I always think I can do anything! I mean I learnt Turkish at the age of 28, I cook all kinds of food, gourmet to street, I blog, I take photographs, I indoor garden, I designed my kitchen and whole condo when it was being renovated and then decorated it all, I… well you get it… So it’s very difficult for me to admit that I can’t do something, picture a frowning face with lips sticking out. Well I had a solo song in the musical called “BUSTER” that I am in. But because it was written in the wrong key for me, and because I panicked and got awful stage fright while singing, as well as the “music director” (snort) was not willing to help me in any way, when I sang the song, it came out squeaky and weak. So I blew it. It also didn’t help that we were in a small room and the pianist was banging on the piano so loudly that even if I had a megaphone, I wouldn’t have been heard. And the other 4 out of 5 principle actors are professional singers, so their voices are out of this world. But ultimately, I can’t blame anyone else, I am the one who didn’t sing the song strongly enough. I feel as if something that was mine has been taken away from me. I seriously have an issue about not being heard, must be from childhood. I didn’t have a voice as a child, abused children seldom do. So this cuts deep and cuts raw in some ways. Literally, my song has been taken away from me. I can sing the song pretty well, I do it at home all the time. But if a tree falls in the forest with no one to hear it, does it make a noise? Hahaha. Fine, I admit, my singing is not as strong as it needs to be to sing in a musical with singers who have voices that will blow you away. The lead actor sang on Broadway!
Anyway, my song has been changed into my monologue. Now, with my monologue, I feel confident and strong, and I will blow people away! So, wow, hunh, who knew? but things turned out right! As Buster would say: “God works in mysterious ways!” And I still sing 20+ songs with everyone else.
This is the first time I am in a musical. People are expected to pick up songs, dances, like they have always been singing these songs and dancing these steps. You have to be extremely extroverted and sure of yourself, and when I am not sure of myself, I become a squeaky little mouse. So even though I wasn’t successful at singing publicly, I did learn what it takes to be in a musical and if I ever try again (someone kick me if I do ;-) ) I will be much more likely to be successful at it.
So, yes a disappointment, but not a failure, I’ll consider it a learning experience. And yes, lesson learned, I can’t do everything, only almost everything, hahaha… Now I’m off to perfect my monologue :-) That I can do!
Posted in Read Along
I sat down to write a post even though I am not really feeling a rant or vent…And I thought, “Nope, you LIKE to write, but you’ve done nothing to EARN it.” In order to earn my right to sit down and spew via keyboard…I forced myself to put on clean clothes, wipe myself down, put on deodorant, and brush my fangs. Such normal little things others do without thinking and yet such a mountain to climb for me most of the time.
Pom poms waving, floats blowing up, rain falling on the parade-my kind of celebration. Tiny goals. Little rewards.
It’s a seemingly silly system and yet I swear it works wonders for me. This week I’ve been doing very little. Even errands into the dish are ten minutes or less. To earn my “drop out and zone out” time, I’ve been doing piddly little things to “earn it.” Like fixing actual food instead of nuking shit. It’s hard to find non frozen foods my kid will eat. Yesterday we had bacon and eggs. I fixed her grilled cheese for supper, a thick burger for myself. If you think cooking is a simple joy, you don’t know me. It takes everything I have most days to make a Nutella sammich, let alone dirty up the dishes I JUST got all washed and cook actual food. I am EARNING my flaky time.
It sucks to have such basic life functions become so insurmountable, so exhausting, and not be able to explain it to people. “You don’t work, you’re house is still infested with dustbunnies, how can you be tired?” I don’t know. It just is, with mental illness. If you have the flu, no one questions your lack of energy and listlessness. Mental stuff is no different. The world at large will never understand this. I’m not sure it’s even fair to expect them to grasp. I doubt I would if I didn’t live it. It’s the whole sporks thing. Everyone else starts out with an unlimited supply. I get so many and every uphill battle with the mundane costs me one. I consider friendship a draining task, and for me, it is. It’s not this energizing rewarding thing for me, I wish it were. I don’t need an audience but on occasion, I do wish I had one or two people I could count on. (As likely as pegacorns dancing the cha cha with beach balls impaled on their horns.)
Last night, as my reward for cooking, when my mood sank to subterranean levels, I allowed myself to go with it and retire to my bedroom crypt at 7 p.m. I was exhausted. My kid was a battery bunny hopped up on Red Bull (metaphorically). To her credit, she did sit on the bed reading. (Never sure if she’s reading or if we’ve just read the same books so often she’s memorized it.) I lay there, mind spinning, body aching (hello, pms) and thought about all the stuff I could be doing. If I could just nap an hour and recharge,then she’d stay asleep if I let her sleep in my bed…It didn’t happen. Oh, she zonked before nine. I, on the other hand, in spite of my nightly Xanax, was still awake until almost 11. Stupid parasitic twin in my brain.
Sleep was the norm. Bizarre dreams, wake up, nod off, wake up, over and over. Come morning, I don’t even want to get up.
Today…I AM gonna shower tonight. It’s been three/four? days.. I must sound disgusting. swear,I wipe down with baby wipes, use deodorant, etc. I don’t reek. Though the hair is looking pretty skanky at this point. This is normal during the winter. It’s unheard of during spring and summer. I’d really like to know what is going on. I’ve even been thinking about asking the shrink if there’s a some sort of blood panel to be run that might explain this shit physically. Low hormones, maybe the thyroid finally went wonky, maybe all the meds have given me ebola…IDK.
As a reward for my vow to shower, I am gonna hit a couple of yard sales this afternoon that are nearby. Mainly because the ad claims they have clothes in Spook’s size. I might find an odd or end. It’s mostly about her, though. She’s growing faster than I can keep up with. My mom is supposedly gonna buy her school clothes and dad and stepmonster are gonna get her school supplies. Not that I asked, but I’m not turning down any help when it comes to her getting what she needs. I figure forcing myself to get out of the house, go do something normally enjoyable, maybe it will force me to shower.
I love to shower normally. Nothing is as it should be. The doctor doesn’t seem to give a damn. I found out last appointment they don’t even have my files from the other psych place, which is 12 years he has no clue about. I should think the wrong diagnosis and wrong meds would be relevant to current treatment. Sad that mental health is given less importance than veterinarian care for pets. I hear stories of people awesome doctors, psych nurses, psychopharmacologists, therapists, support groups…All of which is as existent in the rural midwest as unicorns.
Disheartening but factoid.
Now to figure out a suitable reward for the undesirable task of mowing the lawn. I’m gonna have to think on that one.
Patient, client, consumer – which term do you prefer and why? What difference does it make? Who cares? Well, sit down and let’s take a look.
In the never ending dialectic about labels, I’m firmly on the side of labels. My reason is as simple as this; I want semantic precision in formal contexts. The rest of the time, idgaf. Applying the concept of common usage definitions, this is how I (subjectively, obviously) see things:
Patient: doctors treat patients.
Client: person hires doctor.
Consumer: person is part of the target market for medical services.
(All of those words do the job in one way or another, they could all be called precise, the rest is opinion – and all opinions are valid, no matter what one thinks of them.)
Another of my opinions where identity politics are concerned, is that everyone’s free to choose and use their own labels. Following that logic, doctors can call us whatever they want to, or ask us what we’d like to be called and then respect that wish. Articles and op-ed pieces online seem to be arguing for one specific yet blanket term; I’m not sure why that even matters. Is it because they need something to print on documents? When the letterhead belongs to a medical professional and the subject at hand is something along the lines of ‘treatment’, it seems incredibly simple to me. The official/printed stuff is the doctor or whatever, the rest refers to the person being treated, which makes the need for one and only one label even sillier.
“Many years ago, I heard a psychiatric colleague quip, “The only people who have clients are lawyers and hookers!” Depending on your point of view, he was being grossly unfair to either lawyers or hookers.” Why Doctors Don’t Have Clients
Apart from the fact that autocorrect wanted the word to be ‘hoovers’, it’s ironic that commentary about how to label people-seeking-help-from-the-medical-profession, blithely uses the word ‘hookers’, ignoring the most respectful term, ‘sex workers’. And it’s bullshit, utter bullshit. Someone’s charging money, someone’s paying it – say ‘clients’ if you want.
The following argument for sticking with the word ‘patient’ is as valid as any other, but it expresses my own opinion perfectly.
“The more we use these commercial terms to refer to intimate and personal care, the more that care becomes commercial and impersonal. Such is the power of language.” Dr Barry L. Farkas
I don’t have an issue with being called a client, but ‘consumer’? To me it’s the most commercial of commercial words. It makes me think of Oprah’s Xmas show audience, screaming for trinkets. It puts me in mind of Pac Man and of unhappy people wearing their cars like cloaks while they make their way around drive-through takeaway franchises, ashamed and hiding. That’s not a rational response though; it’s a disproportionate one too and I’m happy to admit it. I’ve spent a fair chunk of my life in Britain throughout my life and been treated (mostly poorly) by the NHS. They use ‘consumer’ and ‘service provider’ and then proceed to fail their consumers mightily. Fuck them and their spin. I don’t want to see some nebulous service provider thanks, I want to see whichever kind of doctor I need to see.
Patient, client, consumer… I think there’s valid argument for throwing the word ‘victim’ into the mix too, but leaving aside the obvious topic of cruelty and malpractice, there’s a concept that wasn’t mentioned in any of the articles I read about this stuff, and that’s the god complex. No wait, title case works better for that, the God Complex (A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility source). What the hell does it matter what they call us, when the relationship is that unequal anyway? Which term describes the act of paying a professional for their services best? That needs to be factored in to the whole debate as well. The medical God complex, as it exists now, and as rife as it is, requires the patient/client/consumer/customer to be a supplicant (a person who asks for something in a respectful way from a powerful person or God. source). If we (society) continue to allow it to continue, the doctor’s surgery is a church and payments are offerings. You don’t have to be religious to see how ludicrous that is. Doctors can bristle with as many delusions of grandeur as they please, but we absolutely do not have to worship at that altar. Or as I like to say, fuck that.
Now open wide and say aaaaaaaamen.
I think that the following quote sums it all up well, and I’m glad it comes from the psychiatric profession. Or should that be service provider or vendor or something?
“Simply use the term that the person whom you are addressing with is most comfortable with. You might discuss a “client” with a therapist, speak about a “consumer” with a mental health board, and still be able to refer a “patient” to another physician.”
Simple, right? And if all else fails, you can always try referring to people by their names.”
Patient’ Vs. ‘Client’: How Semantics Influences the Practice of Psychiatry
Disclaimer: this post accurately represents the opinion of the writer, the blog owner and the writer/blog owner’s dog, who recommends saying to your doctor, “I pay you, you are my bitch. You can call me sir.”
Posted in Read Along
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