My friend Linda once told me a story about learning to recognize the feeling of air on her skin again.
Linda was a teen when she got married. Her husband was older than she was - old enough that today, eyebrows would raise and judgments would be made. They were blissfully happy for approximately half a century; then he got sick. She rarely left his side during his final illness, and had no idea what to do after his death.
I met her after his death. She was 67, working and happy, but still feeling incomplete. She had, according to her own assessment, only been functional again for a year or so.
She was living with her daughter, and working in the garden. One summer day, she felt something that stopped her in her tracks. She stood in the vegetable bed, confused, unsure of whether she'd heard something, been touched, smelled smoke - all she knew was that it had reached out and grabbed her attention. Then it happened again. "It was the wind," she said, "the wind on my back, between my shoulder blades. I was wearing a tank top, and I'd been sweating, and I was feeling the wind across my skin. I realized that I had literally not felt anything for years."
I understood.
A couple of years earlier, I too had not been feeling much of anything. Well, that's not entirely accurate. Mentally, I felt both numb and like an exposed, raw nerve, all the time. Ordinary feelings and experiences were muted, like trying to pick up tiny beads while wearing thick gloves. It felt like they might be there, but I was never really sure. On the other hand, every experience felt like sandpaper over sunburned skin. Sometimes, something would cut through like a knife, with sharp, stabbing pain. Most of the chatter inside my head was single note screaming.
When I was pregnant with my youngest child, I had something truly terrible happen to me. It was one of those things that will forever divide your life into Before the Incident and After the Incident. I tend to be dismissive of people who see everyday irritation, inconvenience or disappointment as trauma, so I don't exaggerate ordinary hurts. I had already experienced Stuff That Will Turn Your Hair White in my life, but this threw me. It not only threw me, it trampled me underfoot.
I rarely reference The Event. Most people, even my friends and family, don't know that it happened. I have spoken about it with my husband, my clergyman, and the professional counselor that my husband (gently) insisted that I see. I will, very occasionally, reference the effect that it had, but the event itself is not open to discussion. Ever. This decision is not open to debate. Ever. I reference it here only to keep things in logical order; the effect had a cause.
Everybody has core needs - to be loved, to be understood, to be useful, for example. I need to feel safe. Almost everything in my life is geared toward making sure that I, and my loved ones, are safe. Naturally, anything that feels unsafe pushes my buttons. Experiencing something that made me feel profoundly unsafe in every way was a seismic event. Life crashed down around my ears, and the shock waves rumbled far into the distance. It was impossible for me to feel safe anywhere, while doing anything.
I had always believed that most people are inherently good, and that most people will do the right thing most of the time. I know, I know, it sounds staggeringly naive, but it was one of my bedrock beliefs. Losing that belief made me question everything I knew, or thought I knew. Unable to sort out whether people in general could be trusted, and how to make that determination, I chose the Fox Mulder route - trust no one.
It was beyond painful. Going out in public was awful. I'd look around at any group of people and think, if a disaster hit right now - fire, shooting, anything - all these people would happily trample or sacrifice me and my family to save themselves. I've always found large groups to be alienating, and this just made it worse.
Staying home felt safer than leaving it, but I found that I could no longer read, watch TV or listen to music. ("Well, that makes sense," my husband said. "Music is designed to evoke an emotional response, and you're fighting emotion right now.") Any outside input at all, no matter the source, was likely to rip open mental wounds that I was trying desperately to stitch closed. Even fluffy sitcoms would have references, or visuals, that brought up excruciatingly painful memories - or predictions, or philosophies, or a hundred other things.
Leaving home was like mountain climbing - I had to prepare, and it took great stamina to complete. More than once, grocery shopping reduced me to tears, and I had to flee the store. The first two times I tried to watch a movie were abject failures. Midway through, I dissolved into a puddle of pain and tears.
I stepped down as leader of my daughters' Girl Scout troops, and I stopped volunteering for community theater groups. I stopped taking photos; on holidays and birthdays I'd shove the camera into my husband's hands and say something like, "Make sure to get one with the cake in it." I continued attending church for two reasons: I couldn't tell my kids it was important if I didn't go, and if I entirely dropped out, church members would try to find out why, and I wasn't about to discuss it. Luckily, the pregnancy, and later, having a newborn, made excuses easy. "I'm just so tired" - which was true. "I'm spread a little too thin" - which was an understatement. "I need to be home with my family" - totally understandable. With four kids, it was easy to say to everyone, "Nope, sorry, I have no time to spare." It made sense. I've never been good about phone calls, but for a solid year I don't think I made a single one. Since it wasn't too out of character, it slid under people's radar, and that's how I wanted it.
Everyone needs something different when they're experiencing stress. Many people need reassurance, or consoling, or distracting. What I want most when I experience any kind of distress is for things to feel normal again, so what I want most from others is that they behave as if everything is normal. Giving me a hug, or saying, "I'm here for you" generally makes things worse. I am OK with an oblique reference as long as it's followed by completely normal behavior. Asking, "Are you OK?" is fine, as long as you will then accept my assurance that I am, or will be, and immediate move on.
As an example of what works best: I've spent most of my adult life being a stay at home mom and working for myself, taking photographs. Once, though, I worked for a small, local company part time. (It was actually part of my plan to force myself out of my home and into interaction with other humans. I met some pretty cool ones there.) One day, I got called into the boss's office, and left about 30 minutes later in tears. Not sniffling, but bawling.
My co-workers didn't know how to react. They had no idea what had happened. For all they knew, I'd just been caught stealing from the company, and the police were on their way. (Actually, it was a personal issue, and the boss reacted very well to what I had to say.) They were unsure of what to say or do, so they ignored me, which is exactly what I needed.
About an hour later, with my tissue box nearing empty and me feeling almost OK again, three or four co-workers were standing nearby discussing something. I've forgotten what. One of them may have said something about the break room being out of snacks, because what I felt compelled to say, in my best British accent, was, "And they ate Robin's minstrels. And there was much rejoicing."
Their heads all swiveled toward me, and they gave me the deer-in-the-headlights stare. One then managed to squeak, "What?" It was clear that they still didn't know what to say, or if they should speak to me at all. Plus, I hadn't so much as looked up for an hour.
I said, louder and very distinctly, "And they ate Robin's minstrels. And there was much rejoicing." They still looked slightly blank, so I said, "Oh, come on. Are none of you Monty Python fans?"
The ice broke. "Oh! Holy Grail! I love that movie!" More quotes were shared, people laughed, some of those in the neighboring desks joined in. Things were back to normal. I was happy, they were happy, and there was no need to ask if I was OK. Perfect.
My husband is more of a conventional human. When he is stressed, he wants to be surrounded by people who tell him that he's wonderful and loved, and that other people are jerks. He wants to have places to go, and things to do, that keep him from thinking too much. It makes no sense to him that I need the universe to collapse down to a space barely bigger than the inside of my head. He constantly tried to cheer me up by doing things that would cheer him up if he was down. Makes sense, right? I mean, the Golden Rule and all.
"Why don't you call So-and-so?" he'd say. "Go out to lunch." I tried to explain - the mere thought had me in tears of exhaustion. I had just enough energy to function, and none to spare. He also could not understand my insistence on avoiding mention of The Event. "Can't you just say that you're upset, and not say why?" he'd ask. NO. First, that's not how interaction works. Second, if I didn't want to discuss it, it was beyond rude to bring it up. Also, I cannot stand it when people say, "I don't want to talk about it" when what they mean is, "Please show me that you're interested. I'd love to tell you, but only if I'm sure of how you'll respond." It's manipulative twaddle. I would probably become violent if someone tried to cajole it out of me.
"Don't you think you'd feel better if you talked to your friends?" he wanted to know.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because they'll tell me that they love me, and I'm wonderful, and it's not my fault, and it's not the end of the world, and millions of people have lived through it before, and I will too, and things will get better eventually, and I already know all of that. Why would I take the time and energy to go over something that I already know?" It just seemed like a huge waste of time and energy, and I had no energy to spare.
Even when I did talk to someone, I often seemed to baffle them. My counselor said during one visit, with genuine concern, "Do you ever think, 'Why me?'"
My response was immediate. "Never. I mean, people have had horrible things happen to them - people have been sent to concentration camps. Why would I think that I, personally, am immune to the human condition?" He stared at me for a moment, then scribbled madly in his notebook. Apparently that was not the expected response.
I don't understand people who think that nothing bad will ever happen to them. I mean, has that ever been the experience of a single person who's ever lived? Then why do you think it will be your experience?
(I also never understood people who'd say things like, "When my mother/father died, it just shook my faith to the core." I understand a tiny bit if your parent was murdered, or if they had a lingering illness, and you're not sure why people have to endure that, but the simple fact of their death? Shouldn't that be a given? If every person who ever lived has also died, chances are that everyone you know will die one day. How can that take you by surprise?
I lost my dad at 22, so I'd experienced losing a parent before most of my peers. "Wait until your mom dies," they'd say. My mom died only a few months ago, and I miss her more than I can say, but I knew that she'd leave one day. It was expected. My faith was unaffected.)
Gloom and doom people, the "everything bad always happens to me" people, also puzzle and annoy me. Usually, they're still walking, talking, sighted - the people with real hardships tend to be far more cheerful. There is no possible way that "everything bad always happens" to you, so don't even try to convince me that it does. Stuff happens, yeah - to you and to everybody else. It's always something. Great stuff happens to you, too, so pay attention to that. If you woke up today, be thankful.
Some days you're the bug, and some days you're the windshield. That's normal.
One friend of mine was around me enough during this time to notice that something was wrong, but she also knew me well enough to know that if I wanted to talk about it, I would, so she didn't ask any questions or try too hard to be helpful. I appreciated it. One day I said to her, "You know, if I was ever to start trusting people again, I think I'd start with your husband." He's a great guy, who also never tried too hard, but I knew he'd jump if I did ask for help.
She smiled. "Yeah. He's pretty great." It was a compliment, to both of them, and she accepted it. It was nice.
I remember the exact moment, and place, I had my Linda-and-the-wind experience.
There's a local park where we spend a lot of time. We photograph it, and people in it, in the spring when everything's blooming, and in the fall when the foliage changes color. We spend a lot of family nights there, walking the trails, having popsicles and looking for baby bunnies.
We were there on another family night, and my kids were playing nearby, watching another family fly kites. I looked over at a particular spot, and noticed immediately how I'd frame a photo. I wished I'd brought the camera. The thought stopped me cold - taking photos has been second nature since I was eight years old, but I hadn't actually thought about taking one for over two years.
I became excited, because I wanted to take a photo. Then I became even more excited, because, holy cow, I was excited! That was new and different and unexpected!
We came back a few days later with the camera. The photos aren't amazing because of their content, which is nice but ordinary, but they are deeply amazing because I took them, on my own, just because I wanted to. Such a little thing, and so monumental.
When Linda told me her story about the wind, I nodded enthusiastically. "I know how that feels!" I told her - and I did.
Sometimes that may be why things happen to you - so that some day, you can look another person in the eye and say, "I know how you feel" - and you will know.
Such a little thing, and so monumental.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Monday, July 22, 2013
The Phone Cops, Part 2
Once, years ago, I deliberately let an account go to collection, despite the fact that I value my good credit rating and I'm vigilant about paying off debts.
I had signed up for a certain number of payments on an item, and I was sure that I had paid the requisite number. Whenever I contacted the company and asked them for the exact date the debt was due to be paid, they either flatly ignored my letters or were cagey, insisting that I owed more without telling me when they had my last payment scheduled. I took to saying, "I want a copy of the forms that I signed," and they ignored me.
So, I let them send it to a collection agency. When I explained the issue to them, they asked the company for copies of my contract. It turns out that I'd miscounted by 2 payments (math is not my strong suit). Armed with a copy of the contract, with a printed "paid in full by" date on it, I happily sent in a check for the two remaining payments, and never heard from them again.
I've written before about my attempts to get my mother's phone turned off after her death. It's been nine months now since she passed away. The granddaughter who lives in Mom's house recently brought me a piece of mail. "It's addressed to Grandma; it's from a collection agency," she said. Of course, it's about the phone. AT&T claims that Mom owes them almost $200. They have turned off her phone, but not because we requested it - they claim that she's not paying her bill.
My knee-jerk reaction was to say, "Good luck proving that she legitimately acquired this debt from beyond the grave! She doesn't need the phone where she is! Go ahead and trash her credit - she doesn't need that either!" That is, however, both juvenile and misplaced hostility. I'm not angry at the collection agency, I'm angry at AT&T. In fact, I welcome the agency's involvement. Maybe AT&T will have to respond to them, instead of ignoring them or giving them the runaround.
I sent the collection agency this letter:
"To Whom It May Concern,
The enclosed form has been forwarded to me as the trustee of the estate of Mrs. B. E. Smith, otherwise known as Mrs. E. R. Smith (her husband, E. R. Smith, passed away in 1988, but some accounts, including this one, remain in his name.)
Mrs. Smith passed away on October 30, 2012. As her bills came in, each was paid in full and each account holder was provided with a copy of the enclosed letter, dated November 19, 2012, notifying them of Mrs. Smith's passing, and requesting that all her accounts be cancelled. Every creditor except AT&T complied with this request. Her final accounts, including this one, were paid in full after her passing.
Over the last eight months, AT&T has been notified by mail, by phone and via the Internet of Mrs. Smith's passing, numerous times, with a request to cancel her account. Most communication from us has been simply ignored, but I have also encountered the following, through various AT&T channels:
1. The letter was never received, because it was sent to the wrong address. When I requested the correct address, I was told, "I'm sorry, I don't have that information."
2. The phone number provided on the AT&T bill for customer service, as well as the phone number provided on their web page, does not connect to an operator, but to a recording that informs me that, "Service cannot be cancelled over the phone."
3. The link provided for "modify or cancel service" on the web page takes me to a page that informs me that, "Service cannot be cancelled over the Internet."
4. When I finally drove to an AT&T store in frustration, an employee used their phone to connect me to an actual human being, who informed me that she could not cancel the service as she could not "verify" my request. She promised that her manager would phone me, on my own line, within 30 minutes to take care of the problem. I never received the phone call.
When the phone was finally turned off, I assumed that the message had finally made its way through AT&T channels, and the account had been cancelled because Mrs. Smith is deceased, and AT&T has been asked repeatedly to terminate service. To find that AT&T considers this bill to be valid, despite its being accrued after Mrs. Smith's passing and despite repeated requests to cancel service, is astonishing in the extreme.
This is not a valid debt. If necessary, I can, and will, provide the name of the attorney handling Mrs. Smith's trust, and allow her to conduct any further communication with AT&T.
I regret that you have been asked to waste your time in this endeavor.
Thank you."
I'm not kidding about the attorney. The estate attorney works for the same firm that employed my mom. She's not cheap, but she is very good. If I have to pay her to take care of this, I will, but it will tick me off. I mean. more than I'm already ticked off.
Let's see if we can finally lay this to rest, as it were.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
The Right Way
Before I got married, I had heard a great deal about how difficult it is to merge two very different people from different backgrounds into a harmonious team. I thought I was pretty ready for it; we discussed money, kids, where and how we'd spend our holidays, all the basic stuff, and I thought we had pretty well reached agreement.
Then, I got married, and I got used to living with another human and making joint decisions. I felt accomplished. I read (fairly obsessively) everything I could find on marriage, divorce, gender differences and the like, and I felt even more accomplished. I got this!
Of course, real life is messy, and you end up encountering things that you never imagined existed.
After we'd been married for years, had kids, bought a home, negotiated all kinds of marriage stuff together, we were having a familiar argument. It was one of those "you or me" situations - you know, "Either you have to do this or I have to." Those things are things like who'll deal with a misbehaving child, take out the trash, cook a meal, make reservations - a job that must be done by one of the two parents in the house. The same principle applies in situations like when you'll have sex, or where you'll go for the holidays - in general, one person will get their way, and one won't, because chances are, you'll never feel exactly the same about it.
(Before you split hairs, and say things like, "You could hire someone to do that for you," or tell me that one partner could seek out someone else to have sex with, let's establish that the parameters of what's acceptable or possible in our marriage have already been set, by us. There's no money for professional cooks, housekeepers, nannies etc., and adultery is bad.)
My husband said, in irritation, "It's not all about you, you know."
I just couldn't believe that he'd chosen an argument that I thought was guaranteed to make him look bad. "Every once in a blue moon, it should be about me. Choose any method of measurement that you want, and any time frame at all - hours in a day, days in a week or in a month, months in a year - and tell me how often we do things your way and how often we do them my way. I have completely given up on ever having anything that resembles 50/50, but every once in a while, in order to keep things from being ridiculously, unhealthily lopsided, it needs to be about me."
He stared at me astonished, as if this thought had never occurred to him. He's a bright guy, my husband, so I was in turn amazed that he apparently had never considered this.
It was obviously still bothering him two or three days later, because he said, apropos of nothing, "I don't know where you get this whole 50/50 thing."
I thought, "Really?" Again, he's a bright guy. How was this new information? I said, slowly and carefully, "Because there's two of us. That means that things should be divided roughly in half. 50% of the time we should do it your way, and 50% of the time we should do it my way." How was it possible that this was not completely obvious?
I don't advocate a complete tit-for-tat exact accounting of every dollar spent ("OK, you spent $10, so I get to spend $10"), or having each partner take out the trash an equal number of times. That sort of system is an unworkable exercise in insanity in my book. It makes complete sense to have one partner do some things more often than the other. I do 99% of the laundry in our house, 100% of the bill paying and gardening, and about 75% of the cooking. My husband does 100% of the auto repair and maintenance, as well as the computer and appliance repair and trouble shooting. (Trust me, you do not want to hand either of those jobs to me, ever.) But in some very important areas, there needs to be something resembling equality, or things head south in a handbasket very quickly. If only one partner can make decisions in the bedroom, for example, that's deeply unhealthy. And don't even get me started on the fury I feel when men refer to taking care of their own children as "babysitting." It's not babysitting when their mother looks after them; it's most assuredly not babysitting when their father looks after them.
This was not the way my husband saw the world. "His" way, he explained, had "nothing to do" with him, personally, or his opinions on any subject. It was just "the right way" to do things.
Holy cow. Major lightbulb over the head moment. This explained SO MUCH! Suddenly, virtually every argument we'd ever had made sense. Good gravy!
Why hadn't he explained to me that this was his world view, I wanted to know. He was puzzled as to why I had asked. It had not occurred to him that there was another way to view things. He hadn't explained for the same reason he'd never told me that socks go on before shoes. Wasn't this something that everyone knew?
I, on the other hand, had never considered this way of thinking. There are so many right ways to do things, and so few wrong ones. Any judgement of "wrong" should be saved for matters of grave importance and moral judgement, or simple physics. Even then, realize that others may not agree. I know people for whom the Biblical injunction "Thou shalt not kill" necessitates catching insects, spiders, mice, scorpions and anything else that might invade your home and releasing them back into the wild somewhere safe. It means eating no meat and wearing no leather. For me, it means "Thou shalt not commit murder;" in other words, never decide that your wishes and aims are more important than someone else's life. There are times, however, in which it is perfectly acceptable to kill for food, clothing, shelter or self defense - and self defense includes having intruders invade my home. I will squash a bug or shoot a burglar and feel fine about it. I think that people in both camps (and everywhere inbetween) need to back off and allow each other clear exercise of their own conscience.
I grew up hearing, "There's more than one way to skin a cat," and, "All roads lead to Rome," being told over and over that there was always more than one way to accomplish any goal. I also heard "Consider the source," meaning that you needed to take people's motivation and/or abilities into consideration when making a judgement on someone's actions or words. If they meant well, or were just dim, you had to cut them some slack. The idea that there was only one "right" way to do anything was not part of my daily reality.
I was now having flashbacks to instance after instance in which my husband and I had been on completely separate pages. When we first got married, for instance, how I ate and/or cooked my food could send him into a tailspin. I remembered him insisting, completely distraught, "You cannot go on eating your sandwiches that way!" What? It was my sandwich, and I liked it. When I would tell him that, he would huff and roll his eyes, or worse, tell me, "That's irrelevant." How could the way I liked my sandwiches be irrelevant to me? I wasn't making his sandwiches that way and asking him to eat them, I was just feeding myself. Does not compute!
(His beef with my sandwiches, in case you wondered, is that I put only butter and cheese on my grilled cheese. "They have no taste!")
Other times had made even less sense to me. For instance, I cannot stand it when he wakes me by grabbing my feet. The foot of our bed, of course, has always faced the door of our room, no matter where we've lived. It makes me insane when he wakes me by grabbing my feet. I wake up in a blind panic; I cannot imagine any legitimate reason for that behavior. I would rather have someone clamp a hand over my mouth than grab my feet (or ankles or calves). When I would tell him that, he'd say, "It doesn't bother me."
"Then I'll feel free to wake you that way. But I hate it, so please don't do it. Walk the few extra steps to the side of the bed."
This was usually met with some comment about my being "controlling." And, the next time he was in too much of a hurry to take three extra steps, he'd grab my feet. Every time, I got angrier, because I'd told him, very clearly, that I hated it. Every time, he'd be more surprised, because he had been clear that it didn't bother him. So, it's controlling to allow for individual likes and dislikes, but not controlling to insist that everyone has to be the same? Really? How can that be?
To me, it seemed obvious - I should treat him the way he wanted to be treated, and he should treat me the way I wanted to be treated. To him, it looked entirely different, but just as obvious; there was one right way to handle this, and we should both conform to that right way.
Other people suddenly made more sense, as well. I remembered going round and round with certain relatives about the planning of my wedding. They'd ask me something about our colors or flowers or some such, and I'd tell them what we'd chosen. I expected, "Oh, that'll be nice," or just "OK," but most of the time, I'd get, "Have you considered X?" When I would say yes, we'd considered it but decided against it, or no, we hadn't considered it because we didn't like X, I thought that the discussion was over. Instead, these individuals would bring the same things up, over and over, and I'd end up saying "no" over and over until tempers frayed. Then I'd get more of those comments about being "controlling" and "selfish."
"So, it's controlling of me to want to plan my own wedding, but it's not controlling of you to want to plan someone else's wedding?" I'd ask, and get no response that made any sense. Usually it was some variation of, "I just want to help," or, "I just want it to be nice." Please note, people: if you want to help, you ask what the bride wants, and then do that thing. You don't try to take over, especially if you say things that translate to, "It will be awful if we do it your way." Someone else's wedding is not about you and what you want.
Again, I was functioning under the assumption that every person needed to make and act on their own decisions, and other people were thinking that things had to be done "the right way," and if I was doing it "wrong," I needed corrected. I'd never really understood why people got frustrated when I didn't change my mind to mirror their opinions. I wasn't losing my mind because they hadn't ditched their opinions in favor of mine.
Mommy Wars - stay at home vs. employed elsewhere, breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding - and various other public battles made more sense now, too. Everyone thought there was only one right way, and it was their duty to enlighten others. Oh, my goodness. No wonder I didn't understand a great deal of common social interactions!
I now understood ridiculous, repetitive, circular conversations, as well. I've always made certain assumptions about conversation in general; I tend to assume that they're an exchange of information. You tell me how you feel, I tell you how I feel, and then we'll understand each other. I never understood, then, why conversations tended to go over the same ground again and again.
I'd say, for instance, "I like A." The other person would say, "I've always liked B better." The way I saw things, we now had enough information to understand each other's behavior and choices, and that was the point. I'd go on my merry way, wondering why the other person would belabor the point. "There are just so many advantages to B," they'd say. "B is just terrific. You really should try B."
"I have. I like A better," I'd say, wondering why we were going over this again. I would get totally baffled when they'd bring it up again and again. It also made no sense to me when they said, and they often did, "Most people prefer B." I could not understand the relevance. It was like injecting, "The capitol of California is Sacramento," into the conversation. It may be true, but I couldn't imagine what it had to do with anything. If they liked B, more power to them. I liked A. That's why there are choices. It turns out, though, that a great many people's idea of "right" is tied to consensus. Whatever the majority thinks becomes "right." Pointing out the majority opinion was their "subtle" way of trying to get me to see the error of my ways, and change my mind.
This is a bad idea on so many levels. One, I do not generally understand subtlety. It passes me right by. Two, the concepts of "right" and "wrong" are, for me, morality and religion based. Therefore, there really is no "wrong" way to serve food, or wear your clothes, or plan a vacation, or choose a paint color. This is why I have no interest in fashion. Don't tell me I'm wearing the "wrong" shoes or pants or colors or whatever. It's hardly possible for it to be "wrong." (My only clothing rules for my kids were that their clothes had to meet health and morality standards.) Also, in 5 or 10 or 20 years, everyone will have changed their minds about it. (Do you see anyone in MC Hammer pants and a mullet walking down the street any more?) Three, let's think about all of the things that have been accepted by a majority in the past (or present). Are all of them scientifically correct or morally acceptable? No. Therefore, pointing out to me what the majority thinks has very little effect.
This could be why these same people viewed me as "stubborn," "self centered," and, yet again, "controlling." (I'll cop to "stubborn." ;D) I still have a hard time understanding how these terms are applicable to someone who figured that everyone should go their own way, and not applicable to someone who was trying to badger others into changing their minds.
Sometimes, someone will accuse me of promoting chaos, or of being too wishy washy to take a stand. I think they're missing the point. While I may have a high tolerance for chaos, as a religious person I'm usually accused of being too rigid, with too many rules. I do, in fact, have very firm ideas about what is morally right and wrong, and I believe that one day, each of us will stand before God to account for our actions. The thing is, I am not God, and neither is anyone else on Earth, so we don't account to each other. Since we don't have to justify our actions to each other in big stuff, stuff of moral significance, how could it possibly be that we need to stand in judgement over each other for petty things, like our food and clothing choices?
There are so many right ways to do anything, and so few wrong ones. Give everybody a break.
After so many years, my husband and I have figured each other out, to a large extent. We will still occasionally look at each other and think, or say, "Huh?" That's because we're human. Still, we do pretty well, I think.
And now I'm going to exercise come of that controlling personality to tell you what I think you should do. You should make your own choices without needing a majority rule to tell you that you're right. You should let everyone else make their choices.
After all, there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Then, I got married, and I got used to living with another human and making joint decisions. I felt accomplished. I read (fairly obsessively) everything I could find on marriage, divorce, gender differences and the like, and I felt even more accomplished. I got this!
Of course, real life is messy, and you end up encountering things that you never imagined existed.
After we'd been married for years, had kids, bought a home, negotiated all kinds of marriage stuff together, we were having a familiar argument. It was one of those "you or me" situations - you know, "Either you have to do this or I have to." Those things are things like who'll deal with a misbehaving child, take out the trash, cook a meal, make reservations - a job that must be done by one of the two parents in the house. The same principle applies in situations like when you'll have sex, or where you'll go for the holidays - in general, one person will get their way, and one won't, because chances are, you'll never feel exactly the same about it.
(Before you split hairs, and say things like, "You could hire someone to do that for you," or tell me that one partner could seek out someone else to have sex with, let's establish that the parameters of what's acceptable or possible in our marriage have already been set, by us. There's no money for professional cooks, housekeepers, nannies etc., and adultery is bad.)
My husband said, in irritation, "It's not all about you, you know."
I just couldn't believe that he'd chosen an argument that I thought was guaranteed to make him look bad. "Every once in a blue moon, it should be about me. Choose any method of measurement that you want, and any time frame at all - hours in a day, days in a week or in a month, months in a year - and tell me how often we do things your way and how often we do them my way. I have completely given up on ever having anything that resembles 50/50, but every once in a while, in order to keep things from being ridiculously, unhealthily lopsided, it needs to be about me."
He stared at me astonished, as if this thought had never occurred to him. He's a bright guy, my husband, so I was in turn amazed that he apparently had never considered this.
It was obviously still bothering him two or three days later, because he said, apropos of nothing, "I don't know where you get this whole 50/50 thing."
I thought, "Really?" Again, he's a bright guy. How was this new information? I said, slowly and carefully, "Because there's two of us. That means that things should be divided roughly in half. 50% of the time we should do it your way, and 50% of the time we should do it my way." How was it possible that this was not completely obvious?
I don't advocate a complete tit-for-tat exact accounting of every dollar spent ("OK, you spent $10, so I get to spend $10"), or having each partner take out the trash an equal number of times. That sort of system is an unworkable exercise in insanity in my book. It makes complete sense to have one partner do some things more often than the other. I do 99% of the laundry in our house, 100% of the bill paying and gardening, and about 75% of the cooking. My husband does 100% of the auto repair and maintenance, as well as the computer and appliance repair and trouble shooting. (Trust me, you do not want to hand either of those jobs to me, ever.) But in some very important areas, there needs to be something resembling equality, or things head south in a handbasket very quickly. If only one partner can make decisions in the bedroom, for example, that's deeply unhealthy. And don't even get me started on the fury I feel when men refer to taking care of their own children as "babysitting." It's not babysitting when their mother looks after them; it's most assuredly not babysitting when their father looks after them.
This was not the way my husband saw the world. "His" way, he explained, had "nothing to do" with him, personally, or his opinions on any subject. It was just "the right way" to do things.
Holy cow. Major lightbulb over the head moment. This explained SO MUCH! Suddenly, virtually every argument we'd ever had made sense. Good gravy!
Why hadn't he explained to me that this was his world view, I wanted to know. He was puzzled as to why I had asked. It had not occurred to him that there was another way to view things. He hadn't explained for the same reason he'd never told me that socks go on before shoes. Wasn't this something that everyone knew?
I, on the other hand, had never considered this way of thinking. There are so many right ways to do things, and so few wrong ones. Any judgement of "wrong" should be saved for matters of grave importance and moral judgement, or simple physics. Even then, realize that others may not agree. I know people for whom the Biblical injunction "Thou shalt not kill" necessitates catching insects, spiders, mice, scorpions and anything else that might invade your home and releasing them back into the wild somewhere safe. It means eating no meat and wearing no leather. For me, it means "Thou shalt not commit murder;" in other words, never decide that your wishes and aims are more important than someone else's life. There are times, however, in which it is perfectly acceptable to kill for food, clothing, shelter or self defense - and self defense includes having intruders invade my home. I will squash a bug or shoot a burglar and feel fine about it. I think that people in both camps (and everywhere inbetween) need to back off and allow each other clear exercise of their own conscience.
I grew up hearing, "There's more than one way to skin a cat," and, "All roads lead to Rome," being told over and over that there was always more than one way to accomplish any goal. I also heard "Consider the source," meaning that you needed to take people's motivation and/or abilities into consideration when making a judgement on someone's actions or words. If they meant well, or were just dim, you had to cut them some slack. The idea that there was only one "right" way to do anything was not part of my daily reality.
I was now having flashbacks to instance after instance in which my husband and I had been on completely separate pages. When we first got married, for instance, how I ate and/or cooked my food could send him into a tailspin. I remembered him insisting, completely distraught, "You cannot go on eating your sandwiches that way!" What? It was my sandwich, and I liked it. When I would tell him that, he would huff and roll his eyes, or worse, tell me, "That's irrelevant." How could the way I liked my sandwiches be irrelevant to me? I wasn't making his sandwiches that way and asking him to eat them, I was just feeding myself. Does not compute!
(His beef with my sandwiches, in case you wondered, is that I put only butter and cheese on my grilled cheese. "They have no taste!")
Other times had made even less sense to me. For instance, I cannot stand it when he wakes me by grabbing my feet. The foot of our bed, of course, has always faced the door of our room, no matter where we've lived. It makes me insane when he wakes me by grabbing my feet. I wake up in a blind panic; I cannot imagine any legitimate reason for that behavior. I would rather have someone clamp a hand over my mouth than grab my feet (or ankles or calves). When I would tell him that, he'd say, "It doesn't bother me."
"Then I'll feel free to wake you that way. But I hate it, so please don't do it. Walk the few extra steps to the side of the bed."
This was usually met with some comment about my being "controlling." And, the next time he was in too much of a hurry to take three extra steps, he'd grab my feet. Every time, I got angrier, because I'd told him, very clearly, that I hated it. Every time, he'd be more surprised, because he had been clear that it didn't bother him. So, it's controlling to allow for individual likes and dislikes, but not controlling to insist that everyone has to be the same? Really? How can that be?
To me, it seemed obvious - I should treat him the way he wanted to be treated, and he should treat me the way I wanted to be treated. To him, it looked entirely different, but just as obvious; there was one right way to handle this, and we should both conform to that right way.
Other people suddenly made more sense, as well. I remembered going round and round with certain relatives about the planning of my wedding. They'd ask me something about our colors or flowers or some such, and I'd tell them what we'd chosen. I expected, "Oh, that'll be nice," or just "OK," but most of the time, I'd get, "Have you considered X?" When I would say yes, we'd considered it but decided against it, or no, we hadn't considered it because we didn't like X, I thought that the discussion was over. Instead, these individuals would bring the same things up, over and over, and I'd end up saying "no" over and over until tempers frayed. Then I'd get more of those comments about being "controlling" and "selfish."
"So, it's controlling of me to want to plan my own wedding, but it's not controlling of you to want to plan someone else's wedding?" I'd ask, and get no response that made any sense. Usually it was some variation of, "I just want to help," or, "I just want it to be nice." Please note, people: if you want to help, you ask what the bride wants, and then do that thing. You don't try to take over, especially if you say things that translate to, "It will be awful if we do it your way." Someone else's wedding is not about you and what you want.
Again, I was functioning under the assumption that every person needed to make and act on their own decisions, and other people were thinking that things had to be done "the right way," and if I was doing it "wrong," I needed corrected. I'd never really understood why people got frustrated when I didn't change my mind to mirror their opinions. I wasn't losing my mind because they hadn't ditched their opinions in favor of mine.
Mommy Wars - stay at home vs. employed elsewhere, breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding - and various other public battles made more sense now, too. Everyone thought there was only one right way, and it was their duty to enlighten others. Oh, my goodness. No wonder I didn't understand a great deal of common social interactions!
I now understood ridiculous, repetitive, circular conversations, as well. I've always made certain assumptions about conversation in general; I tend to assume that they're an exchange of information. You tell me how you feel, I tell you how I feel, and then we'll understand each other. I never understood, then, why conversations tended to go over the same ground again and again.
I'd say, for instance, "I like A." The other person would say, "I've always liked B better." The way I saw things, we now had enough information to understand each other's behavior and choices, and that was the point. I'd go on my merry way, wondering why the other person would belabor the point. "There are just so many advantages to B," they'd say. "B is just terrific. You really should try B."
"I have. I like A better," I'd say, wondering why we were going over this again. I would get totally baffled when they'd bring it up again and again. It also made no sense to me when they said, and they often did, "Most people prefer B." I could not understand the relevance. It was like injecting, "The capitol of California is Sacramento," into the conversation. It may be true, but I couldn't imagine what it had to do with anything. If they liked B, more power to them. I liked A. That's why there are choices. It turns out, though, that a great many people's idea of "right" is tied to consensus. Whatever the majority thinks becomes "right." Pointing out the majority opinion was their "subtle" way of trying to get me to see the error of my ways, and change my mind.
This is a bad idea on so many levels. One, I do not generally understand subtlety. It passes me right by. Two, the concepts of "right" and "wrong" are, for me, morality and religion based. Therefore, there really is no "wrong" way to serve food, or wear your clothes, or plan a vacation, or choose a paint color. This is why I have no interest in fashion. Don't tell me I'm wearing the "wrong" shoes or pants or colors or whatever. It's hardly possible for it to be "wrong." (My only clothing rules for my kids were that their clothes had to meet health and morality standards.) Also, in 5 or 10 or 20 years, everyone will have changed their minds about it. (Do you see anyone in MC Hammer pants and a mullet walking down the street any more?) Three, let's think about all of the things that have been accepted by a majority in the past (or present). Are all of them scientifically correct or morally acceptable? No. Therefore, pointing out to me what the majority thinks has very little effect.
This could be why these same people viewed me as "stubborn," "self centered," and, yet again, "controlling." (I'll cop to "stubborn." ;D) I still have a hard time understanding how these terms are applicable to someone who figured that everyone should go their own way, and not applicable to someone who was trying to badger others into changing their minds.
Sometimes, someone will accuse me of promoting chaos, or of being too wishy washy to take a stand. I think they're missing the point. While I may have a high tolerance for chaos, as a religious person I'm usually accused of being too rigid, with too many rules. I do, in fact, have very firm ideas about what is morally right and wrong, and I believe that one day, each of us will stand before God to account for our actions. The thing is, I am not God, and neither is anyone else on Earth, so we don't account to each other. Since we don't have to justify our actions to each other in big stuff, stuff of moral significance, how could it possibly be that we need to stand in judgement over each other for petty things, like our food and clothing choices?
There are so many right ways to do anything, and so few wrong ones. Give everybody a break.
After so many years, my husband and I have figured each other out, to a large extent. We will still occasionally look at each other and think, or say, "Huh?" That's because we're human. Still, we do pretty well, I think.
And now I'm going to exercise come of that controlling personality to tell you what I think you should do. You should make your own choices without needing a majority rule to tell you that you're right. You should let everyone else make their choices.
After all, there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Illness, Part 8: Meds
I made a prediction to my family: "Watch. I'll go in (to the doctor) and say, 'I feel great,' and they'll say, 'Your blood levels look terrible!'" Sometimes, I like to make predictions that I'm positive are a sure thing, so that my loved ones will be impressed by my prognosticating prowess.
Almost a year ago, my thyroid was removed. It was enlarged and covered in cysts, and my life has been better without it. My biggest problem since then has been the attempts to regulate my medication. Without a thyroid, I'll be on medication for the rest of my life to do the job the gland used to do.
The problem is that mine did its job badly - hence its removal. OK, that's not the whole problem. My body chemistry has never been quite right. I've never had regular periods. I've had diagnosed hormonal issues since I was in my mid-20s, over 20 years ago. I was having trouble getting pregnant, and the OB-GYN ran an MRI and found pinpoint tumors in my pituitary gland. That's worse than it sounds, despite the fact that it means brain tumors. One, they were tiny, very tiny. Two, my last MRI, taken a few months ago, came back clear. We have no idea if that means that they shrunk, that they were never there or that the new scans weren't read properly. The doctor who originally diagnosed the tumors has long since retired, and the original scans have been lost, so they are not available for comparison. Sigh. (At least my blood work shows that my body no longer secretes breastfeeding hormones, years after I stopped breastfeeding. That was one of the originally documented "Huh?" moments.)
Over those 20+ years, I've also had blood tests designed to tell me about my thyroid function over and over, because I've always had symptoms of thyroid issues. Every time, the doctors looked at the results and said, "Your thyroid is fine" - until it had to be removed. (Yeah, dozens of symptoms, persistent over decades, or a blood test - which one are you gonna believe?)
Since then, my endocrinologist and I have discovered that I am something of a paradox. I feel better with a chemical composition that usually makes people feel worse. "I've read about people like you," the endocrinologist said to me, "but I've never actually met one before." So far, we haven't tried to figure out why this is; her office is still trying to wrap its collective head around the fact that it is.
Normally, the higher the concentration of thyroid produced hormones in the blood, the better a person feels. They have more energy, more mental clarity, they lose weight. When the concentration is too low, they are exhausted, mentally foggy, sluggish and gain weight. Doctors have been trying to increase my dosage since weeks after the surgery. Every time, I feel awful. I sleep for 14, 16, even 18 hours a day, but it takes hours to fall asleep. I'm grouchy, have no energy or focus, and get sick easily. Drop the dose, and I sleep normally - I fall asleep quickly, and I wake up 8 to 9 hours later (without an alarm). I have energy. I don't need naps. I rarely get sick. I feel better than I did before the surgery. I like feeling this way.
The problem is that how I feel does not match how the medical literature says I "should" feel.
The medication prescribed for me after the surgery was apparently one of the most common. We had never managed to get me back to the way I felt in the weeks immediately following the surgery, when I felt great but was "supposed" to feel my worst. It was workable but annoying - especially since any time I said, "I'm tired" or "I'm always exhausted" the response was, "We'll raise your levels." NO! That's what caused this feeling!
Then, the manufacturer discontinued that medication. This, it turns out, was actually a good thing. I had to scramble to get in to see the endocrinologist, because I found out that the medication was unavailable when I had a single day's worth left. Silly me. Anyway, I had to see the doctor, because, heaven knows, they can't prescribe medication for a known, documented, unchanged condition without having you sit right in front of them. (I was originally told that I'd also need a blood test first, but they dropped that condition when it turned out that the lab could not get results in time.)
"Well, if you felt good on (the last medicine), I'd just prescribe one that's almost identical. Since you're not happy, though, let's try something new," she said. She prescribed a different medication "that functions totally differently inside your body. For some people, they feel better almost immediately." It's made from the dehydrated thyroid glands of pigs, and was the go-to medication for decades before humanity decided that Better Living Through Chemistry was the Answer to Everything, and naturally derived medicines were for the uneducated and superstitious. Many people who don't respond well to synthetic thyroid hormones do well on this medication. (I frequently refer to them as "my pig pills.")
She told me that I might feel better "almost immediately," so I woke up the next day pretty much thinking, "Show me what you've got." I didn't feel better - or worse - immediately, but after a week or two I did. I like these pills much better. I feel much better. My sleep habits resemble a normal human's - something that has not been the case for most of my life.
I'm supposed to take one pill first thing in the morning, and I never forget. I'm supposed to take one midway through my waking day, "to give you an extra shot of energy to make it through the day," and I frequently forget that dose. For one thing, it does not give me "a shot of energy." I don't really notice the difference at all. I usually forget until close to bedtime, and I'm not supposed to take it too late in the day, lest it cause insomnia. So, if I forget, I just take the next morning's dose. After all, I feel great. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
When I went in for my first checkup after starting the new regimen, I'd been on these pills for about 8 weeks. I saw the physician's assistant (PA) instead of my doctor, which is fine. She's very sweet and competent, despite the fact that she spends most of our time together typing into her computer. I don't blame this on her, but on the current medical culture's need to obsessively document EVERYTHING. This time, she asked how I was doing, how I liked the new meds, and was all smiles with my answers - which boiled down to, "I feel great" - until she called up my labs, done three days previously.
She actually gasped. "I would expect you to be barely functional, like a zombie, with numbers like this! It looks like you're not even in treatment!" The more she stared at the screen, the more agitated she became. "I can't let you walk around with numbers like this!" Then, "Maybe it's lab error. We have to seriously consider lab error with numbers like this." Then, the dreaded sentence: "I'm going to have to increase your dose." UGH!
"I frequently forget to take my second pill. Can we hold off at least until I manage to get the hang of taking both doses?"
"How frequently?"
"More than half the time." This, frankly, was giving me more credit than I deserved - for the first two weeks, I hardly missed any second doses, but for the last month, I think I've remembered a whopping three times.
"The doctor's going to wonder why I let you walk out of here with numbers like this." Then, grasping at straws, "It takes a while for the medication to build up in your blood stream. Maybe it's just not showing up on the tests yet." Yeah, sure, whatever lets me flee the office without a new prescription.
"I get really tired of hearing that my numbers look great when I'm miserable," I told her. This is not new ground we're covering here.
"Of course, of course. You want to be treated like an individual."
See, that's the entire problem. Modern society makes no distinction between individuals. Last time I said almost the exact same thing, "I hate hearing that we have to keep my numbers at a level that makes me miserable," to my endocrinologist, the smile froze on her face and she said, tightly, "I can be held liable if it's determined that I've failed to provide you with a proper standard of care." I have intellectually understood that insurance companies and fear of lawsuits weigh more heavily than health issues and patients themselves in the health care system, but now I find myself smack in the middle of the morass and angry about it.
See, let's first talk about the terms "normal" and "average." "Normal" means "the majority of people fall into this category." ("Most" or "majority," of course, is anything over half.) "Average" is a mathematical term. It means either that you have taken all the available information, added it together and then divided it by the number of individuals it represents, or that it is the exact middle, with half above and half below. Scientists, mathematicians and average people will tell you that nothing is ever 100%. Just because a piece of information represents "most" people, it will never represent all people. Yet, insurance companies and other entities insist that everyone must fall into that middle area. They see no legitimate reason that anyone should ever be above or below that mark. It seems so clearly obvious that some people will fall above that mark, and some will fall below, but they don't see it that way. Everyone must be kept in that middle range, because, by golly, other people need to be there.
This is why, even though I had persistent symptoms of thyroid issues, I was told for decades that I "must" be fine, because the blood tests showed that my hormone levels were in that "normal" or "average" zone. It is also why, even after it was determined that my thyroid was diseased, the health care community feels compelled to return my body to the same body chemistry that existed when I was suffering from disease. It's "normal."
I am thankful that my endocrinologist is at least willing to listen to me. She hears and understands what I have to say. I'm lucky, though, that I fall below "normal." She's willing to let my numbers run low because, "It's far more dangerous to run too high than too low." What if my body's ideal was higher than "normal?"
Still, I feel that I have to fight. My doctor has to straddle the line between keeping me happy and explaining her actions to the insurance company; the company can refuse to pay for any treatment that is not considered "normal." Plus, she has to worry that, one day, I or a family member might sue her because I was not kept in that "normal" range.
I mean, if normal levels were not good for me, it seems obvious that something other than normal would be ideal. And why should anyone but me or my doctor make these choices? Why is it any business of my insurance company? I fear having to fight these battles again in the future, because I'll be on medication for the rest of my life, and my doctor will eventually retire.
So, I left with instructions to "Set an alarm! Don't forget that second dose!" Two out of three days I've remembered. That's progress.
Almost a year ago, my thyroid was removed. It was enlarged and covered in cysts, and my life has been better without it. My biggest problem since then has been the attempts to regulate my medication. Without a thyroid, I'll be on medication for the rest of my life to do the job the gland used to do.
The problem is that mine did its job badly - hence its removal. OK, that's not the whole problem. My body chemistry has never been quite right. I've never had regular periods. I've had diagnosed hormonal issues since I was in my mid-20s, over 20 years ago. I was having trouble getting pregnant, and the OB-GYN ran an MRI and found pinpoint tumors in my pituitary gland. That's worse than it sounds, despite the fact that it means brain tumors. One, they were tiny, very tiny. Two, my last MRI, taken a few months ago, came back clear. We have no idea if that means that they shrunk, that they were never there or that the new scans weren't read properly. The doctor who originally diagnosed the tumors has long since retired, and the original scans have been lost, so they are not available for comparison. Sigh. (At least my blood work shows that my body no longer secretes breastfeeding hormones, years after I stopped breastfeeding. That was one of the originally documented "Huh?" moments.)
Over those 20+ years, I've also had blood tests designed to tell me about my thyroid function over and over, because I've always had symptoms of thyroid issues. Every time, the doctors looked at the results and said, "Your thyroid is fine" - until it had to be removed. (Yeah, dozens of symptoms, persistent over decades, or a blood test - which one are you gonna believe?)
Since then, my endocrinologist and I have discovered that I am something of a paradox. I feel better with a chemical composition that usually makes people feel worse. "I've read about people like you," the endocrinologist said to me, "but I've never actually met one before." So far, we haven't tried to figure out why this is; her office is still trying to wrap its collective head around the fact that it is.
Normally, the higher the concentration of thyroid produced hormones in the blood, the better a person feels. They have more energy, more mental clarity, they lose weight. When the concentration is too low, they are exhausted, mentally foggy, sluggish and gain weight. Doctors have been trying to increase my dosage since weeks after the surgery. Every time, I feel awful. I sleep for 14, 16, even 18 hours a day, but it takes hours to fall asleep. I'm grouchy, have no energy or focus, and get sick easily. Drop the dose, and I sleep normally - I fall asleep quickly, and I wake up 8 to 9 hours later (without an alarm). I have energy. I don't need naps. I rarely get sick. I feel better than I did before the surgery. I like feeling this way.
The problem is that how I feel does not match how the medical literature says I "should" feel.
The medication prescribed for me after the surgery was apparently one of the most common. We had never managed to get me back to the way I felt in the weeks immediately following the surgery, when I felt great but was "supposed" to feel my worst. It was workable but annoying - especially since any time I said, "I'm tired" or "I'm always exhausted" the response was, "We'll raise your levels." NO! That's what caused this feeling!
Then, the manufacturer discontinued that medication. This, it turns out, was actually a good thing. I had to scramble to get in to see the endocrinologist, because I found out that the medication was unavailable when I had a single day's worth left. Silly me. Anyway, I had to see the doctor, because, heaven knows, they can't prescribe medication for a known, documented, unchanged condition without having you sit right in front of them. (I was originally told that I'd also need a blood test first, but they dropped that condition when it turned out that the lab could not get results in time.)
"Well, if you felt good on (the last medicine), I'd just prescribe one that's almost identical. Since you're not happy, though, let's try something new," she said. She prescribed a different medication "that functions totally differently inside your body. For some people, they feel better almost immediately." It's made from the dehydrated thyroid glands of pigs, and was the go-to medication for decades before humanity decided that Better Living Through Chemistry was the Answer to Everything, and naturally derived medicines were for the uneducated and superstitious. Many people who don't respond well to synthetic thyroid hormones do well on this medication. (I frequently refer to them as "my pig pills.")
She told me that I might feel better "almost immediately," so I woke up the next day pretty much thinking, "Show me what you've got." I didn't feel better - or worse - immediately, but after a week or two I did. I like these pills much better. I feel much better. My sleep habits resemble a normal human's - something that has not been the case for most of my life.
I'm supposed to take one pill first thing in the morning, and I never forget. I'm supposed to take one midway through my waking day, "to give you an extra shot of energy to make it through the day," and I frequently forget that dose. For one thing, it does not give me "a shot of energy." I don't really notice the difference at all. I usually forget until close to bedtime, and I'm not supposed to take it too late in the day, lest it cause insomnia. So, if I forget, I just take the next morning's dose. After all, I feel great. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
When I went in for my first checkup after starting the new regimen, I'd been on these pills for about 8 weeks. I saw the physician's assistant (PA) instead of my doctor, which is fine. She's very sweet and competent, despite the fact that she spends most of our time together typing into her computer. I don't blame this on her, but on the current medical culture's need to obsessively document EVERYTHING. This time, she asked how I was doing, how I liked the new meds, and was all smiles with my answers - which boiled down to, "I feel great" - until she called up my labs, done three days previously.
She actually gasped. "I would expect you to be barely functional, like a zombie, with numbers like this! It looks like you're not even in treatment!" The more she stared at the screen, the more agitated she became. "I can't let you walk around with numbers like this!" Then, "Maybe it's lab error. We have to seriously consider lab error with numbers like this." Then, the dreaded sentence: "I'm going to have to increase your dose." UGH!
"I frequently forget to take my second pill. Can we hold off at least until I manage to get the hang of taking both doses?"
"How frequently?"
"More than half the time." This, frankly, was giving me more credit than I deserved - for the first two weeks, I hardly missed any second doses, but for the last month, I think I've remembered a whopping three times.
"The doctor's going to wonder why I let you walk out of here with numbers like this." Then, grasping at straws, "It takes a while for the medication to build up in your blood stream. Maybe it's just not showing up on the tests yet." Yeah, sure, whatever lets me flee the office without a new prescription.
"I get really tired of hearing that my numbers look great when I'm miserable," I told her. This is not new ground we're covering here.
"Of course, of course. You want to be treated like an individual."
See, that's the entire problem. Modern society makes no distinction between individuals. Last time I said almost the exact same thing, "I hate hearing that we have to keep my numbers at a level that makes me miserable," to my endocrinologist, the smile froze on her face and she said, tightly, "I can be held liable if it's determined that I've failed to provide you with a proper standard of care." I have intellectually understood that insurance companies and fear of lawsuits weigh more heavily than health issues and patients themselves in the health care system, but now I find myself smack in the middle of the morass and angry about it.
See, let's first talk about the terms "normal" and "average." "Normal" means "the majority of people fall into this category." ("Most" or "majority," of course, is anything over half.) "Average" is a mathematical term. It means either that you have taken all the available information, added it together and then divided it by the number of individuals it represents, or that it is the exact middle, with half above and half below. Scientists, mathematicians and average people will tell you that nothing is ever 100%. Just because a piece of information represents "most" people, it will never represent all people. Yet, insurance companies and other entities insist that everyone must fall into that middle area. They see no legitimate reason that anyone should ever be above or below that mark. It seems so clearly obvious that some people will fall above that mark, and some will fall below, but they don't see it that way. Everyone must be kept in that middle range, because, by golly, other people need to be there.
This is why, even though I had persistent symptoms of thyroid issues, I was told for decades that I "must" be fine, because the blood tests showed that my hormone levels were in that "normal" or "average" zone. It is also why, even after it was determined that my thyroid was diseased, the health care community feels compelled to return my body to the same body chemistry that existed when I was suffering from disease. It's "normal."
I am thankful that my endocrinologist is at least willing to listen to me. She hears and understands what I have to say. I'm lucky, though, that I fall below "normal." She's willing to let my numbers run low because, "It's far more dangerous to run too high than too low." What if my body's ideal was higher than "normal?"
Still, I feel that I have to fight. My doctor has to straddle the line between keeping me happy and explaining her actions to the insurance company; the company can refuse to pay for any treatment that is not considered "normal." Plus, she has to worry that, one day, I or a family member might sue her because I was not kept in that "normal" range.
I mean, if normal levels were not good for me, it seems obvious that something other than normal would be ideal. And why should anyone but me or my doctor make these choices? Why is it any business of my insurance company? I fear having to fight these battles again in the future, because I'll be on medication for the rest of my life, and my doctor will eventually retire.
So, I left with instructions to "Set an alarm! Don't forget that second dose!" Two out of three days I've remembered. That's progress.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Travel Reviews
I am not a hotel snob. I can't bring myself to be any kind of snob, really.
I love to travel, but all I really want out of a hotel is that it be clean, comfortable, quiet and safe. I don't really plan to spend much time at the hotel. My kids have frequently complained that they don't get to spend enough time in hotel pools.
Sometimes, we'll book a stay at a resort, intending to do more than just sleep and shower there. Our favorite was on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Recently we went to Paris, my husband, my youngest 2 children and me. Three of the four of us had never been there before; my son was there two years ago. Paris, of course, is one of those iconic cities that almost everyone wants to see.
As usual, I just wanted clean and comfortable. Unlike my usual routine, I read the reviews on the booking site ahead of time. I knew nothing about Paris, and I wanted to be sure of things like how close it was to the train station; we planned on arriving and leaving by train.
"I think this hotel caters to college backpackers," I told my husband. It was in an older building with few amenities, inexpensive, and the room I booked had 4 single beds. (Unlike the frame of reference in the US, here "older" equated to "about two centuries," nearly as I could tell.) The reviews said that the rooms were small. "If you have a lot of luggage, plan on stacking it in the tub." We were fine with all of this, because we'd be in Paris. It was supposed to be within walking distance of the Louvre - bonus!
When we arrived, tired and dragging our huge American suitcases, they may have looked at our family and decided to put us in a different room, because they gave us a room with 2 queen beds. There were no lifts; we went up three flights of these stairs. (At least we didn't have to traverse the 6 flights to the top.)
Here's the room itself:
It was small, but not as small as I'd expected. The bathroom was larger than I expected, too. The walls were thick stone, so it was comfortable even without air conditioning. With the windows closed, it was also quiet. The only noise that seeped through were TV sounds from the flatscreen on the opposite side of one wall. The beds were some of the most comfortable we slept on during the entire week in Europe. The bedding was thick cotton, hand quilted, and reminded me of something you'd find on a visit to a grandparent's house. And we were in Paris!
It was half a block from the metro station, a few minutes' walk to the train station, close to numerous restaurants. Here's a few of the places we walked to that first day:
Paris!
After we came home, we left our own review. It said basically what I said above - comfortable, clean, great location, few amenities. Then I read the other reviews.
About half said almost the same things I did. The others were deeply scathing. "Never stay here!" "I'm writing on every travel sight (sic) I can find to avoid this place!" "Awful!" Honestly, I think most of those were the traveler's fault. One whined, "I didn't even realize I'd booked a one star property until I arrived." Really, Traveler? It's clearly posted on the website. Even if it wasn't, you thought that a place without a pool, a fitness center, conference rooms or any other modern amenities was a five star?
One woman said, "Overweight people would have a hard time in these rooms." I'm very large, my husband and daughter aren't small, and we were fine. We didn't have to stack our luggage in the tub, either. Another said, "I literally could not turn around." People really need to understand what "literally" means. It is not physically possible to be in a room large enough to hold a bed and be "literally" unable to turn around. Nobody would be ballroom dancing in these rooms, our two beds were each against a wall, but let's not exaggerate here.
One said, "I don't even think the photos on the website were real." Wow. After looking through them, I can say that not only do I not think that they're faked, they're very accurate. I saw the single room across the hall from us, our room, the lobby, the lounge - they all look just like the web photos. The main photo on the site looks almost identical to this one that I took.
I'd be happy to do it from a comfortable, clean one star hotel.
I love to travel, but all I really want out of a hotel is that it be clean, comfortable, quiet and safe. I don't really plan to spend much time at the hotel. My kids have frequently complained that they don't get to spend enough time in hotel pools.
Sometimes, we'll book a stay at a resort, intending to do more than just sleep and shower there. Our favorite was on the Big Island of Hawaii.
I rarely read guest reviews of properties, because I've discovered that most people hold opinions that are very different from mine. We loved this property. It's one of the few places we've ever stayed where we didn't leave the hotel for an entire day. Our favorite spot was the lagoon, where we snorkeled almost daily. After we came home, I read some reviews, and was glad that I hadn't read them, and perhaps passed on this resort, based on them, before we left.
Many were just scathing. "Awful. I'd never stay here again. Avoid at all costs." Really?
The most common complaint was, "It took 20 minutes to go between the parking lot and our room." Clearly, repeatedly, in the description available, it says that the resort is 62 acres, with several swimming pools, a golf course, the lagoon, restaurants and more. Did anyone imagine that 62 acres meant that you'd be within 5 minutes of your room at all times? Even walking was quick, maybe 25 minutes from property end to end, and there were both a train and gleaming teak and brass boats that would take guests between buildings. Yet, over and over came the complaint about how far apart things were.
One guest complained that the whole place "smelled like a sewer." Um, no, sir, it smelled like the tropics. It smelled wet, because it is wet. The ocean does not smell like a chlorinated pool. Wet, loamy soil does not smell like my home in the desert. Fish ponds will smell like fish live there. There's a country song about a student trip with the lyrics, "We all started yelling when we smelled the beach." I was glad that it was written by someone actually familiar with the ocean. Anyone who expects the real thing to smell like fabric softener called "Ocean Breeze" will be disappointed. The real thing smells wet, a bit fishy, and faintly of decaying plant matter.
We want to go back some day, and take the rest of our family.
At Disneyland, a favorite destination, we like to be within walking distance of the parks. We have stayed on Disney property, at the Grand Californian, and it was great. The room was comfortable, convenient, and had bunk beds for my kids. Why don't more hotels have bunk beds? How often do you want to put two couples in a room together? (Don't answer that.) My travel has usually been with between 2 and 5 kids. Kids do not want to share a bed. Parents do not want to listen to arguments about hogging space and taking the covers. Yet, Disney is one of a very few companies I've ever known to put bunk beds (including ones with a trundle!) in their rooms.
Still, the Grand Californian is much more expensive than other choices. We usually choose places that are in an entirely different cost bracket.
We once stayed at a property that my husband and I loved, and our oldest daughter hated. It was an older place, probably built in the 1950s, and it looked like it. The pool was tiny, and the breakfast was prepackaged pastries. We didn't care; the room was great. We had a mini suite with a king sized bed in one room (important when you and your spouse are both large people, and your spouse can't stand to be touched in his sleep), a second bedroom with 2 queen sized beds, and a full kitchen, with a full sized refrigerator, a stove, a microwave and a dining room table. It would have been especially ideal if we'd been planning an extended stay. We had 5 of us in our room, and my oldest daughter and her husband in another room.
What did this daughter hate the most? The towels. "They're rags! The cleaning rags at my house are nicer than these!" This is true, about her cleaning rags. She is a towel snob. At the age of 13, she was furious with me because I would not replace the one year old beach towel that she'd used exactly twice. ("It's old! It's worn out!") The hotel towels were showing signs of age, sure, but I wouldn't even have remembered them if she hadn't come unglued. (I think she's too picky. She thinks I'm not picky enough. Yes, we love each other and choose to travel together, at least once a year.) She insists that if we ever stay there again, she will bring her own towels. OK.
(The next time she stayed at a hotel, she phoned me. "It was great! Everything was brand new, and the towels were so fluffy!")
Recently we went to Paris, my husband, my youngest 2 children and me. Three of the four of us had never been there before; my son was there two years ago. Paris, of course, is one of those iconic cities that almost everyone wants to see.
As usual, I just wanted clean and comfortable. Unlike my usual routine, I read the reviews on the booking site ahead of time. I knew nothing about Paris, and I wanted to be sure of things like how close it was to the train station; we planned on arriving and leaving by train.
"I think this hotel caters to college backpackers," I told my husband. It was in an older building with few amenities, inexpensive, and the room I booked had 4 single beds. (Unlike the frame of reference in the US, here "older" equated to "about two centuries," nearly as I could tell.) The reviews said that the rooms were small. "If you have a lot of luggage, plan on stacking it in the tub." We were fine with all of this, because we'd be in Paris. It was supposed to be within walking distance of the Louvre - bonus!
When we arrived, tired and dragging our huge American suitcases, they may have looked at our family and decided to put us in a different room, because they gave us a room with 2 queen beds. There were no lifts; we went up three flights of these stairs. (At least we didn't have to traverse the 6 flights to the top.)
Here's the room itself:
It was small, but not as small as I'd expected. The bathroom was larger than I expected, too. The walls were thick stone, so it was comfortable even without air conditioning. With the windows closed, it was also quiet. The only noise that seeped through were TV sounds from the flatscreen on the opposite side of one wall. The beds were some of the most comfortable we slept on during the entire week in Europe. The bedding was thick cotton, hand quilted, and reminded me of something you'd find on a visit to a grandparent's house. And we were in Paris!
It was half a block from the metro station, a few minutes' walk to the train station, close to numerous restaurants. Here's a few of the places we walked to that first day:
Paris!
After we came home, we left our own review. It said basically what I said above - comfortable, clean, great location, few amenities. Then I read the other reviews.
About half said almost the same things I did. The others were deeply scathing. "Never stay here!" "I'm writing on every travel sight (sic) I can find to avoid this place!" "Awful!" Honestly, I think most of those were the traveler's fault. One whined, "I didn't even realize I'd booked a one star property until I arrived." Really, Traveler? It's clearly posted on the website. Even if it wasn't, you thought that a place without a pool, a fitness center, conference rooms or any other modern amenities was a five star?
One woman said, "Overweight people would have a hard time in these rooms." I'm very large, my husband and daughter aren't small, and we were fine. We didn't have to stack our luggage in the tub, either. Another said, "I literally could not turn around." People really need to understand what "literally" means. It is not physically possible to be in a room large enough to hold a bed and be "literally" unable to turn around. Nobody would be ballroom dancing in these rooms, our two beds were each against a wall, but let's not exaggerate here.
One said, "I don't even think the photos on the website were real." Wow. After looking through them, I can say that not only do I not think that they're faked, they're very accurate. I saw the single room across the hall from us, our room, the lobby, the lounge - they all look just like the web photos. The main photo on the site looks almost identical to this one that I took.
I think I'll continue to stick with my usual behavior - I don't ask for, or give, advice very often, because what I think and what others think may or may not bear any resemblance to each other.
Did I mention that I got to see Paris?
The second morning, we walked down the street to a little bakery for breakfast. While we were deciding, someone walked in and said, "Bonjour. Un baguette, sil vous plait." It was delightful - we were having An Authentic French Experience! I'd be happy to do it again.
I'd be happy to do it from a comfortable, clean one star hotel.
Monday, July 1, 2013
A Little Help From My Friends
The mother of one of my son's friends came over recently to tell me that she was afraid that some of the kids my son's been friends with for years were doing drugs. "I'm so sorry to drop this in your lap," she said. She gave me reasons for this fear, and named some names. She also expressed that, in her opinion, it would be a mistake to let my son spend time around these kids any more. "I'm just afraid that they'll drag him down. He's avoided all this mess."
It's a legitimate concern. Kids do drugs. They drink. They have unprotected sex with people they barely know, or like, well enough to speak to. Awful things happen. I don't mean to minimize the dangers or possibilities. Also, my son is a bright, ambitious, sober 18 year old, about to head off to a university hundreds of miles away. Now is not the time to derail.
Still, I am not really worried. I have not laid down any ultimatums.
Please, do not feel the need to "enlighten" me with horror stories. Please do not tell me that every parent thinks, "It won't happen to my kid." I know these things. I do. I don't feel that my child, or his friends, are angelic or perfect. I also do not feel that substance abuse is a rite of passage, and nothing to be alarmed about (or worse, necessary).
To understand how I feel, you have to understand me. To understand me, we have to go back, more than 30 years. We have to go back to high school.
In junior high (for me, 6th - 8th grade, fall 1977 - spring 1980) I knew a few kids who drank, and a few who did drugs. Most of my close friends were pretty sober, but I did know people who engaged in various risky or improper behaviors.
I once mentioned to my husband, in passing, that I'd learned to carry my purse from a successful purse snatcher and pickpocket. "WHAT?" he responded. He found this fact bizarre and astonishing, and in need of an explanation.
I explained that my friend W had made a pretty tidy sum stealing purses and wallets. He'd shown me how to carry my stuff to minimize the chances that someone would take mine. He was a pretty good teacher. The only time someone's ever taken my bag, I walked out of a restaurant and left it there.
I started high school in the fall of 1980, and graduated in the spring of 1984.
Drugs were not hard to find. Alcohol was even easier. I mean, it was high school.
I spent most of my time in the theater department. I was also on the debate team, the yearbook staff and the newspaper staff. My friends ranged from total outcasts to the pretty and popular. I see no reason to dislike people unless they make it abundantly clear that they dislike me. Even then, I usually wish them well - just from a distance.
I have never had a thing for bad boys. I also did not swoon over jocks. My friends would obsess over how cute #42's butt was, or how mysterious the brooding James Dean wannabe in leather was, and it would just bore me. I tended to get crushes on the quirky, nerdy guys. Guys who can carry on an intelligent and funny conversation did it for me (and still do). As a freshman, I had no interest in the blue eyed, blond football player named Nick who sat next to me in science, but I was fascinated by the guy named John who sat in front of me and was in ROTC (the HEIGHT of uncool at my high school). He had painted his car to look like a tank, complete with turret on the roof. He was also witty.
Honestly, though, both my male and female friends saw me as some kind of third gender. I didn't date in high school.
I did hang around with a very large, very tightly knit group of kids. It felt like a family then, and it still feels like a family now.
A significant percentage of these kids did drugs and/or drank to excess. Not all, but enough to be over the 51% required to call it the majority. Some kids also dealt drugs, including one of my best friends. (He thought that no one would notice that he was buying himself sports cars with cash, while working at McDonald's.) Some went way beyond "sexually active" and into "promiscuous." One had his own still. (His "brew" was locally famous, and reputed to be high proof.)
This behavior was never what attracted me to any of them. I tended to view it with a middle aged attitude, hovering between fear and exasperation. I kept waiting for all of them to grow out of it.
On the other hand, they kept expecting me to grow up and get with the program and act like everybody else. They were fine with me as I was, though. They had no investment in making me change.
Even when I started driving a van, and took on the role of designated driver (before there was even a term for it), and was therefore fairly often at parties with very intoxicated people, I felt no pressure to drink or do drugs. None. Zero. I not only have never been intoxicated, I have never tasted a beer, or a joint, or many other substances. I take no credit and expect no admiration, because it took no effort at all. I'm not the only one who made it through school - or life - this way, either. I can introduce you to a number of us. It's not superhuman. It's fairly ordinary.
Almost no one offered alcohol or drugs to me, and those who did were satisfied with a simple, "No thanks." Let me tell you, nothing promotes sobriety more than being the only sober one in a room. Intoxicated people have no idea how ridiculous they look and sound.
Others occasionally refused for me, with much more vehemence than I would have used. Once, someone offered me hallucinogenic mushrooms, and I said the customary, "No, thanks." Their response was a simple, "OK," and I thought that would be the end of it. Another friend leapt in.
"Don't EVER offer her anything like that again! EVER!"
The first friend was shocked. They thought they were being courteous, offering to share. They started to justify - "They're all natural. They're organic. The Native Americans have used them in their religious rituals for centuries..."
"I don't care! NEVER offer Sharon something like that!"
"It's OK," I said.
"No! It's not! It's against your religion!"
"I can say 'no' on my own."
"You shouldn't have to!"
They were protective, especially when they, themselves, were sober.
Still, it wasn't always pretty. I have been vomited on. I have cleaned up someone else's car - a Cadillac - in the middle of the night before the owner's children could return it home. I have sat next to a bed, making sure the sleeper's head hung slightly over the side. One of my dad's stories from his career at the fire department was about a coworker who fell asleep intoxicated and drowned in his own vomit; I was terrified that I would lose someone that I loved. Long before I became a parent, I had no qualms about dealing with the bodily fluids and functions of others.
Long after high school, I worried that someone would overdose, or die in a DUI crash, or be arrested for trafficking.
I never questioned whether they loved me. I felt very loved. I can't imagine that they ever questioned whether or not I loved them. My kids grew up calling many of these people "Aunt" and "Uncle." Most others, they know on a first name basis. I do not understand people who must be surrounded by others who agree with them, and behave in similar ways. Even at the age at which people tend to be the most judgmental and exclusionary, adolescence, we all held it together, loving people who were very, very different from ourselves.
At the time, many people (mostly adults) assured me that it was temporary. We'd never even see each other after high school, except for maybe at school reunions, they said. See the preceding paragraph; some of us are now grandparents, and we still love each other. We are still a part of each other's lives. My kids have "cousins" who are totally unrelated to them. We - the theater department of our high school - hold our own reunions, encompassing about 8 graduation years, because attending school reunions means that we're limited to seeing those from a single graduation year.
My mother always knew who was doing what (and with whom). She knew who took 1/2 an inch at a time from all the liquor bottles in the cabinet, combined and drank it in a concoction called "death." She knew who owned the still. She knew how my friend bought his sports cars. She knew who raided their parents' stash, and whose parents let them (and others) drink at home. I told her, the other kids told her - nobody hid things from my mom. She loved them anyway. This is not because my mother was enabling and trying to be cool. She would have preferred it if they were all sober and virginal. There were clear, iron clad rules. There would be none of this at her house or on her property, whether she was home or not. (No one ever violated this rule.) She would prefer it if it didn't happen in front of her kid, but she left that up to me. She would not give anyone money or bail anyone out. If you screwed up, it was on you. If you followed her rules, you were always welcome in her home. And I mean always - two kids once showed up at 11:30 at night to ask for a fudgesicle. She let them sleep at our house, and had no trouble letting me spend time at their houses.
And they all loved her. Until the end of her life, many of them called her Mom.
One of my siblings once argued with my mom that she was showing favoritism. "You hate my friends! You love Sharon's friends, and they do way worse stuff than mine do!" (This is debatable, but Mom didn't bother.) Her response was immediate and succinct.
"That's because Sharon has never felt compelled to act like her friends."
I thought about that statement when the mother came to me with her concerns about my son's friends.
I know that my son is not me, and that his friends are not my friends. I also know what kind of people they are.
My son is very secure in his beliefs and behaviors. He is bright, personable, friendly and not easily swayed. He doesn't drink, he doesn't use drugs, and I don't see him starting, even if someone makes it available. He is secure being the only "different" one, he is OK with being teased. He can walk away when he needs to. He does not cave in to pressure in order to fit in. If he was a different type of personality, things might be different.
The friends in question are great kids. I'm not going to swear that they've never done something stupid, because they're human, they're kids, and their brains aren't done forming yet. Plus, not everyone believes in lifelong teetotaling. Still, I cannot conceive of them as being so far gone that they're a danger to my kid.
I thought about my mother's reaction to my friends. I thought about how my life would be immeasurably emptier without them in it. I thought about the people my son has added to our family - because they are family. They are not disposable.
Three of my kids are adults, and one is a teen, so we can have conversations that may have been iffy when they were younger.
"Can you imagine," I asked, "how all of our lives would be different if Grandma had insisted that I couldn't be around Aunt B any more?" Their Aunt B spent years intoxicated on a daily basis, in a household where adults could be absent for weeks at a time. My kids know this, and they know how much their grandma loved Aunt B. "Can you even imagine Aunt B being a bad influence?" Their shocked looks said that they could not.
I had a conversation with the kids in question, and their moms. They knew what had been said. I did not ask what they may or may not have done. I did not threaten, or lecture. I said, "Do we have to have a conversation about what I consider to be acceptable behavior?"
They laughed. "No, Mom." They know.
I said to my son, "Even if other people lose their minds, I expect you not to lose yours."
"I know, Mom."
I asked the other parents, "Are you worried?"
"Not at all."
"OK, then. We're all clear."
In 30 years, maybe they'll have similar conversations with their kids, and be able to think of how their honorary aunts and uncles did not ruin their parents' lives. I hope so.
It's a legitimate concern. Kids do drugs. They drink. They have unprotected sex with people they barely know, or like, well enough to speak to. Awful things happen. I don't mean to minimize the dangers or possibilities. Also, my son is a bright, ambitious, sober 18 year old, about to head off to a university hundreds of miles away. Now is not the time to derail.
Still, I am not really worried. I have not laid down any ultimatums.
Please, do not feel the need to "enlighten" me with horror stories. Please do not tell me that every parent thinks, "It won't happen to my kid." I know these things. I do. I don't feel that my child, or his friends, are angelic or perfect. I also do not feel that substance abuse is a rite of passage, and nothing to be alarmed about (or worse, necessary).
To understand how I feel, you have to understand me. To understand me, we have to go back, more than 30 years. We have to go back to high school.
In junior high (for me, 6th - 8th grade, fall 1977 - spring 1980) I knew a few kids who drank, and a few who did drugs. Most of my close friends were pretty sober, but I did know people who engaged in various risky or improper behaviors.
I once mentioned to my husband, in passing, that I'd learned to carry my purse from a successful purse snatcher and pickpocket. "WHAT?" he responded. He found this fact bizarre and astonishing, and in need of an explanation.
I explained that my friend W had made a pretty tidy sum stealing purses and wallets. He'd shown me how to carry my stuff to minimize the chances that someone would take mine. He was a pretty good teacher. The only time someone's ever taken my bag, I walked out of a restaurant and left it there.
I started high school in the fall of 1980, and graduated in the spring of 1984.
Drugs were not hard to find. Alcohol was even easier. I mean, it was high school.
I spent most of my time in the theater department. I was also on the debate team, the yearbook staff and the newspaper staff. My friends ranged from total outcasts to the pretty and popular. I see no reason to dislike people unless they make it abundantly clear that they dislike me. Even then, I usually wish them well - just from a distance.
I have never had a thing for bad boys. I also did not swoon over jocks. My friends would obsess over how cute #42's butt was, or how mysterious the brooding James Dean wannabe in leather was, and it would just bore me. I tended to get crushes on the quirky, nerdy guys. Guys who can carry on an intelligent and funny conversation did it for me (and still do). As a freshman, I had no interest in the blue eyed, blond football player named Nick who sat next to me in science, but I was fascinated by the guy named John who sat in front of me and was in ROTC (the HEIGHT of uncool at my high school). He had painted his car to look like a tank, complete with turret on the roof. He was also witty.
Honestly, though, both my male and female friends saw me as some kind of third gender. I didn't date in high school.
I did hang around with a very large, very tightly knit group of kids. It felt like a family then, and it still feels like a family now.
A significant percentage of these kids did drugs and/or drank to excess. Not all, but enough to be over the 51% required to call it the majority. Some kids also dealt drugs, including one of my best friends. (He thought that no one would notice that he was buying himself sports cars with cash, while working at McDonald's.) Some went way beyond "sexually active" and into "promiscuous." One had his own still. (His "brew" was locally famous, and reputed to be high proof.)
This behavior was never what attracted me to any of them. I tended to view it with a middle aged attitude, hovering between fear and exasperation. I kept waiting for all of them to grow out of it.
On the other hand, they kept expecting me to grow up and get with the program and act like everybody else. They were fine with me as I was, though. They had no investment in making me change.
Even when I started driving a van, and took on the role of designated driver (before there was even a term for it), and was therefore fairly often at parties with very intoxicated people, I felt no pressure to drink or do drugs. None. Zero. I not only have never been intoxicated, I have never tasted a beer, or a joint, or many other substances. I take no credit and expect no admiration, because it took no effort at all. I'm not the only one who made it through school - or life - this way, either. I can introduce you to a number of us. It's not superhuman. It's fairly ordinary.
Almost no one offered alcohol or drugs to me, and those who did were satisfied with a simple, "No thanks." Let me tell you, nothing promotes sobriety more than being the only sober one in a room. Intoxicated people have no idea how ridiculous they look and sound.
Others occasionally refused for me, with much more vehemence than I would have used. Once, someone offered me hallucinogenic mushrooms, and I said the customary, "No, thanks." Their response was a simple, "OK," and I thought that would be the end of it. Another friend leapt in.
"Don't EVER offer her anything like that again! EVER!"
The first friend was shocked. They thought they were being courteous, offering to share. They started to justify - "They're all natural. They're organic. The Native Americans have used them in their religious rituals for centuries..."
"I don't care! NEVER offer Sharon something like that!"
"It's OK," I said.
"No! It's not! It's against your religion!"
"I can say 'no' on my own."
"You shouldn't have to!"
They were protective, especially when they, themselves, were sober.
Still, it wasn't always pretty. I have been vomited on. I have cleaned up someone else's car - a Cadillac - in the middle of the night before the owner's children could return it home. I have sat next to a bed, making sure the sleeper's head hung slightly over the side. One of my dad's stories from his career at the fire department was about a coworker who fell asleep intoxicated and drowned in his own vomit; I was terrified that I would lose someone that I loved. Long before I became a parent, I had no qualms about dealing with the bodily fluids and functions of others.
Long after high school, I worried that someone would overdose, or die in a DUI crash, or be arrested for trafficking.
I never questioned whether they loved me. I felt very loved. I can't imagine that they ever questioned whether or not I loved them. My kids grew up calling many of these people "Aunt" and "Uncle." Most others, they know on a first name basis. I do not understand people who must be surrounded by others who agree with them, and behave in similar ways. Even at the age at which people tend to be the most judgmental and exclusionary, adolescence, we all held it together, loving people who were very, very different from ourselves.
At the time, many people (mostly adults) assured me that it was temporary. We'd never even see each other after high school, except for maybe at school reunions, they said. See the preceding paragraph; some of us are now grandparents, and we still love each other. We are still a part of each other's lives. My kids have "cousins" who are totally unrelated to them. We - the theater department of our high school - hold our own reunions, encompassing about 8 graduation years, because attending school reunions means that we're limited to seeing those from a single graduation year.
My mother always knew who was doing what (and with whom). She knew who took 1/2 an inch at a time from all the liquor bottles in the cabinet, combined and drank it in a concoction called "death." She knew who owned the still. She knew how my friend bought his sports cars. She knew who raided their parents' stash, and whose parents let them (and others) drink at home. I told her, the other kids told her - nobody hid things from my mom. She loved them anyway. This is not because my mother was enabling and trying to be cool. She would have preferred it if they were all sober and virginal. There were clear, iron clad rules. There would be none of this at her house or on her property, whether she was home or not. (No one ever violated this rule.) She would prefer it if it didn't happen in front of her kid, but she left that up to me. She would not give anyone money or bail anyone out. If you screwed up, it was on you. If you followed her rules, you were always welcome in her home. And I mean always - two kids once showed up at 11:30 at night to ask for a fudgesicle. She let them sleep at our house, and had no trouble letting me spend time at their houses.
And they all loved her. Until the end of her life, many of them called her Mom.
One of my siblings once argued with my mom that she was showing favoritism. "You hate my friends! You love Sharon's friends, and they do way worse stuff than mine do!" (This is debatable, but Mom didn't bother.) Her response was immediate and succinct.
"That's because Sharon has never felt compelled to act like her friends."
I thought about that statement when the mother came to me with her concerns about my son's friends.
I know that my son is not me, and that his friends are not my friends. I also know what kind of people they are.
My son is very secure in his beliefs and behaviors. He is bright, personable, friendly and not easily swayed. He doesn't drink, he doesn't use drugs, and I don't see him starting, even if someone makes it available. He is secure being the only "different" one, he is OK with being teased. He can walk away when he needs to. He does not cave in to pressure in order to fit in. If he was a different type of personality, things might be different.
The friends in question are great kids. I'm not going to swear that they've never done something stupid, because they're human, they're kids, and their brains aren't done forming yet. Plus, not everyone believes in lifelong teetotaling. Still, I cannot conceive of them as being so far gone that they're a danger to my kid.
I thought about my mother's reaction to my friends. I thought about how my life would be immeasurably emptier without them in it. I thought about the people my son has added to our family - because they are family. They are not disposable.
Three of my kids are adults, and one is a teen, so we can have conversations that may have been iffy when they were younger.
"Can you imagine," I asked, "how all of our lives would be different if Grandma had insisted that I couldn't be around Aunt B any more?" Their Aunt B spent years intoxicated on a daily basis, in a household where adults could be absent for weeks at a time. My kids know this, and they know how much their grandma loved Aunt B. "Can you even imagine Aunt B being a bad influence?" Their shocked looks said that they could not.
I had a conversation with the kids in question, and their moms. They knew what had been said. I did not ask what they may or may not have done. I did not threaten, or lecture. I said, "Do we have to have a conversation about what I consider to be acceptable behavior?"
They laughed. "No, Mom." They know.
I said to my son, "Even if other people lose their minds, I expect you not to lose yours."
"I know, Mom."
I asked the other parents, "Are you worried?"
"Not at all."
"OK, then. We're all clear."
In 30 years, maybe they'll have similar conversations with their kids, and be able to think of how their honorary aunts and uncles did not ruin their parents' lives. I hope so.
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