhymes numbers
and my sister when she is born
I do all the mothering
that I have longed for
even though I am three
we were talking about your monsters not mine
you must go in to the cave where you have locked them
and free them all
fall on your knees
and say forgive me forgive me
for I have sinned
bow your head
and hold out your arms
and what, you say, will the tortured monsters do?
will they smite you? will they burn you? will they lock you in their place?
mine didn’t mine were babies grief, fear, shame and I embraced them carried them up to the light and care for them
wash them diaper them feed them wrap them in warm blankets
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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