A local Truckee boy just barely into his seventeenth year throws himself off a bridge in a location where he is unlikely to survive. He knows he will hit pavement because he has probably thought about where and how so many times. Maybe he imagined it over and over again because he wanted to be certain there was no chance he would live. Those of us who have had suicidal thoughts as our occasional or steady companion in the darkest of dark times consider the finer details of carrying it out. "Will I live if I do it this way? And if so, who will bear the burden of my survival? I may be a quadriplegic who must be looked after twenty four hours a day if I live. No...that will never do. I must be sure I die."
I attended his memorial service today which was called a "celebration of life." A celebration of life seems far more appropriate when the deceased is 95 years old and life has been lived to its fullest potential, or when a disease has chosen the time of death. When death by suicide remains the only choice for ending suffering, a celebration of life seems a denial of what was true. This young man screamed for a message to be heard. Did anyone hear him? What was it that haunted him day and night? What made life so brutally painful that he chose to jump off a bridge in broad daylight on a Friday just a few days after his seventeenth birthday? And why is it that the topic of conversation at his memorial service was his preference for pasta without any sauce and the kind of socks he wore? When a teenager dies by a choice he makes after years of suffering shouldn't we be holding his suffering and at least making it a primary topic of discussion at his memorial service? Should we not embrace and tenderly hold his suffering as part of our own? Shouldn't we be talking about the bullying in schools that we close our eyes to and simply write off as 'stuff teenagers do'? What about the pressure he might have felt from our culture's relentless infatuation with academic test scores and grades? Shouldn't we be asking his friends what really happened and did we do them a terrible disservice by asking them to keep it light at his memorial service?
From where I stood, it seemed his church wanted memorial attendees to remember his smile and his wit and his love for video games. Maybe his parents preferred to keep the rest of the story private and I honor their need for privacy in this time of great pain. Yet his story and his pain is also ours. While I want to remember this young man for his wit and his quirks and his choice of socks, I also wanted us to talk about the wounding caused by cruelty perpetrated by teenagers toward their peers, and the real harm it causes, especially to those more fragile than others. There was no mention of the darkness and struggle he must have awakened to each day, no mention of the tension he held in his heart that found no relief, even in the love his family had for him. I wonder what this young man really wanted us to know about what it was like to live in his skin. Maybe he couldn't bear the thought of growing up and being out in this world where the competition leaves little room for those who cannot toe the line when the clock turns eighteen. And there is no medicine to change who one really is, gay or straight, addict or straight edge, black, white and every color in between, Christian, atheist, Jew or Muslim. And when there is no soft place to be who one is, no embracing of difference and diversity, the softest place to land is death. Even when the landing is solid pavement.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Really? You're going to F**k with me about this? More from "The Good Enough Mother"
She gets up at 4:30 to have her half hour on the treadmill in her living room. The house is still asleep, thank the good Lord (if there is such a thing). Then she has to get in the shower, get dressed and start making breakfast before her daycare kids arrive at 6AM. She took on more because they need the money. Some weeks they only have fifty bucks to feed a family of four and it just won't do at all.
In her sacred half hour, she dreams. Step by step, her shoes hit the strip of rubber on the treadmill and she breathes in a predictable rhythm. Her boy is a few months shy of eighteen and she knows she's in for a fight to get him placed in a group home. He is part of her, flailing arms, limbs that won't behave and big geen eyes fringed with thick black lashes. Seizures grip him in the night and she wakes up to make sure he hasn't bitten through his tongue. She tenderly changes the sweaty pajamas, cleans up the pee and slobber and tucks him back in. His clothes hang off a body misshapen by scoliosis and he struggles to stand up straight. When he's excited, he shakes his hands as if he might be ready to reach for the controls of his favorite video game. Sometimes, she wonders whether she wants her freedom from being a 24/7 caregiver or whether she feels she must give him up because her husband has threatened to leave her if she doesn't find placement for him the second he turns eighteen.
"Maybe I'll just take him and we'll leave. I handled him just fine before I married my husband. Seems like now I'm dealing with trying to make things okay for him and trying to take care of my son too. But I really am so tired..."
She fantasizes about leaving him on the doorstep of the government agency whose mission statement is to serve families with disabled children but whose actions fall far short.
"Here is is," she imagines saying. "You won't place him. Well fuck you. He's yours now. He's homeless cuz I got nothin' left." She says this to me while we sit on her sofa as all the babies nap to the sound of Sugarland on the radio. It's our little secret that she wants to run far, far away.
"He wet the bed three times over the last two days," she says. Her eyes fill. Then the phone rings and she picks up. It's the orthodontist's office calling about what they can't or won't do for her son who has a snaggle tooth that needs to be pulled or it will abcess.
"He is disabled, THAT'S why he's on Medicaid," she says rolling her eyes. She is used to fighting this fight day in and day out to get medical services, supportive services and other kinds of assistance for her boy. "We have really good insurance through my husband's work. But his secondary is medicaid. You don't bill them? Well then refer me to someone who will...You don't do that? Well who can...I have to call Medicaid to find a preferred provider? I already did and nobody...You're sorry? Really? Well why is this so difficult to bill the primary and then bill Medicaid for the difference? No I am not going to pay out of pocket...Can't you tell me who will just pull the goddamn tooth and bill the insurance? Yeah...okay. Fine. I will do it myself."
She hangs up and looks at me. "This is what I do eevery day every time he needs medical attention. You would think in this country that a child would not have to go without medical care. But it's always a struggle."
She dreams of days on a lake. She dreams of starting a business. She dreams of dressing up in leather and riding her Harley. "I have lots of ideas," she says. "But they die when my treadmill stops."
She has that frantic look again. "I am eating too much again," she says. "I once spent my days in the gym. I worked there and I worked out. I was so ripped. A guy with some big bodybuilding competition even offered to sponsor me and I said no. Can you believe I said no? How different would MY life have been."
I look at her and remind her that she is the most astonishing example of strength and patience I have ever witnessed. I could no more do what she does in one day than I could fly to the moon. We talk about hunger and how to feed it. Right now it's with food. So what...when her time comes, food will be the last thing she will feed that hungry soul with. But once in a while, she can feed that hunger by standing up and maybe issuing a definitive statement to her husband when he complains that the furniture is dusty or that there is a ring around the tub. That's when she rises up and puts her hands on her hips. She looks down at him while he sits on the sofa in judgment of her mothering, in judgment of how she won't have sex with him on account of her being tired all the time and how the tub needs a scrubbing. And she silently walks into the kitchen. And then the sponge flies across the room past his face followed by a plastic bottle of Soft Scrub. She breathes out and shakes that honey blond hair out of her face and moves like a panther through the living room and into her bedroom to her closet. She digs around way in the back and something rattles. It's the buckles, all ten of them. She puts on those leather pants and the matching jacket without a word. And when all ten buckles are buckled, she walks past him out to the garage where her motorcycle waits. And she mounts it like an Amazon and rides into the night.
In her sacred half hour, she dreams. Step by step, her shoes hit the strip of rubber on the treadmill and she breathes in a predictable rhythm. Her boy is a few months shy of eighteen and she knows she's in for a fight to get him placed in a group home. He is part of her, flailing arms, limbs that won't behave and big geen eyes fringed with thick black lashes. Seizures grip him in the night and she wakes up to make sure he hasn't bitten through his tongue. She tenderly changes the sweaty pajamas, cleans up the pee and slobber and tucks him back in. His clothes hang off a body misshapen by scoliosis and he struggles to stand up straight. When he's excited, he shakes his hands as if he might be ready to reach for the controls of his favorite video game. Sometimes, she wonders whether she wants her freedom from being a 24/7 caregiver or whether she feels she must give him up because her husband has threatened to leave her if she doesn't find placement for him the second he turns eighteen.
"Maybe I'll just take him and we'll leave. I handled him just fine before I married my husband. Seems like now I'm dealing with trying to make things okay for him and trying to take care of my son too. But I really am so tired..."
She fantasizes about leaving him on the doorstep of the government agency whose mission statement is to serve families with disabled children but whose actions fall far short.
"Here is is," she imagines saying. "You won't place him. Well fuck you. He's yours now. He's homeless cuz I got nothin' left." She says this to me while we sit on her sofa as all the babies nap to the sound of Sugarland on the radio. It's our little secret that she wants to run far, far away.
"He wet the bed three times over the last two days," she says. Her eyes fill. Then the phone rings and she picks up. It's the orthodontist's office calling about what they can't or won't do for her son who has a snaggle tooth that needs to be pulled or it will abcess.
"He is disabled, THAT'S why he's on Medicaid," she says rolling her eyes. She is used to fighting this fight day in and day out to get medical services, supportive services and other kinds of assistance for her boy. "We have really good insurance through my husband's work. But his secondary is medicaid. You don't bill them? Well then refer me to someone who will...You don't do that? Well who can...I have to call Medicaid to find a preferred provider? I already did and nobody...You're sorry? Really? Well why is this so difficult to bill the primary and then bill Medicaid for the difference? No I am not going to pay out of pocket...Can't you tell me who will just pull the goddamn tooth and bill the insurance? Yeah...okay. Fine. I will do it myself."
She hangs up and looks at me. "This is what I do eevery day every time he needs medical attention. You would think in this country that a child would not have to go without medical care. But it's always a struggle."
She dreams of days on a lake. She dreams of starting a business. She dreams of dressing up in leather and riding her Harley. "I have lots of ideas," she says. "But they die when my treadmill stops."
She has that frantic look again. "I am eating too much again," she says. "I once spent my days in the gym. I worked there and I worked out. I was so ripped. A guy with some big bodybuilding competition even offered to sponsor me and I said no. Can you believe I said no? How different would MY life have been."
I look at her and remind her that she is the most astonishing example of strength and patience I have ever witnessed. I could no more do what she does in one day than I could fly to the moon. We talk about hunger and how to feed it. Right now it's with food. So what...when her time comes, food will be the last thing she will feed that hungry soul with. But once in a while, she can feed that hunger by standing up and maybe issuing a definitive statement to her husband when he complains that the furniture is dusty or that there is a ring around the tub. That's when she rises up and puts her hands on her hips. She looks down at him while he sits on the sofa in judgment of her mothering, in judgment of how she won't have sex with him on account of her being tired all the time and how the tub needs a scrubbing. And she silently walks into the kitchen. And then the sponge flies across the room past his face followed by a plastic bottle of Soft Scrub. She breathes out and shakes that honey blond hair out of her face and moves like a panther through the living room and into her bedroom to her closet. She digs around way in the back and something rattles. It's the buckles, all ten of them. She puts on those leather pants and the matching jacket without a word. And when all ten buckles are buckled, she walks past him out to the garage where her motorcycle waits. And she mounts it like an Amazon and rides into the night.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Hanging On
I hang on
when I really need to uncurl my fingers
and let my self fall
like a red scarf in the desert wind
floating fearlessly against the sandstone canyon walls
I hang on the hook like an old pink coat
with a frayed neckline
where you put me
when you have something better to wear
I sway slightly when you walk by
hoping you might choose me this time
I lean against the wall
brushing my threadbare hemline
against the tops of your boots
Just noticing the rough leather
against the softness of cashmere
and remembering the smell
of your skin on my pillow
One day you will take me off the hook
and wear me as if it was our first dance
and for the moment I forget
that you will hang me up again
It's just the perfect dance
round and round like a red scarf
floating upon the trustworthy wind
toward the sun and the moon
Until you decide it is time to stop
and I dance on alone
upon those waves of desert wind
against the sandstone canyon walls
when I really need to uncurl my fingers
and let my self fall
like a red scarf in the desert wind
floating fearlessly against the sandstone canyon walls
I hang on the hook like an old pink coat
with a frayed neckline
where you put me
when you have something better to wear
I sway slightly when you walk by
hoping you might choose me this time
I lean against the wall
brushing my threadbare hemline
against the tops of your boots
Just noticing the rough leather
against the softness of cashmere
and remembering the smell
of your skin on my pillow
One day you will take me off the hook
and wear me as if it was our first dance
and for the moment I forget
that you will hang me up again
It's just the perfect dance
round and round like a red scarf
floating upon the trustworthy wind
toward the sun and the moon
Until you decide it is time to stop
and I dance on alone
upon those waves of desert wind
against the sandstone canyon walls
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Garmin ForeRunner 405 Causes Woman to Fly Into Murderous Rage
Lurch gave me a Garmin Forerunner 405 sometime in the spring of 2009. I should never have agreed to be Lurch's girlfriend, we were better off as friends. But I was out of my mind with heartache when I decided to try. I thought maybe I needed a man who wasn't interesting and exciting. Lurch was neither. Predictable and mechanical, he works like one of those oil drilling machines near Bakersfield. Up, down, up down, get the oil, up, down, here is my oil, in a rhythmic fashion with a very predictable yield. Sex was similar which is why we only had it once, and even that single episode lasting eight minutes and thirty two point five seconds brought my dinner up to my throat.
Lurch likes to measure everything, a pastime that makes him delightfully happy and which I hate with a screaming passion. The ForeRunner 405 he gave me with such high expectation that I would love it, was like wearing Big Ben on my wrist. It was supposedly genious enough to tell me how far, how fast, where, when, what and how I was doing every single second of whatever physical activity I was engaged in. I didn't even take it out of the box for two months because I knew I would hate it. I just want a watch with maybe two buttons at most. A start/stop button and a button to reset it is plenty for me to manage.
Lurch also gave me a hanging toiletry bag because he had one made my the Swiss Army people and I coveted it because the bottles all stood up straight inside of it and you could tell which was the shampoo and which was your lotion and it had lovely little toothbrush holders. But he gave me a cheap one he found at a sidewalk sale which was just a lousy excuse for a toiletry bag and I just resented him for it. And he gave me a car cover because he had one and his main priority aside from measuring every inch and every detail of his daily runs was keeping his car clean at all times. I hated this thing he paid $500.00 for because it took forever to unfold and secure onto my car which didn't mind being dirty. I didn't mind either and I always had better things to do than wrestle a car cover over my car at 6PM when I got home from work and was ravenously hungry and annoyed with pretty much everything including Lurch.
I had passive agressive responses to these gifts that Lurch so proudly gave me. He called every night at exactly 8:00PM and his first question was, "Have you learned how to use your Garmin yet?" And I took a fiendish sort of delight in replying, "No...I couldn't carve out the four and a half hours it would take to learn how to use it today and I've used up all my vacation time. Maybe in a couple of years when I'm done with life as I now know it, I will take it out of the box and read the manual which requires a degree in computer science."
Besides, I was not sure I liked him enough to accept a gift worth over $300.00 especially if I wasn't planning on sleeping with him, and spent a lot of time dreaming up reasons why I could not sleep with him. In fact, that is where most of my vacation time was spent, and I came up with brilliant reasons for why I could not have sex with him. But I digress...
When he asked if I was using the car cover, I told him my car preferred a heavy coating of grit and mud since she was a tough girl and not a sissy who was afraid of a little dirt.
So anyway, I finally took the ForeRunner out of the box after about two months as I said. It was so complicated to understand that I cried and had a tantrum right in front of an elementary school trying to use it for the first time. I had only about 40 minutes to go for a run and I spent about 32 minutes trying to pull up all the right menus using the watch's bezel. I think I dropped to the sidewalk in tears and cast a spell upon Lurch in that moment.
When the ForeRunner did work, it often gave me information I did not want. If I ran for two and half hours on hilly terrain, I wanted it to tell me I burned 6,000 calories because it sure felt like I burned enough to justify three martinis and half a chocolate cake. Instead, it would tell me I only ran ten miles and burned 600 calories. Again, on the sidewalk on my back sobbing and cursing Lurch for giving me this horrid device.
On long bike rides, it would go blank in the midst of what was intended to be an 80 mile ride. I was then left to my imagination which is not particularly concerned with being precise; it prefers to embellish based upon perceived effort. The ForeRunner was supposed to measure distance and time, but would decide it did not want to measure these elements on a particular day and would decide instead to beep every time I turned left or right and would tell me how far away I was from San Bernardino. In century rides, it would quit for no apparent reason, or freeze which made me furious. When I couldn't have the most essential data, I became very anxious and realized in these moments that it was all Lurch's fault that I was becoming like him.
I decided to call Garmin and lobby hard for a replacement or a simpler device which would not require an advanced degree in computer science. It turns out that the wait time was at least 45 minutes for customer service so I emailed instead. A representative named Aaron wrote me a two page email describing what he thought the problem was and how I could troubleshoot by plugging in the USB wireless transmitter and then making sure the watch was set to ANT+ settings. And then there was a long list of things I had to do to update the software and then go through the troubleshooting procedure. I became fatigued and felt my bloodsugar drop to dangerous levels when I read Aaron's list of procedures, so I emailed him and told him I would prefer to pay the $79.95 to have Garmin do all this stuff. He was resistant to this idea and encouraged me to take a week off from work to learn these procedures for updating the software and testing the device using my heartrate monitor and engaging in activities I would normally use the watch for. This would have required a prescription for a benzodiazapene and additional medical insurance in case a had a stroke while cursing my way through this procedure so I emailed him again begging him for the address to the repair department. He emailed back and told me this was a complicated procedure because of the distance between the repair department and the financial department. The repair department is apparently in Kansas and the financial department is in Norway, and the two don't communicate other than by steamship. So my check for the repair would have to be sent to Norway via Iceland and when received, they would send an albatross to Kansas with verification that my check had been processed. Then the Kansas repair team would immediately fly into action to repair the device and would ship it back to me via Volkswagen to California since devices shipped by air tend to mess with the settings. I also told Aaron that the watchband had broken and would need a new pin. He informed me that this would be a simple matter of sending away for a new pin to Thailand for an addition $19.95 shipping not included. I should receive my device back by Christmas of 2012 at which point, I would need to send it back to Kansas to update the software again.
Lurch spends his life doing stuff like this which is why I grew more and more intolerant of him. It was simply a match made in Hell, that's all. His job, for which is highly overpaid, is to measure race courses and order Porta-Potties and he has it down to a science. He never tires of running his same route day in and day out with his Garmin measuring each and every step and he delights in knowing that he shaved off .00045 seconds off his time from last Wednesday.
I left Lurch and took the ForeRunner with me, but I wish I hadn't. I returned the toiletry bag and the car cover though.
Lurch likes to measure everything, a pastime that makes him delightfully happy and which I hate with a screaming passion. The ForeRunner 405 he gave me with such high expectation that I would love it, was like wearing Big Ben on my wrist. It was supposedly genious enough to tell me how far, how fast, where, when, what and how I was doing every single second of whatever physical activity I was engaged in. I didn't even take it out of the box for two months because I knew I would hate it. I just want a watch with maybe two buttons at most. A start/stop button and a button to reset it is plenty for me to manage.
Lurch also gave me a hanging toiletry bag because he had one made my the Swiss Army people and I coveted it because the bottles all stood up straight inside of it and you could tell which was the shampoo and which was your lotion and it had lovely little toothbrush holders. But he gave me a cheap one he found at a sidewalk sale which was just a lousy excuse for a toiletry bag and I just resented him for it. And he gave me a car cover because he had one and his main priority aside from measuring every inch and every detail of his daily runs was keeping his car clean at all times. I hated this thing he paid $500.00 for because it took forever to unfold and secure onto my car which didn't mind being dirty. I didn't mind either and I always had better things to do than wrestle a car cover over my car at 6PM when I got home from work and was ravenously hungry and annoyed with pretty much everything including Lurch.
I had passive agressive responses to these gifts that Lurch so proudly gave me. He called every night at exactly 8:00PM and his first question was, "Have you learned how to use your Garmin yet?" And I took a fiendish sort of delight in replying, "No...I couldn't carve out the four and a half hours it would take to learn how to use it today and I've used up all my vacation time. Maybe in a couple of years when I'm done with life as I now know it, I will take it out of the box and read the manual which requires a degree in computer science."
Besides, I was not sure I liked him enough to accept a gift worth over $300.00 especially if I wasn't planning on sleeping with him, and spent a lot of time dreaming up reasons why I could not sleep with him. In fact, that is where most of my vacation time was spent, and I came up with brilliant reasons for why I could not have sex with him. But I digress...
When he asked if I was using the car cover, I told him my car preferred a heavy coating of grit and mud since she was a tough girl and not a sissy who was afraid of a little dirt.
So anyway, I finally took the ForeRunner out of the box after about two months as I said. It was so complicated to understand that I cried and had a tantrum right in front of an elementary school trying to use it for the first time. I had only about 40 minutes to go for a run and I spent about 32 minutes trying to pull up all the right menus using the watch's bezel. I think I dropped to the sidewalk in tears and cast a spell upon Lurch in that moment.
When the ForeRunner did work, it often gave me information I did not want. If I ran for two and half hours on hilly terrain, I wanted it to tell me I burned 6,000 calories because it sure felt like I burned enough to justify three martinis and half a chocolate cake. Instead, it would tell me I only ran ten miles and burned 600 calories. Again, on the sidewalk on my back sobbing and cursing Lurch for giving me this horrid device.
On long bike rides, it would go blank in the midst of what was intended to be an 80 mile ride. I was then left to my imagination which is not particularly concerned with being precise; it prefers to embellish based upon perceived effort. The ForeRunner was supposed to measure distance and time, but would decide it did not want to measure these elements on a particular day and would decide instead to beep every time I turned left or right and would tell me how far away I was from San Bernardino. In century rides, it would quit for no apparent reason, or freeze which made me furious. When I couldn't have the most essential data, I became very anxious and realized in these moments that it was all Lurch's fault that I was becoming like him.
I decided to call Garmin and lobby hard for a replacement or a simpler device which would not require an advanced degree in computer science. It turns out that the wait time was at least 45 minutes for customer service so I emailed instead. A representative named Aaron wrote me a two page email describing what he thought the problem was and how I could troubleshoot by plugging in the USB wireless transmitter and then making sure the watch was set to ANT+ settings. And then there was a long list of things I had to do to update the software and then go through the troubleshooting procedure. I became fatigued and felt my bloodsugar drop to dangerous levels when I read Aaron's list of procedures, so I emailed him and told him I would prefer to pay the $79.95 to have Garmin do all this stuff. He was resistant to this idea and encouraged me to take a week off from work to learn these procedures for updating the software and testing the device using my heartrate monitor and engaging in activities I would normally use the watch for. This would have required a prescription for a benzodiazapene and additional medical insurance in case a had a stroke while cursing my way through this procedure so I emailed him again begging him for the address to the repair department. He emailed back and told me this was a complicated procedure because of the distance between the repair department and the financial department. The repair department is apparently in Kansas and the financial department is in Norway, and the two don't communicate other than by steamship. So my check for the repair would have to be sent to Norway via Iceland and when received, they would send an albatross to Kansas with verification that my check had been processed. Then the Kansas repair team would immediately fly into action to repair the device and would ship it back to me via Volkswagen to California since devices shipped by air tend to mess with the settings. I also told Aaron that the watchband had broken and would need a new pin. He informed me that this would be a simple matter of sending away for a new pin to Thailand for an addition $19.95 shipping not included. I should receive my device back by Christmas of 2012 at which point, I would need to send it back to Kansas to update the software again.
Lurch spends his life doing stuff like this which is why I grew more and more intolerant of him. It was simply a match made in Hell, that's all. His job, for which is highly overpaid, is to measure race courses and order Porta-Potties and he has it down to a science. He never tires of running his same route day in and day out with his Garmin measuring each and every step and he delights in knowing that he shaved off .00045 seconds off his time from last Wednesday.
I left Lurch and took the ForeRunner with me, but I wish I hadn't. I returned the toiletry bag and the car cover though.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
What Love Isn't
Love is not closed
When the arms fold in and the shoulders enclose the heart like wings protecting a wet bird against a bitter wind,
Love will fly itself above the clouds where it hovers like a hummingbird near the sun,
parting the clouds for you if only you will just look up and offer your heart to its warmth
Love isn't here
or there...
It isn't sitting in a cage waiting to be tossed a bone
It doesn't pace the floor waiting for you to come home
It does not rage or scream its disappointment
It weeps softly looking up at you from its place near the sofa
where you left it right next to your suitcase full of fear.
It does not care whether you missed a spot or colored outside the lines
It only notices the colors
Love pours itself into every empty space
even the ones you thought you hid so well
It does not worry that you're leaving and may never return
And it does not disappear without a trace
It goes with you and dances all around you
lapping at your feet and running on ahead a bit so you'll know the way
It stays right beside you even when you're too busy to notice
When the arms fold in and the shoulders enclose the heart like wings protecting a wet bird against a bitter wind,
Love will fly itself above the clouds where it hovers like a hummingbird near the sun,
parting the clouds for you if only you will just look up and offer your heart to its warmth
Love isn't here
or there...
It isn't sitting in a cage waiting to be tossed a bone
It doesn't pace the floor waiting for you to come home
It does not rage or scream its disappointment
It weeps softly looking up at you from its place near the sofa
where you left it right next to your suitcase full of fear.
It does not care whether you missed a spot or colored outside the lines
It only notices the colors
Love pours itself into every empty space
even the ones you thought you hid so well
It does not worry that you're leaving and may never return
And it does not disappear without a trace
It goes with you and dances all around you
lapping at your feet and running on ahead a bit so you'll know the way
It stays right beside you even when you're too busy to notice
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Enforced Therapy - Works as well as enforced health care
A patient walks into a doctor's office because his boss tells him he has to go and get checked out for blurred vision. It's affecting his work performance. The patient is told by the doctor that he is diabetic and must go on insulin and quit drinking. The patient refuses to do either one. Can the doctor force him to quit drinking and take insulin? Can his boss? The answer is no. The patient still has the right to refuse treatment. Can his boss fire him? Only if his health condition prevents him from doing his job and when he has been offered resources and assistance to correct the problem.
This therapist walks into a home because she has been told to do a mental health evaluation on an 18 year-old boy. His evaluation and subsequent services if indicated, will be paid for by your tax dollars. In this case, the boy is on parole and the court has ordered therapy. I do the evaluation and the young man denies any symptoms indicating mental illness or suicidal or homicidal intent. I ask him if he wants therapy and his reply is: "Fuck no. I want to get me a job and get the fuck outta here. I mean no offense ma'am, but I don't need no fuckin' therapy."
Can I force him? If the court orders him to therapy as part of his parole requirements, I suppose THEY can force him and I become a part of that because I have been assigned the case. Will he engage in therapy and benefit from it? Probably not. I can have a conversation with him about his past and his family of origin, I can dig for problems and probably find some if he chooses to share with me, and I can probably identify some areas where he could use a little soul work, but the bottom line is, if he chooses to shut down, it's game over. He will have a bitter taste in his mouth for a long time about "therapy," and if he ever does need it, he probably won't seek it out because his first experience with it was force fed.
Your tax dollars might as well be flushed down the latrine. And if you total up the amount of money spent on cases just like these, it adds up to millions of dollars.
The solution? The state and county government budgets should be adjusted such that providing mental health services are offered only to those who seek it out. It can be offered to anyone by Child Welfare Departments, Juvenile Justice and other branches of human services, but ultimately, it should be the client's choice to accept it. Same as health care. And that is the ONLY instance in which I think mental health care should have parity with physical health care.
This therapist walks into a home because she has been told to do a mental health evaluation on an 18 year-old boy. His evaluation and subsequent services if indicated, will be paid for by your tax dollars. In this case, the boy is on parole and the court has ordered therapy. I do the evaluation and the young man denies any symptoms indicating mental illness or suicidal or homicidal intent. I ask him if he wants therapy and his reply is: "Fuck no. I want to get me a job and get the fuck outta here. I mean no offense ma'am, but I don't need no fuckin' therapy."
Can I force him? If the court orders him to therapy as part of his parole requirements, I suppose THEY can force him and I become a part of that because I have been assigned the case. Will he engage in therapy and benefit from it? Probably not. I can have a conversation with him about his past and his family of origin, I can dig for problems and probably find some if he chooses to share with me, and I can probably identify some areas where he could use a little soul work, but the bottom line is, if he chooses to shut down, it's game over. He will have a bitter taste in his mouth for a long time about "therapy," and if he ever does need it, he probably won't seek it out because his first experience with it was force fed.
Your tax dollars might as well be flushed down the latrine. And if you total up the amount of money spent on cases just like these, it adds up to millions of dollars.
The solution? The state and county government budgets should be adjusted such that providing mental health services are offered only to those who seek it out. It can be offered to anyone by Child Welfare Departments, Juvenile Justice and other branches of human services, but ultimately, it should be the client's choice to accept it. Same as health care. And that is the ONLY instance in which I think mental health care should have parity with physical health care.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Fired
It must have been the recommendation that she have her daughter re-evaluated by a psychiatrist and that she be unmedicated for a week or two beforehand. As her daughter's caregiver, she receives money each month because her daughter has been given a pretty severe diagnosis. I wasn't seeing symptoms of schizophrenia and it is exceedingly rare for a child to be given that diagnosis. So I consulted a psychiatrist who affirmed that schizophrenia is extremely rare in children and followed his recommendation to ask the mother to have her daughter re-evaluated.
I left the house for the last time on August 3rd after an intense session where I thought perhaps some headway was made (see the blog entry entitled, "Dear Dad....")but I received a call the following week that the mother did not want me at her home again. My first thought was about her daughter, who at the age of twelve, has already thought about suicide. She speaks with the spirit of her father who committed suicide five years ago. She wants more than anything to have a bond with her mother, but has thus far been unsuccessful in her attempts to create one.
And then I thought about how the mental health system, funded with our tax dollars, passively supports this type of abuse. A child can be given a diagnosis for mental illness because a parents reports symptoms and behaviors and the treating psychiatrist can issue a diagnosis without thoroughly questioning all those who are involved in the child's life. This mother knew how to report symptoms and she knew her daughter would not argue on her own behalf; to do so would mean serious trouble at home when nobody was watching. True that this child had behaviors that were troubling in school, e.g., attention seeking from boys and bullying them if they did not give her attention and refusing to do her work,but I wanted to explain these behaviors thusly:
The child lost her father and her mother is so caught up in her own physical problems and her world of being "the sick one," that she sought attention in bizarre ways, entirely understandable given her circumstances. Her mother had not invested time in teaching her to cultivate her self-esteem and to get noticed because of her artistic ability or her amazing imagination. When this child was hungry, she snuck food because she was forbidden to help herself. Though money for food is scarce in this household, the starvation went beyond hunger for food. This child knew her hunger and fed it by taking anything that might feed it including food, her mother's nail polish or the attention of boys in her class.
I have done my part as a therapist to enable a system that makes children the bearers of mental illness when it should be attributed to the family system, the juvenile justice system or the educational system or all of the above. And I am unwilling to continue my participation despite the fact that this job is my main source of income right now.
Over the past three months, I have declined in my health and consumed too much chardonnay to medicate my shame over participating in a system that uses taxpayer dollars to impute mental illness to children because it's convenient or financially beneficial for their parents or the school or the system itself. I crawl through my front door after a day of being a mental health prositute feeling that I have no energy to give to what I really love. I love nothing more than offering what I have to people who want to explore, discover and learn in partnership with me. And I love to write. Writing is my way of connecting with the world. As Gloria Steinem said, "When I am writing, it is the only time I feel I do not need to be doing anything else." For me, writing is a joyful immersion, the way I play, and the way I engage with a larger audience.
The reckoning with the voice of my heart, which asks me in a beseeching and sometimes frantic tone, "What are you DOING?!" has gotten louder the more I do this type of work. And I can only answer that I have once again given in to my fear of not succeeding in what really gives me joy. I read the first three pages of Julia Cameron's book, "The Artist's Way," and realized that I needed to stop doing everything that felt wrong immediately, regardless of whether it seemed not to make financial sense.
When fear threatens to level me, as it seems to do about every other day, I strain to see through this forest of thorns, and it's all I can do to hang on until the thorns give way to the softness of grass and sunlight. I heave myself onto the grass and ask for peace. I wonder if I have lost my mind and the answer is probably yes. I have not lost my heart though.
As I leave this child with the imagination of the world inside of her, I pray she will find some rest in her own ancestry where imagination was treasured, not mis-cast as mental illness. And I pray that in my brief time with her, perhaps there was one sentence or one moment that she can hold onto that planted a seed of belief in her potential.
I left the house for the last time on August 3rd after an intense session where I thought perhaps some headway was made (see the blog entry entitled, "Dear Dad....")but I received a call the following week that the mother did not want me at her home again. My first thought was about her daughter, who at the age of twelve, has already thought about suicide. She speaks with the spirit of her father who committed suicide five years ago. She wants more than anything to have a bond with her mother, but has thus far been unsuccessful in her attempts to create one.
And then I thought about how the mental health system, funded with our tax dollars, passively supports this type of abuse. A child can be given a diagnosis for mental illness because a parents reports symptoms and behaviors and the treating psychiatrist can issue a diagnosis without thoroughly questioning all those who are involved in the child's life. This mother knew how to report symptoms and she knew her daughter would not argue on her own behalf; to do so would mean serious trouble at home when nobody was watching. True that this child had behaviors that were troubling in school, e.g., attention seeking from boys and bullying them if they did not give her attention and refusing to do her work,but I wanted to explain these behaviors thusly:
The child lost her father and her mother is so caught up in her own physical problems and her world of being "the sick one," that she sought attention in bizarre ways, entirely understandable given her circumstances. Her mother had not invested time in teaching her to cultivate her self-esteem and to get noticed because of her artistic ability or her amazing imagination. When this child was hungry, she snuck food because she was forbidden to help herself. Though money for food is scarce in this household, the starvation went beyond hunger for food. This child knew her hunger and fed it by taking anything that might feed it including food, her mother's nail polish or the attention of boys in her class.
I have done my part as a therapist to enable a system that makes children the bearers of mental illness when it should be attributed to the family system, the juvenile justice system or the educational system or all of the above. And I am unwilling to continue my participation despite the fact that this job is my main source of income right now.
Over the past three months, I have declined in my health and consumed too much chardonnay to medicate my shame over participating in a system that uses taxpayer dollars to impute mental illness to children because it's convenient or financially beneficial for their parents or the school or the system itself. I crawl through my front door after a day of being a mental health prositute feeling that I have no energy to give to what I really love. I love nothing more than offering what I have to people who want to explore, discover and learn in partnership with me. And I love to write. Writing is my way of connecting with the world. As Gloria Steinem said, "When I am writing, it is the only time I feel I do not need to be doing anything else." For me, writing is a joyful immersion, the way I play, and the way I engage with a larger audience.
The reckoning with the voice of my heart, which asks me in a beseeching and sometimes frantic tone, "What are you DOING?!" has gotten louder the more I do this type of work. And I can only answer that I have once again given in to my fear of not succeeding in what really gives me joy. I read the first three pages of Julia Cameron's book, "The Artist's Way," and realized that I needed to stop doing everything that felt wrong immediately, regardless of whether it seemed not to make financial sense.
When fear threatens to level me, as it seems to do about every other day, I strain to see through this forest of thorns, and it's all I can do to hang on until the thorns give way to the softness of grass and sunlight. I heave myself onto the grass and ask for peace. I wonder if I have lost my mind and the answer is probably yes. I have not lost my heart though.
As I leave this child with the imagination of the world inside of her, I pray she will find some rest in her own ancestry where imagination was treasured, not mis-cast as mental illness. And I pray that in my brief time with her, perhaps there was one sentence or one moment that she can hold onto that planted a seed of belief in her potential.
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