NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 1 + April PAD Challenge 2020 Day 1: Escape on the Asphalt Sea

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

on an asphalt sea my son and I ride

as long as the weather is on our side

we make a journey to retrieve

items from a place that we must leave

on an asphalt sea

as the earth turned, so did the tide

fortune has not been on my side

I search for reasons to believe

on an asphalt sea

some days I do not mind the ride

other days I wish to escape inside

over the years there have been reasons to grieve

I examine the dreams that my mind may conceive

on an asphalt sea

~cie~

notes

I combined the NaPoWriMo prompt with the April PAD Chapbook Challenge prompt AND the April PAD Challenge Countdown prompt. Go me!

Tan Renga Wednesday on Friday: Last Leaf

Image Source

a last leaf

swirls on the wind towards the east -

first snow falls gently

the falling snow is pleasant

the icy roads are not so

~Chèvrefeuille & cie~

notes

The Hokku stanza was written by Chevrefeuille. The Ageku was created by me. I do like the snow, but I hate driving on icy roads. I've had a couple incidents when doing so which left me with a bit of PTSD. I tend to tense up when I have to drive on icy roads, which makes doing so a bad idea.

I will try to catch up with the poems over the next few days. I was working on a short story for blog.reedsy.com. If you are looking for a short story contest with no entry fee, they have a weekly contest here. Go to the apps section of the page and choose "story prompt."

Also, if you're looking for help with editing or publishing your book, you can look at what Reedsy has to offer here. Using that link will get you $25 credit on any of Reedsy's services.

I believe I may have had another TIA. There always tends to be a cognitive shift when one of these happens. It's hard to explain. It isn't as if I'm having short term memory issues (well, no worse than I ever did). It's simply that the WAY I think changes. At this point, I find myself needing to be a little more measured in my output. I get tired very easily. It's frustrating because although I've never been a Type A personality by any means, I've always been very productive.

I know that I'm vulnerable to vascular problems because of my diabetes. Well, I'm perfectly happy to keep my blood sugars in check, which I can do if I have, you know, ADEQUATE INSULIN! Which my health care provider and Medicaid seem to be conspiring not to provide me. Going without insulin for weeks at a time is, I don't know, a bad thing when you're diabetic. 

The elite devils in charge of things don't care about that, though. They want the poor and the handicapped dead. Of course, then they won't have anyone to do the menial jobs that they revile, but I wouldn't give them too much credit for being smart.

Yeah, I said "handicapped" instead of the more politically correct "disabled." I honestly don't see what the difference is. I can apply both to my own condition, and I don't find either one offensive. Sometimes people become so busy picking nits that they forget to work on the issues that really matter.

Carpe Diem Field of Flowers: Honeysuckle

I can remember

the smell of honeysuckle

New Mexico night

~Cie~

Notes:

I recently completed and am about to submit my manuscript for the Insecure Writers' Support Group anthology contest. The genre is middle-grade historical fantasy/action.

I normally write for adults. I find writing for youth extremely challenging. I ended up opting to write a lightly fictionalized autobiography of myself between childhood and my pre-teen years which centered around my imagination and the fantastical fiction genres which inspired me. In writing about myself I ended up opening a lot of pockets of unresolved grief.

The place I lived between the ages of four and nine was a semi-rural pocket in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where people could have small farms and keep chickens and such. We had a very large yard, a half-acre. Unfortunately, the house was in rather a shoddy condition and cockroaches the size of school buses had a tendency to get inside. The bugs are huge in New Mexico, and I was not keen on that. But I did love the little skinks and horned toads and such. We also had many beautiful plants around such as the honeysuckle vines, and the cicadas would sing us to sleep.

I was a very shy child and did not have many friends. The characters I met in fantasy worlds were my friends, as were my pets and the animals in our yard.

Although I was born in the Western United States and raised in the Southwest for a number of years, my parents were both from New York. When certain relatives would visit, they would ridicule my accent. A New Mexico accent is a bit of an off-Texas drawl. To this day, I bristle whenever anyone askes the seemingly innocent question: "where are you from?" To me, that question is loaded.

Carpe Diem Summer Challenge 2019: Twilight

Image by DarkWorkX from Pixabay

Looking forward to

Finally seeing twilight

From the window of

My new home on the prairie

Will the day finally come?

~Cie~

Notes:

When you invest in a historic property in a way-off-the-beaten-path town, there can be holdups. This place is not move-in ready, and getting it to that state is proving to be a challenge. It's been like pulling teeth for the electrician to get the necessary permits. He's trying his best, but the people who are supposed to be helping him aren't being very helpful. He said that usually permit people are more than happy to take your money.

It's also been like pulling teeth to get the proposal from the plumbing company. Why don't these people want our money? If they don't get the proposal to my email tomorrow, I'm going to tell them that we'll come to the office and sign it. 

With my health issues, these 250-mile round trips are knocking me on my ass. I'm an old night shift worker who has never slept well at night and these contractors like to get cracking at the ass-crack of dawn. 

I may suggest to my son that we consider packing everything from the townhouse into a pod and staying in one of those by-the-week motels in Greeley so we don't have to keep making this drive. It's really taking a toll on me. Of course, we'd have to find one that would allow cats...hell, it's always something.

Anyway, this bit is going to start coming down today, so that's a start.

Carpe Diem Summer Challenge 2019: Shadow

Photographer unknown

I

blue autumn skies

folded into mountains

purple shadow

blue autumn skies

stretching endless before me

skies blue like your eyes

folded into mountains

a felled giant lies sleeping

dreaming of the past

purple shadow

falls over eyes which can't cry

I have seen too much

Jane & Cie

II

such a hot day

my shadow needs to cool down

under the willow

such a hot day

sun beats down unrelenting

upon troubled earth

my shadow needs to cool down

it steals away and leaves me

muscles wracked with pain

under the willow

I find trouble waiting there

in the form of thought

Kyoshi & Cie

Note:

The "sleigh" of the first Troiku was created by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016). The "sleigh" of the second Troiku was created by Kyoshi Takahama (1874 - 1958). I wrangled all the horses.

I have chronic, widespread, low-grade pain from fibromyalgia and am constantly hot and easily fatigued due to my various endocrine problems. The summer is not my friend.

Grover and Clem aren't bothered by this weather, seeing as Grover is a ghost and Clem is a mutant Cactus Man, or maybe a Man Cactus.

Visit the Artist

Visit the Artist

Visit Grover and Clem and follow the Grover Hotel renovations at the Good Stuff from Grover blog!

Cie's Year-End Wrap-Up 2018

Image copyright Conger Design

I love the above image. Back in the late 1990s, I went to school for one semester for graphic design but dropped out. I didn't know it at the time, but I had untreated type 2 bipolar disorder, OCD, and borderline personality disorder, three exciting co-morbid conditions which happen to feed each other in ways that are just, shall we say, really special. I wouldn't be properly diagnosed until 2004.

When I think of how many years were wasted mired in shame and stigma because I had no idea in this Universe what was going on with me, I thought I was just an attention-seeking fuckup, it makes me very angry. Granted, some of the tools available to me now simply didn't exist when I was younger. E-commerce was in its infancy in the 1990s. There were no smartphones. 

Hell, even GPS was still in its infancy. (I still have my TomTom Go.) The job I have today could not have existed in the 1990s. Back when dinosaurs and Ronald Reagan roamed the Earth in 1984, I delivered pizzas. Even the TomTom Go was as yet unheard of. How the hell my dyslexic ass didn't get lost more often, I'll never know. When I think of trying to do my job without Waze, it gives me that feeling of waking up with a start after a terrible dream and praising whatever powers there might be that the dream isn't real.

So, I didn't initially come here to talk to you about type 2 bipolar disorder, but now that I've thought about it, I want to talk about it. This is how people tend to think of bipolar disorder, and it's a reasonably accurate depiction of type 1 bipolar disorder.

Image Source

The post that the image comes from is worth reading.

The late Patty Duke had type 1 bipolar disorder. She is a personal heroine of mine. Her book, Call Me Anna, helped me understand better the things that I had gone through and to help me forgive myself for some of the truly awful decisions I made while hypomanic. 

Being diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder helped me understand why I had seen some features of bipolar disorder in myself but was convinced that I didn't have it because I'd never experienced a full mania. I tended to go from crushingly depressed to positive and overly functional. I never flew off to Vegas and got married to a guy I barely knew or anything of that nature, although I did convince myself several times that the Universe wanted me to be with guys who raised red flags like nobody's business and who, unsurprisingly, turned out to be horrible and abusive.

When I was hypomanic, I would take on second jobs and be the world's greatest employee that everyone loved until everything came crashing down and everyone ended up thinking I was the world's biggest flake and fuckup. I would be mired in depression which felt like being at the bottom of a dark pit that there was no way out of. 

When I would finally, miraculously, find myself pulled out of that pit, I would admonish myself that from now on I would be positive and productive and would never go back THERE again. When I inevitably went back there again, I would shame and berate myself for being a worthless fuckup.

Click to enlarge. 

This is a fairly standard bipolar disorder screening questionnaire. It tends to miss people with type 2 bipolar disorder.

Was there ever a period of time when I wasn't myself? No. I was always myself, although I often didn't like it very much. 

The late Peter Steele of Type O Negative, who had type 1 bipolar disorder, describes reflecting on occasions following a manic episode where he felt that there was something he could have learned from the time in question if only he could remember it. I never experienced anything like that.

I've never presented as talking extremely fast or seeming particularly hyper. I've never slept well anyway, so the "sleeping less than usual" criteria didn't send up any red flags. The late Julia Lennon described having periods where she wouldn't sleep for a week at a time, and doctors didn't know what was wrong with her. She was institutionalized on several occasions.

I did get involved in ill-advised relationships with abusive guys, but I never flew off to Vegas to do so. I took on multiple jobs and then crashed, often losing all of my jobs. When I was good, I was very very good, and when I was bad I was nonfunctional. 

I speak openly about my mental health struggles because I would be very happy if no-one else ever had to fight the way I've had to fight. I've been told that I should keep my psych problems hidden because people would avoid me if they knew I was one of THEM. I was told I would never find a job if people knew I'd been to a therapist. 

I was also told that I was "just being dramatic," that I needed to "stop seeking attention," that I was "just being lazy," and that I brought all my problems on myself with my "negative thinking." I can tell you that none of these criticisms did a damn thing to help me improve my life or to do anything except hide my problems and hate myself because I was never able to develop any decent coping skills for dealing with them until I was in my middle years. At this point, I'm still cleaning up the messes made by attempting to hide my problems, such as a storage unit full of stuff and a mountain of debt.

We've come a long way when it comes to mental illness in Western society, but we haven't come far enough. There is still a tendency to see people with mental issues as less intelligent or less capable or as loose cannons just waiting to explode and harm others. The truth is, people who live with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than to perpetrate violence.

There is a tendency to see jobs such as mine as "lesser" and to believe that the working poor, unemployed, and homeless "deserve" to not have basic amenities or a living wage. This needs to end. Everybody deserves the basic amenities, whether or not they are capable of working a "normal" job or at all.

I heard the term "lazy" so many times that I ended up with a terrible complex about taking breaks or doing things that are purely enjoyable and will never turn a profit. I once read a statement from a counselor which said that the term "lazy" should be replaced with "demotivated," because asking a person why they are so lazy shuts down the conversation and thus any chance of helping the person, whereas asking them why they are feeling demotivated leaves the conversation open and may help create a plan for helping them.

Exploitative shows like "Hoarders" should not exist. Like, at all. Capitalizing on people's illness for entertainment is twisted and barbaric. Hoarding is a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is the symptom of malfunction in a certain area of the brain. It is not "laziness." Dealing with hoarding tendencies is exhausting, time-consuming, and life-destroying. People with hoarding tendencies need help from a compassionate professional, not a bunch of lookie-loos seeking schadenfreude at another's expense.

My son is helping me deal with the lifetime of hoarding without help contained in my storage units and the closets and spare rooms of the mobile home that I hope to have in a condition where I can think about selling it by the end of next year. With his help, the storage unit, which is about the size of a one-car garage, is 1/3 of the way clear at this point, and we are hoping to have it entirely clear by June of 2019. 

My late father attempted to "help with cleaning," but his help really only traumatized me and made me feel more ashamed, which didn't lead to me keeping up with the process. My son is understanding when I tell him that I can't deal with a certain item at the moment and we'll need to put it aside. We move on to the next thing. He also suggests creating scrapbooks and art from my vast collection of images from magazines, unlike my father, who told me that "anything that lands on the floor needs to be thrown in the garbage."

My father had piles of papers and magazines all over his house. He had OCD with hoarding tendencies too, but he came from an era when one locked their mental health issues in an attic and never spoke of them. This helped nothing, which is why I have come out of the attic and am speaking openly about my struggles.

For years I refused to make New Year's resolutions because I had learned to equate them with "new you in 52" crap, which really benefits no-one but the billion-dollar diet industry. I refuse to have or promote weight loss as a "health goal." 

I spent 33 years in yo-yo dieting hell trying to hate myself thin. There is no way I'm going to endorse that behavior. I'm going batshit at this point with all the blogs in my sidebar promoting "get paid to lose weight" garbage. You'll never see me promoting these things because dieting inevitably fails for everyone but statistical unicorns.

Diets don't work. Health at Every Size works. If you want to start exercising, increase the amount you're exercising, or eat fewer processed foods, great, but do it for overall health, not for weight loss.

We'll all be a "new you in 52" anyway. We'll have new experiences behind us, and many of our cells will have been replaced by new ones. Don't buy into the "new you in 52" crap. It only leads to frustration. Instead, pursue things that will lead to a more authentic you. 

Your authentic you has nothing to do with a number on the scale or even the amount of money in your bank account. It is the you who is true to themselves, which has nothing to do with looks or status at all.

Best wishes in the coming year,

Cie

OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 5: Devastation (NSFW)

Image copyright Comfreak on Pixabay

I just can't get poetic with today's prompt. I may end up attempting to tie things up by making it into a Haibun, but I make no promises there either. This is one of those that's going to be real, raw, and only lightly edited, so buckle up, Bitches, it's going to be a bumpy ride. 

By the way, if you have issues with profanity, with subject matter that is on the opposite end of the spectrum from sweetness and light, with mental illness, the black dog, and suicide ideation, you'll probably want to give this post a miss. 

Also, please remember these guidelines:

If I may add a couple:

"Have you tried meds?"

I will be 54 years old in February and have lifelong mental health issues. What do you think? The Wonder Drugs don't work the way they're advertised, they make things worse by a long shot. So, please, don't patronize me with that crap.

"Have you tried church?"

Some of the nicest people I've met have been religious.

Conversely, some of the most truly horrible and destructive people I've met have been religious.

If religion helps you, that's great. I don't like organized religion. It did me a lot more harm than good. 

But neither of those things are what I came here to talk about.

I came here to talk about the day that the nuke dropped on my life.

Oh, hey, here's a Haiga I made last year. So, there's the poetry part of this assignment. This Haiga has little nuclear clouds in the background.

I'm a lifelong proponent of nuclear disarmament. I grew up during the cold war. When I was a child, I feared that I would die in a nuclear exchange. As a teenager, I figured I might as well party as hard as possible because I didn't know if I had a future. As an adult, I still have nuke dreams, but they're allegorical, just like the nuke that dropped on my life closing in on two years ago now.

I've mentioned before that I was fired from my job as a nurse back in March of 2017. I was really sick at the time I got fired, with both a chronic illness that had become significantly worse and an acute illness that made my lungs and sinuses feel like they were full of Slime.

Yeah, that stuff. When I was twelve, my brother and I got the kind with worms. It came in a little plastic trash can. We loved it. 

I miss the fun I had with my brother when we were kids. He's too overworked and miserable and also in constant pain to have much fun now. It breaks my heart.

Anyway, the days playing with Slime and believing that Really Cool Stuff was going to happen were long in the past. I was working when I knew I shouldn't be working. Like I said, I was really, really sick. 

I was working as a home care nurse. I had this really pushy coordinator who, when I mentioned that I was sick, said that the family really needed me to be there and it would be okay because I had contracted the illness from that patient, so it's not like he could catch it from me. Besides, this coordinator kept talking about how they were going to replace the nurse who had the four-night week with me (I was working three twelve-hour night shifts with this family and one twelve-hour night shift with another family) because that nurse had lupus and often had to miss work because of it. Great! Not like I can mention that my diabetes had gotten worse and was causing me problems when presented with that, right?

Yeah, I could have, but it has been a lifelong struggle for me to assert myself. I was afraid I'd lose my position. So I buckled down and went in. I had been dozing off during the shift during the past couple of weeks, but I always woke up. Still, it was worrying me, but I didn't feel like there was anyone I could tell.

On this particular night, I didn't just doze. I fell into a dark, dead, dreamless sleep. I'm fairly certain that I had a small stroke because there were certain changes to my cognition following that incident. Judging by the clock, I was out for about twenty minutes. I woke to the patient's father sitting at the end of the bed, glowering at me.

I apologized profusely, gathered my belongings, and left. I knew that I would be fired, which I was.

I felt horrible about the incident and about myself. I very seriously considered suicide. I've dealt with suicide ideation my entire life, but at this point, I was wondering if there was any reason for me to go on living. I was the worst of fuckups. Was I redeemable in any way? I hardly thought so.

At first, the financial hit wasn't as bad as it could have been. I was working part-time for another agency, picking up shifts once every couple of weeks with another patient. I was able to get full-time hours with them although the hourly salary was less. But then, that patient's condition worsened, he was hospitalized and ended up requiring more extensive care than we could provide. The agency never found me another case.

I drifted for a while, delivering food for Uber Eats and eventually trying to drive for Lyft and Uber. This lasted about two weeks, and some dumb stoner kid backed into the rental car I was driving. The rental company did not prorate me for the lost days, and Lyft took close to a month to reinstate me, even though the accident was not my fault. I said, "fuck it." I really didn't like driving passengers anyway.

I tried going back to work in long-term care, but the activity intolerance caused by my diabetes combined with the slight cognitive impairment experienced after the night which led to my being fired from the home care agency made this impossible. You never stop when you are working in a long-term care institution. There is no time to rest or even eat. My blood sugar tanked. Plus, as I discovered, I was no longer the whiz with passing meds that I had been when I did my nursing internship in 2011. 

I understood each of the components of passing meds. This patient needs this med in this dose at this time. I understood what each of the meds did. But for the life of me, I could not prioritize which patient to give medication to first. I called my son halfway through the shift and told him I didn't think I could do the job. I emailed my letter of resignation to the staff director the next morning.

I took a job with an all-night grocery delivery service and ended up with a permanent nerve injury to my left arm. I spent half of November in terrible pain, unable to sit up for more than about 45 minutes at a time before I had to lie on the arm to try and numb the pain. I again considered suicide, this time not out of self-loathing but because the pain was nearly unbearable. I had to wait for two weeks for Medicaid to kick in before I could start physical therapy. I hadn't been able to afford insurance before that and was making too much with the delivery service to have Medicaid. It is one fucked-up system we have going, and there is nothing anyone could say to make me believe otherwise. It is straight-up fuckery, plain and simple.

At this point, the arm pretty much feels like a lump of clay. Sometimes a tingly lump of clay. But I'll take that over a hideous pain that induces suicidal feelings. Before anyone gives a person desperate for pain relief grief, think of the worst pain you have ever felt in your life. Now, ponder on the idea that you could not stop that pain. Bitch, you aren't going to just grin and bear it. You're going to do whatever the hell you have to do. I can't stand people who get sanctimonious about folks who become addicted to pain medications. Nobody wants to be in pain. End of story.

After a couple of weeks of physical therapy, I was able to drive again and ended up at my current job: delivering food. This is the sort of job that people have been taught to look down their nose at. To them I say, well, Motherfucker, I have your fucking food here, which you did not have to cook or pick up. You're better than me just because you work in an office? I say no. This kind of shit "master and servant" attitude does no-one any good. Rich people aren't better than poor people. In fact, to para-quote Bob Marley, some of them are so poor that all they have is money. Some of them are terrible people, and I would find it torturous to be in their presence for one minute.

Case in point, and ain't it the truth.

I went through more than a year of thinking "if I'm not able to be a nurse anymore, what value do I have?" I'm no longer in a "helper" profession. I'm no longer able to do the kind of work that said "helper" profession requires. I not only have a psychological disability or three, but I am also now physically disabled as well.

This society behaves as if people with disabilities deserve to live in poverty. I never believed that, but I kept feeling as if I'd done "something to deserve this."

I can't remember exactly when the breakthrough happened, but one day I got really pissed off and realized that no, I damn well did not do anything to deserve to be pushed into poverty. I lose Medicaid if I make a dime more than $1100 a month, but who the fuck can live on $1100 a month? I don't qualify for SNAP because I have a 401K from the job I held for close to 11 years and I don't want to take an $18,000 hit by liquidating it. I want that whole fucker to go to my son when I go tits up. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

As for being a nurse, the truth is, I never wanted to go into that profession. I was encouraged to go into it by my family because my mother had been a nurse. While I had some nice moments with the kids, and while I had some nice moments with my co-workers and the residents at the retirement community when I was working there, I was done. I was burned out. I really didn't want to do it anymore, and I felt extremely guilty about that. What kind of person doesn't want to help other people?

It isn't that I don't want to help other people, but I think it's long past time that I acknowledged that I need help too, that I deserve to have help, that I'm not garbage because I'm disabled. No disabled person is garbage. We need to stop this shit attitude in our society, and we need to stop it yesterday. 

My disability doesn't really make me angry. Sometimes I wish I could still run and jump like I could when I was a kid. But I like to walk, and I hope I'll be able to walk for the rest of my life. Maybe the time will come when I need a scooter or power chair. If I do, I won't be bitter. Bodies age, shit happens. It is what it is. However, I have to be brutally honest. If I deteriorate to the point where I need to spend the rest of my life in a long-term care center, or if I'm diagnosed with dementia, that's the time I pull the plug. Those are two situations that I find absolutely intolerable. I won't do it to myself, and I won't do it to my son.

By the way, inasmuch as we need to acknowledge that depression is a very real illness, as real as any physical malady, we also need to acknowledge that sometimes depression isn't a brain-based issue. Our world is very fucked right now, and anyone who looks around and doesn't see terrible problems that should have been fixed a long time ago is shutting their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears, and yelling "lalala, can't hear you." 

It isn't going to get better by ignoring it, People.

It's really not.

And that's all I have to say about that.

XOXO, 

Cie

NaHaiWriMo 2018 #8: Monkeying Around + The Fight Against Perfectionism

Notes:

Click the image to enlarge.

"So then I artistically blurred my photo to give a sense of moving back through time."

Nah. I moved my hand while the photo was being taken.

"But why would you want to use a photo like that? Any photographer worth their salt would delete it forthwith!"

I don't really consider myself a photographer. I'm a person who takes pictures because I enjoy it. 

This blurry photo isn't without its merits. It inspired me to create this Haiga of questionable quality.

Nobody is ever going to consider this to be a high-fallutin' work of art to rival the classics. But it is fun, and it illustrates the idea that you can make your mistakes work for you.

I have been battling perfectionism all my life. Embracing my mistakes is helpful for me. Perfectionism is an extremely destructive quality. I would like to share the ways in which it has harmed me from various perspectives.
In this post, I would like to share how physical perfectionism has caused untold harm to me and many others. Some of what I share involves my own perfectionism, and some of it involves the unrealistic standards which society imposes upon people.

On a physical level, we live in a society which demands that Number Twelve Looks Just Like You. We are supposed to aspire to a certain standard of beauty and fitness, and, if we fail to achieve such, we are deemed failures not worthy of even basic decency in the way we are treated by others.
However, rather than inspiring everyone to become super duper supermen and women, this attitude has a tendency to backfire. You end up with people who do not trust doctors because doctors continually shame them for their physical appearance or failure to be compliant with regimens that it may be impossible or intolerable for them.
So, instead of engaging in a program of regular visits to the doctor for preventative care and maintenance of chronic health issues, people avoid going to the doctor until they experience a critical problem. This helps no-one.
When my current doctor addressed my slightly elevated triglycerides (a common issue for diabetics) with "have you been indulging in treats?" I snapped. I said "I make twelve thousand dollars a year and generally eat only one or two meals a day. I eat what I can afford to purchase. I do not 'indulge.'"
In spite of the fact that this doctor is by far the most effective doctor that I have ever seen, I am considering going back to the guy who was burned out and had no fucks to give, because my current doctor has given me ample reason to mistrust her. The 'indulging in treats' bit is mere sprinkles on the body-shaming cake.
This doctor presented herself as offering a 'safe space' for larger people, and, during my first visit, appeared to live up to her promise. Thereafter, she suggested weight loss surgery and blamed my abnormal endometrial thickening on "obesity."
If you want your larger patients to believe for a second that you have any respect for them, you need to ditch the "o" word. "Obesity" is "other." "Obesity" is a pariah. "Obesity" is shit. "Obesity" is always said with a sanctimonious sneer. If you use that word, I do not trust you.
Abnormal endometrial thickening is correlated with a larger body type, but correlation is not causation. It is also correlated with being over fifty (guess I need to step into an age-regression machine), white (guess I'd better start tanning), and diabetic.
A larger body type is also correlated with type 2 diabetes. Again, correlation is not causation. I am inclined to think that abnormal pancreatic function is a strong contributing factor in both the tendency to gain weight and the endometrial hyperplasia. There may be a third factor which causes all of my endocrine issues. A heavy body type is correlated with endocrine issues, but it did not cause these issues. In fact, the reverse is true. None of my endocrine system works properly. It would be highly unlikely for me to have a thin body unless I were to become deathly ill, regardless of how little I eat or how much I exercise.
So, having a bench in your waiting room rather than just chairs with arms does not constitute offering a "safe space" for people of all sizes. I don't trust you, and that makes for an ineffective doctor/patient relationship, regardless of your ability to diagnose and possibly treat health problems.
People are not inclined to take care of things they hate, and that includes their bodies. While cleaning out my storage unit, I found numerous artifacts from the many years I spent trying to hate myself thin. Looking over the awful things I wrote about myself, thinking about all the money I spent playing a game that almost nobody wins, realizing that I caused wear and tear to my body equivalent to the harm done to it by the many years I spent working long hours at physically punishing jobs, thinking back on the times when I was sometimes spending five hours at the gym when I should have been spending that time with my son, I became extremely depressed.
To top it all off, none of this shit brought me to the goal of Magical Thinness, which would have won me the Handsome Prince with the Exactly Correct Body Fat Percentage, a billion dollars for every pound I lost during my incredibly successful "weight loss journey," fame and adoration of the masses, or anything but a far thinner wallet and a soul filled with self-loathing.
Thinspo is crap. Fitspo is crap. Dieting is crap. It's all harmful. None of it will bring you happiness, and it won't even bring you health. It will bring you self-loathing and turn you into an awful person that nobody likes.

Dieting is not about health. It is about perfectionism. The pressure to be perfect is purely for profit. Stop paying into a system that doesn't give a damn about you and thrives on your failure.

"In the long term, dieting is a spectacular waste of time for everyone except statistical unicorns." --Louise Adams

~Cie~

The Cheese Grates It: Proselytizing Sucks

A couple of days ago, my doorbell rang. I was hoping it might be this alligator, but it was the Jehovah's Witnesses.

One of the women had been here a couple of months ago. She'd given me a pamphlet and said it answered questions such as "what does God think of tattoos?"

As a person with tattoos, I found this a bit offensive and said as much. 

The woman was embarrassed by her gaffe. She seemed well-intentioned although misguided, so I kindly but firmly informed her that I am a tattooed agnostic and do not apologize for being one. 

On this occasion, I said that I had no interest in attending church, as I figured that was what they were going to postulate.

Instead, they wanted to tell me how the Bible has answers to my most burning questions. The lady who had been here before then recalled my saying I was an agnostic. I said that I still am, that I think there is a higher power but I do not believe that humanity has the capacity to understand it. I said that my opinion was unlikely to change, and, because I was raised to be polite, thanked them for their time.

Next time the doorbell rings, I certainly hope it's either Amazon delivering a package or an alligator. Or maybe this raven. I could certainly get behind its cause.

Proselytizing is outmoded in the Information Age. It was always annoying. 

If there is truth in a belief system, it doesn't need to be shoved down people's throats. They'll either come around to it or they won't. Scare tactics and browbeating are no way to create adherents.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

NaHaiWriMo 2018 #1 and Shadow Shot Sunday

Notes:

I loathe this laptop with the fiery passion of a thousand supernovas. I will be glad to have my desktop back in action this week.

Click the above photos to enlarge them.

It appears that Rick from 19 Planets (19planets.wordpress.com) is not doing Haiga prompts this year. It has become a tradition for me to do Haiga in September so I will continue that tradition. The Haiga may occasionally be mixed with other prompts. 

If I miss a day, I will try to double up on another day, but I'm not going to be a strict disciplinarian with this. I'm not in school and this isn't homework. It's supposed to be enjoyable. Life is far and away stressful enough without my adding to the stress by beating up on myself for not having my Haiga done on a strict schedule.

My Haiga this month will probably become Haibun more often than not, as this one has done. 

I will be using more of my own photos than I have in the past. The above photo, with and without the Haiga, is mine. You are welcome to use and share it, but please credit me back. You can link to this blog, but at least provide a copyright credit to Cara Hartley or The Real Cie. You are welcome to alter the original photo, i.e., to make your own Haiga or use for a photo prompt, but, again, credit me for the original photo. I'm pretty easygoing about the use of my work as long as I'm credited for it.

In other news, my financial situation is still awful, and my son suggested that I move in with him. I would never have asked him to let me do this, and I was surprised and grateful for the offer. He has grown up a lot, and it shows in the fact that he saw the way I was struggling and offered this solution. I think it shows that I have made a few positive changes as well.

One change that has come in the past year is my reaction to acknowledgment (or lack thereof) of my work. In the past, it has been very upsetting to me that I do not generally receive comments on my creations. This has tended to have a negative effect on my work. At this point, I seem to have taken enough Fukitol that I really don't give any fucks whether people comment on my work or not. 

I also don't care if people are offended by my liberal use of profanity. I'm assuming we're all adults here. I cannot possibly be the first person you've encountered who has a tendency to drop f-bombs. I used to post warnings all over the place and apologize any time that I typed a post full of swears. Fuck that shit. If you have a problem with profanity, this is your notice that I'm not someone whose work you want to read. Full stop.

I will not apologize for being politically liberal, being horrified by the reptilian aliens who have taken over the United States Government (I don't actually think they're reptilian aliens, this is an example of hyperbole), my tendency to be hyperbolic, my being agnostic with a tendency to metaphysical beliefs, my tattoos, my mental health issues, my physical issues, the size of my body, my dead libido, or my outrage at the state of the world.

I will not apologize for the fact that in spite of the financial upheaval my physical decline has wrought, I am greatly relieved to never have to work in healthcare again. Although there could be a sense of accomplishment, I realize that I was extremely stressed out and more often than not miserable doing this kind of work. The physically and emotionally difficult jobs I worked in the past took a toll on my body, and I'm not sorry to be done with them.

I will not apologize for working a low-paid job as a delivery driver for a restaurant. I should not have to apologize for that.

I will not apologize for needing to receive Medicaid. I will say that it's bullshit that I should have to make sure that I don't earn over $1100 a month because if I earn one cent more than that, I lose Medicaid. Everybody in the U.S. should have Medicaid. Full fucking stop, no fucking apologies.

I will not apologize for writing gloomy poetry.

I will not apologize for writing Haiku.

I will not apologize for being an outlier. I used to beat myself up for not being able to belong to any group, including so-called "writer support groups." These groups tend to only be supportive if you are a very select type of person. I am not a very select type of person. Whether accidentally or on purpose, the Universe broke the mold after it made me. I think the Deities probably said, "holy shit, we can't have another of those running around!"

So, here we are, my first Haibun of 2018. I think. I may have done another somewhere along the way, but, as far as I know, this is the first one.

I may make a virtual chapbook of this year's NaHaiWriMo. (I'm pretty sure I stole that term from the aforementioned Rick.) All proceeds will go to helping me pay my plethora of back bills. Stay tuned for more!

~Cie~

They Were Flowers Once

Copyright August 18, 2018, by The Real Cie

Bit of a cheat--this tree flowered in the spring, and now the flowers have become crab apples. I'm not ambitious enough to try canning them or any such thing. Perhaps the fine crow which was scavenging trash from the median will enjoy some of them.

I'm not always awake in the early morning, but I don't sleep well. I had been taking a low dose CBD/THC edible to help with insomnia and leg cramps, but haven't been able to afford it in a while, so I just deal with the insomnia and hope for no leg cramps. I don't like the way prescription sleep medications make me feel. I find that a lot of the time the "cure" is worse than the problem itself. I would never set foot in a doctor's office if I didn't have this wreck of an endocrine system to deal with.

Honestly, I'm glad to see the first signs of fall. I'm hot all the time anyway, which makes summer complete misery for me. Sorry to all you folks who like summer. It's my turn!

~Cie~

Prompt:

Cee's Flower of the Day

Feel free to use any of my images--just credit them back to me!

30 Days of De-Objectification: Wrap-Up

Sheriff Buford Pusser

December 12, 1937 - August 21, 1974

30 Days of De-Objectification:

Wrap-Up

Back in 1981, there was a television show called Walking Tall, which was inspired by the life of Sheriff Buford Pusser. The real-life Sheriff Pusser fought corruption in McNairy County, Tennessee. He was due to portray himself in the sequel to the 1973 film about his life, but died under mysterious circumstances in a single-car accident. Many people believe that his vehicle was sabotaged.

One of the lines in the theme song for the television show was “sometimes right hurts you more than wrong.”

I was struggling with a lot of issues at that point in my life. I was sixteen years old and far from popular. I gave in to peer pressure in several instances because I wanted to be liked. Still, I tried to make sure that my core values didn’t change. I didn’t join in bullying kids who were even less popular than I was. I did, however, do some things that I’m not proud of, mostly minor acts of vandalism on school property.

I also allowed boys to do things to me that I really didn’t want to do, because I wanted to feel loved. Instead, I ended up feeling even worse about myself.

I haven’t had an easy life, and I haven’t always done the right thing. I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons.

Many years later, the line from the theme song of that short-lived television program that I loved still sticks with me. I still try to live by it, even though I’ll probably always fall short.

Doing what’s right isn’t easy, especially when you’re young and wanting to be accepted.

Sometimes the “cool” thing is the wrong thing.

Some people act like it’s cool to belittle other people for aspects of their appearance, such as their size and the clothes they wear.

Those who belittle others to make themselves feel big tend to be extremely insecure. They take their own self-doubts out on others. These are hardly people that should be emulated.

It seems to me that some people join in the trend of expressing lewd and objectifying thoughts about people like actors and musicians because those individuals don’t seem real to them.

They are real, no matter how remote they may seem to be.

Most people do not like being objectified.

I would be extremely creeped out if I were to discover that someone had been writing graphic sexual fantasies about me and perhaps pairing me with one of my associates in these fantasies.

It seems very disrespectful to me to objectify anyone, let alone someone markedly older than myself.

I’ve found people who are a good deal older than me attractive. I couldn’t imagine implying that these men were fodder for sexual fantasies, let alone broadcasting such fantasies for public consumption.

Nobody should be thought of as only a sex object, and people who have become vulnerable due to infirmity should be afforded special consideration in this regard. I say this as a person who is experiencing deteriorating physical health myself. The last thing I want is for someone to look at me and see nothing but a thing to be masturbated over.

I am unsure how anyone could fail to see it as anything but incredibly insulting to look at a picture of a person who accomplished a great deal in their life, and instead of thinking “I really admire what this person was able to do,” the viewer of the photograph thinks: “Damn, he was hot! I want him to ram his rod up my coal chute like a runaway mine cart!”

I sometimes wonder if younger people have been taught the concept of putting themselves in another person’s shoes.

Would the people objectifying older and dead musicians like to have others objectifying them in the same way?

“Your accomplishments are meaningless. Only your genitals matter.”

That’s pretty disgusting.

I’m fairly sure everything I’ve written in this series has made not one damn bit of difference.

I wrote it anyway, because, if intent means anything, I’d like to think it made a difference on some level to the people being objectified.

I want them to know that their accomplishments matter more than their sex appeal to me.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

30 Days of De-Objectification: Worthless

30 Days of De-Objectification:

Worthless

Trigger Warning:

Discussion of sexual assault 

Mention of self-harm 

I am going to reveal something very personal.

Twenty going on twenty-one years ago, in the early morning hours of November 1, 1997, I was sexually assaulted by my ex-boyfriend.

I was in my early thirties, but I was very naïve. Even though I broke up with the guy because he had a very callous sense of humor and everything physical that happened with him had been coercive, I thought it was the right thing to do to remain friends with him. After all, I had broken up with him. So, I thought that we would start our new friendship with my taking him to a work friend’s Halloween party.

Not only was I very naïve, I also had untreated type 2 bipolar disorder, which would not be correctly diagnosed for another six years.

I took my son, who was seven years old at the time, with me because my co-worker had kids around his age.

I proceeded to get extremely drunk.

One of my other co-workers was flirting with me.

My ex-boyfriend became extremely angry.

To avoid having him start a fight, I took him out of there. I also did something which makes me flinch to remember to this day. I took my son with me over to my ex-husband’s parents’ house. I drove drunk with my child in the car. I didn’t know who I could call.

After dropping my son off with his grandparents, I went back to my apartment with my ex-boyfriend, so he could get his car. I went to bed fully clothed. I woke up undressed with him on top of me. I begged him to stop, but he didn’t. When he was done, he said “well, now we’re back together again.”

For the next year, I had panic attacks every twenty minutes for about five hours from the time I woke up. I didn’t want to go back to sleep because I knew it would start all over again when I woke up. Eventually, I would become too exhausted to stay awake, and the cycle repeated, every day, for the next 365 days.

I was falling apart. Nobody thought what I’d been through was “that bad,” because this bastard didn’t grab me and throw me on the ground or beat me up.

I felt like garbage. I felt worthless.

I was very vulnerable, and about six months after the event, I went to another co-worker’s party, where I became involved with one of the most predatory men I’d ever met. This creep expressed sympathy for what had happened, but he really just wanted sex. He took advantage of the fact that I was extremely vulnerable and my self-esteem was completely in the toilet. He would be affectionate towards me and then threaten to withdraw his “love” if I didn’t do what he demanded, which included watching a lot of pornography. He got a sick thrill out of my disgust over the bestiality videos he enjoyed watching. He eventually took up with another girlfriend and flaunted her in my face. He told me I was his “only girl,” but said he needed “a cheap piece of ass” too.

I ended up at his door one night with bloody wrists. I still have the scars.

Neither of these men saw me as human. I was a thing, an object. I was garbage.

Twenty years later, I still feel like I’ve been thrown in a sewer whenever I talk about it.

It is never right to look at another person and see an object rather than a human being.

It doesn’t make it better if you’re a girl objectifying a man.

There are some who will say “well, look what these guys did to you! We should turn the tables and have our revenge!”

I don’t believe that will make anything better.

I believe that objectification is never right.

I believe that it’s particularly awful to exploit and objectify vulnerable populations.

I took care of old and sick people for a lot of years.

I feel protective towards people in that population.

People who have lost their health and their ability to continue their careers should be honored, not objectified.

One of the residents at the retirement community I used to work at started hallucinating. One night she called me to her apartment in hysterics. She said that there were men who had come out of her closet and beat her. She said that these men told her that they were going to have sex with her. She said: “you’d think they could leave a seventy-five-year-old woman alone, wouldn’t you?”

These men in their sixties, seventies, and beyond don’t want to be objectified by teenage girls.

They have enough problems.

Don’t treat people like things to do with as you see fit.

Don’t deny others their worth.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~