Serah has dark, terrible thoughts about her whole life & how to handle it. She toys with the idea of getting ready to go somewhere, bra, jeans, tshirt, socks & shoes, and then to just start walking.
She can’t decide if this urge is one of a flight towards freedom or towards suicide. It has been more than a year…closer to five years, actually…since she could do a full grocery shopping trip without passing out before the food was put away. She will call for the frozen foods to be brought to her in the tones of a bomb shelter guard: there is no time to be lost, the essentials must be stored in their proper places before the next airstrike–when Serah’s vision turns grey & black with shooting stars, & she knows that the respite from her own personal Luftwaffe is over. Time to lay down, to let unconsciousness smother her, or else lay half-awake as vicious spasms rack her muscles. Later, she’ll find crusts & crumbs scattered everywhere by her family, her home a stinking minefield.
And she thinks of walking.
war
June 13, 2010a moment to cover my ass
June 12, 2010Of course all this is fiction. Serah Gould Ravenswing, alternately known as ‘I’, is simply a way for me to try my hand at writing something bigger than the occasional blurp on Twitter or malarkey on Facebook about how wonderful life is, or even the once-upon-a-time MySpace Fist of Rage blogs targeted at whoever hurt my feelings that week. The odd thing is, people actually read those, and as of this moment, BMS is my little secret, a corner of the internet as yet unnoticed by acclaimant, critic, or bored web-surfer.
Nevertheless, the potential reader should know: much like Mutant Down Under, most of this is true only as much as the observer decides that it must be true. Everything written is true in a relative, psychoanalytic kind of way, but anyone hoping to meet up with the Darrell Gould or Ulla Ehrenreich of this blog will be disappointed. On occasion I may work into my stories actual living people or places that truly can be found on a map, but most writers do.
Fiction is almost always about the truth.
The Bitch Is Back
June 11, 2010After four blogs fishbowled with self-pity and then an unexplained hiatus of nearly a year, here I am again. Let us all hope I have something interesting to say this time around.
The rest was background for what’s happening now…as all the past is background, backstory, for the moment upon which we are poised. I’m irritated to discover that Flash Factor is by no means original. Although it does seem that I predate most, if not all, of the flash factors out there, with their brand spanking new copyright 2010′s hanging off their ass ends. I could have gone with Ravens Wing, but my art porn site (finally over 100 visitors in just over a year, I’m getting up there!) and sexy Myspace & sexy Twitter all are some variation on the Ravenswing theme, and I am not sure that I want to brand myself as the crazy art porn micro-star with the pretentious blog about her fucked-up family. Let us keep things in their respective places, I say, with the merest of nods to the obsessive-compulsive behavior that soothes me so.
Wurble: Self-Pity
July 9, 2009The sense of isolation, of loss, grows and grows and grows as he wanders off away from me; as my physical strength, my hopes, dreams, and goals, turn from the beauty of the present and the future shining with a myriad of possibilities dwindles down to a pinpoint: one second at a time. I live by heartbeat lately. Not the way the anonymous alcoholics do. My self-pity is of a different variety. Not so self-congratulatory, at any rate.
I may have to sue myself for defamation of character
May 25, 2009I am bugnuts but I can’t get proof. It’s not my goal to get professional verification of my lack of sanity; in fact, for a while there, I was doing my damndest to appear well-adjusted, as at that time I believed there was some sort of benefit to looking sane. Oddly, that was the period when I came closest to getting labeled as something. I was evaluated as “narcissistic, lazy, self-indulgent, male-dependant with possible [insert any known disorder here]” by one doctor of psychsomethingy. I thought I should get on that one as the eval sounded pretty urgently serious to me. Subsequent testing ruled out everything but anxiety, PTSD, atypical ADHD, and intelligence. PTSD is responsible for anxiety, intelligence for atypical ADHD, put those together with a lack of coping skills, you get “adjustment disorder” that explains an amazing range of erratic behaviors. In other words, it means absolutely nothing. It even rules out the term “crazy.” I can behave like a full-on maniac, and it’s just because I’m smart and stressed out. Toss in a confirmed diagnosis of fibromyalgia, and everything is explained away by the effects of chronic pain. Woohoo. Still doesn’t help me feel any better.
Not that a “real” diagnosis would make me feel better. It’s the treatment plan that is supposed to help with that. My husband was diagnosed as bipolar. Awesome, I thought, now at least we can get him some help. Nope. Starting to feel like it’s all a big scam, medicine. The medicine I was given for the fibro compounded my physical issues and impaired me mentally as well. My husband has not known what to do, how to handle the stress of watching me get sicker and sicker, with the lack of family support–or worse, negative family interference–with his own brain chemistry already monkeywrenching away. So he gets medicine too, but what he was prescribed seems to be making it worse. Fucking doctors. Fucking medical establishment. I wish I could poke them all in their smug little eyeballs with their free drug-rep pens for doing absolutely nothing useful. I’ve dropped 50 pounds since going on meds again. I’m still in constant pain, struggling to eat or sleep, and Darrell smashes up electronics in the kitchen sink like he’s in a video game where the goal is to destroy all gaming systems. He thinks this is a sensible although somewhat extreme solution to people being irresponsible with his games and electronic equipment. I’m feeling utterly lost, because watching his one sure source of stress relief go literally down the pipes makes me want to follow it. Break me into a million pieces too, I want to tell him, I’m tired of driving you and everyone else crazy. But if I say this out loud, he gets more upset and acts even more erratic, the behavioral health people increase his fucked-up medication and tell me I need to be more supportive. And then they smile at the both of us in a way that I am assuming is meant to be reassuring, but it comes across to me as part mechanical, like they have been retrofitted with LCSW software and are programmed to issue bullshit general statements followed by bullshit fake smiles. The other part is a slight hint of self-congratulation; the software is functional and making them so very useful, so helpful at assessing the defectives in front of them and coming up with practical solutions so that the defectives quit tearing up other people’s lawns and dripping blood photographically all over the internet.
It’s hard to say anything anymore. I am trying. I am doing what I can. I don’t know what to do. I have a lot of hope for this new therapist I’m seeing. I’m afraid of hoping too.
It turns out my one close-to-crazy psych eval all those years ago was rendered pretty much null and void for all practical purposes because it later became apparent that the doctor who did it possibly has an anti-female bias. He acted as a psychiatric consultant for a government agency, evaluating parents who were involved in certain types of custody situations, were suspected of engaging in illegal activities (fencing, drug dealing, etc.) or child abuse. He administered some standard tests, conducted a 1-2 hour interview with the “client”, and then wrote an evaluation based on the information he had gathered and “collateral information” from the referring agency. This tended to be the information that formed the basis of the agency’s suspicion of illegal activity, a file to which few “clients” were granted access, rendering it rather difficult for the person under suspicion to feel that they had been granted due process. Eventually a bunch of us ended up getting together and comparing our experiences with him and another therapist in the area. While his evaluations of the males seemed to have some variation, the majority of the female “clients” were labeled as narcissistic, lazy, self-indulgent, male-dependant with possible passive-aggressive personality/borderline personality/bipolar disorder. Those three disorders seemed to be rampant in that particular area amongst white female parents, with incomes below poverty level, and with boyfriends or children of color. I’ve never attempted to do a nationwide statistical analysis of those factors, but those of us comparing this doctor’s evals had only those three things in common. Otherwise we appeared to have a wide range of personality types, religions, and life experiences, yet damn near cookie-cutter speculative diagnoses.
The other therapist had an interesting approach: he invited the victims of abuse and rape to “let go of the blame game, and look at [their] own responsibility in the situation.” Yep. The fucking asswipe said this to a variety of women, most nauseatingly to a 15-year-old victim of gang rape.
She had a history of attention-seeking behaviors, drinking and going off here and there, so possibly this therapist believed that rape was a natural consequence of her behaviors. Never mind that the attention-seeking was because she quite possibly needed, uh, attention. She got in the car with the nice town boys because they made her feel pretty. And interesting. They went and drank at a nearby state park area, and one of them held her hand and told her he could fall in love with her. He said not to worry, he wouldn’t hurt her. He wouldn’t want her to do anything more than she wanted to do. It would be okay to take off her pants because (as he held her hand and gently touched her face and arm and thigh) he would never ever go any further than she said he could. Once the pants were off, he held her down and whispered that if she just did what she was told to do, he would protect her and make sure that his friends let her live afterwards. She held still because it just seemed prudent. They dropped her off at her sister’s trailer house when they were done. She was incoherent and nearly hemorrhaging, the carefully extricated pants ruined after all.
No one believed her. The doctor offered no opinion as to whether her injuries were a result of forced intercourse or consentual rough sex. Charges were dropped. It was such a shame that a trailer park girl like her would want to ruin those boy’s lives, some said. So trashy she would ride around half the night with boys she barely knew, too drunk to notice or care that her period had started and ruined her pants, and when she got in trouble at home, try to get out of trouble with a crazy story. What was she thinking, that anyone would believe that popular, handsome boys like them would ever even LOOK at a fat slutty girl like her. Maybe one of them turned her down or hurt her feelings and she was acting in retaliation. Others shook their heads over the misunderstanding, that she would think the first boy was threatening her, when he thought she was agreeing to group sex as long as they were careful with her. And the other boys (because boys will be boys) not knowing a thing about the so-called misunderstanding, just doing what drunk boys do with girls who don’t say no. Who knew what really happened out there, bunch of kids fucking around in the dark, there just never was any way to tell once the booze started flowing.
She told me this story ten years later. I was slamming around the house we were sharing, spun as hell, bitching about Dr. WhatTheFuck telling me that I needed to examine WHAT in the matter of my ex abusing me and my kids? I was yelling that my responsibility lay in not shooting my fucking ex in the head when I had a chance, sure I would have gone to jail and probably to hell too, but for sure it was my responsibility to protect my children, and was I supposed to say that to this moron, who ostensibly was educated and qualified, at least in the state of Minnesota, to practice therapy? That when I proceeded to NOT commit murder, that’s where my motherfucking responsibility lay in the motherfucking situation? Had I just not heard what he said correctly? Was I delusional in thinking I was a victim too?
Antha started laughing, a kind of half-hysterical half-relieved weeping laughter that stopped me in my tracks to examine her for signs of Organic Brain Syndrome or temporary methamphetamine-induced psychosis, as we meticulously tracked the other’s behavioral patterns out of mutual concern over such things. She didn’t appear to be having a psychotic break, just being weirdly emotional, so I waited to hear the joke.
“I bet you I can tell you the name of the therapist you’re talking about, and QUOTE exactly what he said to you,” she finally said.
“Yeah?” I wrinkled my forehead at her, accustomed to somewhat odd behavior, but never having played Name That Therapist And His Tagline before. “Who and what?”
“Hah. ‘I think what you need to do here is move beyond the blaming, and examine your own responsibility in this matter,’” she intoned in a creepily familiar, self-important manner, and then sang out, “Mister Roddy Fucking KNOWLES!” like she was winning the Jeep Grand Cherokee Eddie Bauer Edition on a TV game show. She should have gotten some sort of prize because she had the thing dead-on.
“You know this guy?” I asked, stunned at the accuracy of the imitation. “How?”
And that is how I heard the story of How Antha Lost Her Virginity and subsequently was forced into therapy to cure her of her desire to increase her sense of self by ruining the lives of others.
In ten years, I was the first person who believed she was a virgin when she got in that car. I was the first person to look beneath the manipulative exterior, the selfishness, her completely amoral adult functioning, and everything else that made her one of the most hated and feared women in the area, and hear a child’s voice with no lie in it.
The medical community fails us over and over again. Darrell, the gentlest man I have ever met, seeks help because he said something mean to me during a stressful time, and his resulting shame turned a mildly bipolar episode into a scary rapid-cycle anger/suicide ride. The help he gets: medication that is not only dangerous for someone with his physical issues, but has increased his irritability AND almost eliminated his ability to assess the appropriateness of his behavior even after the event. I’ve been fucked over so many times by medical ignorance or neglect that I could write a book, not just a blog. As for Antha…I believe that the lack of support she experienced all those years ago perpetuated a mental rape upon her that was far more devastating than the physical rape that tore her to the point of hemorrhage. We are all making our way through. I don’t know…maybe WE aren’t the crazy ones.
( The blog entry ends here. The rest is legal stuff, because I have learned from experience that if your ass is hanging out, at least carry sunscreen. )
The following information regarding libel is from
http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/defamation. My comments are enclosed with [brackets].
Defamation: a false and unprivileged statement of fact that is harmful to someone’s reputation, and published “with fault,” meaning as a result of negligence or malice.
Libel is a written defamation; slander is a spoken defamation.
To prove defamation:
Establish that a statement has been made or published to someone other than the person defamed;
That it is a false statement of fact;
that it is clearly is about the plaintiff and could harm the reputation of plaintiff.
If the plaintiff is a public figure, he or she must also prove actual malice.
Opinion itself is not usually considered defamatory,
but making a statement and labeling it as “opinion” doesn’t automatically make it so. It doesn’t count as just opinion if a reasonable reader or listener could understand the statement as asserting something that could be proved true or false. The context of the statement is sometimes considered as statements made in the context of an Internet bulletin board or chat room are highly likely to be opinions or hyperbole.
However, if it can be seen in context as an assertion of fact, even if presented as an opinion, it may be construed as defamation.
[The story I relate above contains specific references to two different mental health practitioners in the state of Minnesota who actually exist. In the first specific reference, I personally was not privy to the collateral information gathered by the governmental agency, and hence cannot make a statement regarding the accuracy of such. I never saw my own file, and do not know what it contained. The other clients who shared their evaluations with me told me verbally that they were not allowed full access to their files either. The feeling that due process was subverted is a feeling--aka opinion--generally held by the persons going through the referenced process. I did see the actual evaluations themselves, and in the ones I saw, the general assessment paragraph varied only from the statements above as pertained to the intelligence and/or the appearance of the subject. For example, I was described as having adequate intelligence and dressed appropriately, while another subject was of adequate intelligence but dressed inappropriately. Another was described as having a cognitive impairment. That particular subject appeared extremely intelligent to me, but I never administered any tests to her, so who knows. Other than cognitive function our assessment paragraphs were almost identical. Psych evals are confidential documents; at the time I saw them I was given verbal authorization by the subjects to disclose my findings of the odd similarities, with the understanding that details regarding their identity should be withheld in order to avoid further targeting or stigmatization. Because of this possibility I too prefer anonymity.
In the case of the second practitioner, the details of the alleged rape and subsequent therapy are written here as they were related to me by the alleged victim and by her family members. I changed her name and some small details to provide a measure of anonymity. She did, however, give me permission to share her story publicly, and indicated a willingness to make an official statement regarding the details of her therapy if an issue arose regarding the truthfulness of my disclosure. I never had opportunity to ask Rod Knowles himself if the quotes attributed to him in the above blog were part of his standard practice with other alleged trauma victims. I was not one of his clients, and I am not certain as to his educational degree although in conversation he was referred to as doctor. When he made the statement to me as quoted above, it was during the course of our one and only meeting, one that I was given to understand had been requested by him so that he could meet me and assess how to best offer services to my ex during the course of a child custody situation. I was alone with him during this one meeting, hence have no witnesses. On the off chance that Mr. Knowles or someone who knows of him were to read this blog and find it defamatory, I would be forced to leave behind the comfort of anonymity and ask other women--or men--to come forward with their experiences. If necessary I will do so. I have reasonable belief based on confidential conversations that multiple persons can or will make statements similar to my own.
All references in the body of the blog to persons or situations not specifically mentioned in this bracketed footnote are either fiction, autobiographical fiction, or depicted in a somewhat fictionalized manner to illustrate a point about a general opinion, i.e. the failure of the medical community to adequately meet the needs of various patients. Except for the incidents addressed in the footnote, no other persons or situations should be construed as anything other than fiction, including the pronoun "I".]
“Truth is an absolute defense to a defamation claim.”
Hello world!
May 24, 2009Hello, World! Awesomely cheerful. I love it! I’m trying to engage in positive cognitive reformatting so that I’m not sick anymore. Maybe I’ll try it out. I’ll put it in my PDA so that I can start my day out right.
6:30 a.m. Wake up
6:50 a.m. Wake up for real. Take meds and lay very still so that you don’t wake up the baby by screaming accidentally because you moved too fast. The child believes firmly in a 7:20 or later wake-up. He will object to early-morning yelping.
7:00 a.m. Take cleansing breaths. Try to focus on something good and nice and happy. Look, the electricity is still on! Your Twitter friends in Australia probably tweeted something fascinating and unintelligible in the 3 hours you slept. Something to look forward to. Rock & roll. Time to establish contact with children.
7:01 a.m. Call out, “Hey kiddos! Are you up and…” Realize that only a little squeak came out. Try again.
7:02 a.m. “Are you up and around?” Wait for response.
7:03 a.m. Call out again. This time a sound much like that of an unhappy walrus makes its way down the hallway. You reassess and calculate quickly that son #1 is having bed gravity issues again, and these issues may well be responsible for the soulful sea mammal noises. Belt out corresponding walrus encouragement sounds…not because you want to really, but because that first call and a half triggered a series of muscle spasms in your back which somehow misplaces all your carefully acquired language.
7:04 a.m. Reassure yourself that it will pass, both aphasia and muscle lock. Remind yourself of all your reasons to live. Remind yourself of how necessary you are, as one reason to live is being held to the surface of his bed by an alien force field, and yet another reason is making closet noises that indicate she holds you, one of her brothers, or some other unknown entity responsible for the complete lack of a belt. Your hear flop flop creak flump sea walrus bellow overlaid by a high-pitched superfast angry tirade delivered to the empty belt hook in the closet. None of it sounds like English even though the only other language training you’ve given them is the ASL sign for bathroom, Spanish curse words, and the universal sign used on people who tailgate you in school zones.
7:05 a.m. Beg husband to check on kids progress so you don’t have to move. Try to recognize that he too has disordered sleep patterns in order to avoid a multilingual and somewhat divisive communication sequence.
7:10 a.m. Wake up for real again. Spend five minutes playing 20 Questions Statue Style with children. “Are you dressed?” “Yes mom.” “Socks and shoes?” “Noooo…” “Shirt? Pants?” “NOOO!!!”
7:15 a.m. Come to realize that the combination of bladder urgency and concern over your child’s interpretation of the word “dressed” is swiftly taking priority over the pain of moving. Toddle towards bathroom only to find it occupied. Try not to peepee dance.
7:20 a.m. Discuss with husband who is administering which child’s meds. Attempt to wake up little one. Fall asleep during process.
9:10 a.m. Wake up and discover that husband has taken care of morning routine with kids. Assess work hours and the need to be at work approximately 45 minutes to an hour before 9:10.
9:12 a.m. Remember that your doctor said no heavy work and hence there are no hours available to you. Have a short panic attack thinking about bills.
9:13 a.m. Spend some time thinking about how to get 200-300 calories into your gullet instead of just drinking coffee. Get out of bed, again.
9:15 a.m. Walk out of bedroom and stare in horror at the aftereffects of what was possibly a tornado in the living room. Promptly lose appetite.
9:18 a.m. (here’s where I’m adding even more positivity) Stick your head out the window and holla “HELLOOO WOOOOORLD!”
I’m thinking about using the theme called “Fresh Bananas” for this blog. It is described as “Light blues and reds compliment the lack of yellow in this two-column theme.” Uuuuhh. I am pondering this statement as well as the theme title. It sounds like it could be useful, if it compliments the lack of things. We may have a working solution if the light blues and reds compliment the lack of sensible content.
