My daughter, her boyfriend, and me decided to spend today at Lake Powhatan, a nearby small lake where there are “rooms” (clearings) along the forested paths, each one containing a picnic table and a grill.
This year I made sure not to forget the tinfoil (last year we didn’t have any and most of the hamburger fell through the grill vents into the fire–we fished them out and ate them anyway) but we forgot the lemonade I made last night! So at the last minute we stopped in a convenience store and picked up a bottle of Sprite. Guess I’ll be having lemonade with my dinners this week.
We found a good “room” with a view of the lake that was shaded all around by trees, but the mosquitoes were having a field day and I have the red welts to prove it.
That’s the actual name of the lakefront we went to.
We had the usual Memorial day fare: burgers, baked beans and potato salad. Everything tasted wonderful. There’s nothing quite like meat cooked outside on a grill, and it wasn’t scorched this time from falling into the flames.
Come and get it!
It was really too cold to swim, although some people were (especially the kids) but we weren’t that courageous. My daughter and her boyfriend stayed safely on the sand. Me? I can technically tell people I “went in,” since I waded in up to my knees, and then waded back. The water hasn’t really warmed up yet. But it felt good just standing there in the shallows feeling the gentle breeze.
As we were walking back to where we parked (a good 3/4 of a mile walk because the parking area was full), we saw these two black snakes in an…intimate moment. Nature always has so many surprises, but I still felt a little guilty taking pictures of them. (You can click on the photos to get a closer view).
Those of us who were scapegoated and rejected by our own families often feel like orphans in life, forever being buffeted to and fro by the winds of a seemingly heartless world and hanging on to what seems like a brittle tree branch for our lives. We were trained and groomed by our families of origin to continue to be victimized throughout our lives, always treated as though we were less than everyone else, deficient in some way. We were not given the tools other children in our families, or the children of normal, loving families were given to do well in life. We were tossed out “with the wolves” so to speak, and told to “sink or swim.” Unfortunately, too many of us sink–into abject poverty, drug or alcohol addiction, eating disorders, abusive marriages, and mental and physical illness of all types. Everything that others seem to obtain with ease–a wide circle of friends, financial success, material goods like houses, cars or vacations; respect and closeness within their families, a relatively easy climb up the corporate ladder–seems to elude those of us who grew up programmed to believe we were defective.
We may not have literally been orphaned by our parents, but functionally we are no different than orphaned children. Children who lost their parents young to death or abandonment also grow up without any sense of belongingness and no loving, close attachments to anyone. How can you when you are treated like a number at some orphanage (more so in the past or in foreign countries like Romania) or are constantly being sent from one foster home to another, where the foster parents may mean well (but sometimes not) but have too many other charges to take care of to fulfill your need to belong and be loved. Orphans learn not to get too attached to anyone because any attachments they may form are impermanent. Getting close to others hurts too much, so they learn not to get close to anyone, not to trust anyone.
When orphans become adults, they are sent out into the world ill-prepared for adulthood with no emotional or financial help to guide them in their journey. With no one to truly care for them, and no families to turn to in times of need or crisis, they must either sink or swim. Those that swim do so at a cost. They may become successful in life, obtaining the trappings like money or status, but they never really know what love or real self esteem is. They don’t even know who they are. They just know they must survive–at any cost. It’s my belief that orphaned kids who take the swim route become narcissistic–how could they not? Adopting a false self and a fighting mentality is the only way they know to survive in a harsh, uncaring world where they seem to have no place.
Although narcissistic abuse survivors may have been raised in actual families, we were emotionally and spiritually orphaned due to rejection and emotional abuse. We were compared unfavorably with siblings, other family members, or just about anyone else. We were raised to believe we had no rights. We were punished for having opinions. Our boundaries were constantly being violated; we weren’t even allowed to have boundaries. We were called names, belittled, gaslighted, threatened, and stunted and stifled in every imaginable way. Our efforts to be approved of and small victories were belittled or sabotaged. We were refused financial or emotional help where other children or young adults from normal families (or even our own families) would have received it (my family refused to pay for my college education although they could have afforded it). We were trained to believe we were undeserving of success or love. We developed a strong Inner Critic who continued to live on inside us long after we left our families of origin, continuing the abusive message that we are less.
We become adults who are afraid to take any risks, afraid to speak our minds, afraid to stand up for ourselves, afraid to just be. We feel guilty if we do succeed in something and sabotage ourselves just like our own families sabotaged us. If we were bullied by our families of origin, we develop dismally low self-esteem and internalize the message that we deserve nothing and are nothing. We develop a victim mentality that makes sure the bullying and rejection continues throughout our lives. We develop C-PTSD and are handicapped on almost every level for finding our rightful place in the world. We were programmed by our narcissistic families to be targets for other abusers and narcissists, who smell our vulnerability and our lack of emotional defenses. I can’t tell you how many childhood victims of narcissistic abuse were also bullied in school or even as adults in the workplace, were always passed over for promotions or raises, or married narcissistic spouses who continued the abuse, sometimes taking it to new levels of cruelty. I know because I was one of them.
Even if we somehow managed to find some small place in the world, we still feel like we don’t belong. We still feel isolated from the rest of the world, different in a bad way. We feel like we don’t deserve to have anything good. In their desperation, some narc-abuse victims sell their souls and turn to narcissism as a way to cope. They escape the enemy by becoming the enemy. Their attitude is fake it ’til you make it (or just pretend you made it). Their self esteem isn’t real; inside their prison of narcissism they are screaming in agony, but God forbid anyone ever know. They’d destroy you first to avoid being exposed as vulnerable and defenseless as they really feel. They sacrifice their very souls to survive.
For those of us fortunate enough to have escaped narcissism, there is more hope. Although we may appear to have much less than someone who turned to a narcissistic defense, spiritually we have so much more. We haven’t jettisoned our souls to survive. We may have lost everything else–we may have poor physical or mental health, live in poverty, feel isolated from everyone, have difficulty getting close to others, always seem to have less than others–but spiritually we remained intact. Our quest to reclaim our humanity is a hard journey, filled with pain, but the moments of self-discovery and emotional and spiritual growth are so worth it. In the process of healing from narcissistic abuse, I finally found the family I know will always accept me unconditionally: God’s family. There is always a place at His table, where you will never be judged and always accepted for the person you are, instead of the one you can never be. In God’s family you are never an orphan.
Sometimes something as simple as music helps you get there. Here is a song that helped me (and at least one other narcissistic abuse survivor I can think of) in the early days of starting this blog:
I can’t….I can’t not reblog this. OMG. This is like my life. I know these narcissistic yuppies of which Katie speaks. The corporate and work world is swarming with them. They swarm wherever there is money and status. They swarm in churches too (though happily, not in my church). They look down on and judge those of us who have less, those of us who they took everything away from.
Where they don’t swarm and where survivors can find refuge: natural places where you can be quiet with God and surprisingly, places of knowledge and learning, even among those who do not believe in God. Places where we can explore our creativity and feed our souls and ask questions. They stay away from those places where we are free to be who God meant for us to be, places where no one judges or looks down on us. These gifts are worth so much more than some ugly, sterile McMansion in a gated community or tricked-out status foreign car.
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Credit: Magpie’s Nest / Car with lots of geegaws and doodads
I really don’t know why, but the words geegaws, doodads, and dingbats all crack me up. They are real words that can be found in the dictionary (and they all mean almost the same thing, although dingbats refers more to digital doodads and geegaws–or a scatterbrained or stupid person) but they still sound like jokes to me.
Dingbat can also refer to a type of cheaply built, flat-roofed apartment house common in southern California. Most dingbat houses come in pastel colors, have stucco fronts, and are adorned with a monogram or logo (such as the owner’s initials or a romantic sounding name like “Tropical Breeze,” “Sinking Ship,” or “Halfway House”). The boxy structure overhangs a parking stall. Some dingbats actually have a dingbat-like doodad stuck on the front like this one (but I don’t think that’s the reason they’re called dingbat houses).
One word I think sounds really nasty and gross is “moist.” Whenever I hear the word moist I feel like puking. Apparently I’m not alone though: moist seems to stimulate gag reflexes everywhere because the way it sounds reminds moist most people of bodily functions. Don’t tell me a cake is “moist”–I’ll probably spit it out at you.
Some words are just plain annoying. One “word” that comes to mind is “melty.” I don’t even think it’s a real word, just a dumb adjective made up by advertisers for equally dumb consumers. I will not eat “melty” cheese, bite into a “melty” sandwich, or be separated from my money for anything “melty.” I hate that word. So don’t use it in front of me. Ever. Please.
What are some words you have a visceral reaction to (disgust, laughter, annoyance, terror, etc.)?
Plain Ol’ Vic says he hates durian, a fruit from Indonesia that’s illegal in many places due to its awful stink. There are people who love it though, and say it doesn’t taste nearly as bad as it smells. I think the custardy consistency would put me off, but I would still like to try it sometime to see if it’s really that bad.
Has anyone tried durian, and if so, what did you think of it?
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In our increasingly sociopathic and cold-blooded society, the most vulnerable people are falling through the cracks and no one seems to care. It’s a popular sport these days to target the poor, elderly, mentally ill, sick, disabled and otherwise vulnerable and blame them for all of society’s ills–and of course for their own lot. Many people today think helping these people is just “enabling” them and that somehow they deserve their lot. Some Prosperity Gospel “Christians” even say that to help them is a sin because the reason they suffer is because they are morally inferior and displeasing to God. All this is nothing more than societal gaslighting, and to Christians who want to live as Jesus did, such views are pure heresy and evil.
Now there’s a new group of targeted people–chronic pain patients. My housemate, who I’ve written about before, suffers from chronic, debilitating pain due to fibromyalgia and injuries sustained in a car accident she was involved in more than thirty years ago that has caused bone fusion and scar tissue buildup. Some days are so bad she can hardly move, and spends the entire day in bed, sometimes crying from the pain. But she’s been unable to get any pain medicine that works. She has been to 20 or 30 different doctors, and all refuse to prescribe any kind of opiate medication, the only kind that works for her.
My housemate is not a drug addict. She has no history of drug addiction. Before she moved to this state, her doctor prescribed her Oxycodone, which relieved her pain. She did not get high from it or take more than the prescribed amount. When she moved here, her medical records were transferred, but no doctor here will even look at them. She’s been to several pain management doctors, but all they will do is give steroid injections, which require twice weekly visits (she does not have any method of transportation so this is a hardship) and are much more expensive than her previous opioid medicine was–the frequent copays cost much more than she can afford, and only a portion of injection treatments are covered. They also don’t work for her pain. Physical therapy hasn’t worked either. In fact, she says it makes the pain worse.
But because she has asked doctors for the same pain medicine she was getting in her old state, and keeps trying new doctors, she has been redflagged as a “drug seeker” and “doctor shopper” and “shows addictive behaviors.” She was required to attend a drug assessment and passed it, but she still can’t get any doctor to give her a prescription. Pain patients are being stigmatized as addicts even when they are just doing what anyone in their right mind would do when denied medicine that works–going to a different doctor. My housemate (who is moving back to the state where her old doctor was) continues to suffer and can barely function due to the pain.
I decided to do some research on this issue, and it turns out she’s far from alone. Profiling pain patients as if they’re criminals and stigmatizing them as drug addicts has become a new epidemic in this country, and it’s because of the recent DEA crackdown on opioid pain medicines, which have been sold for years on the black market as recreational drugs. Some people have speculated that the increasing difficulty in obtaining pain medicine legally is due to the relaxation of marijuana laws that have decriminalized or even made medical marijuana legal in many states. The DEA needs a new bogeyman, because that’s their bread and butter and there’s a lot of money involved, so now they’re going after pain patients.
Only cancer patients can (theoretically) be legally prescribed opioid pain medication without having to submit to all sorts of unnecessary drug and psychological tests (these protect the doctor rather than the patient) and jump through medical hoops to get the medicine they need. But even they sometimes fall through the cracks, especially in states like Florida where the drug laws are especially draconian. Darlene Patsos, a Florida woman with Stage 4 lung cancer, was denied access to any kind of palliative pain relief, even though she was terminal. This is unconscionable and appalling–and cruel beyond belief. You’d think we were living in the Middle Ages instead of 2016. This simply should not happen in any technologically advanced society.
No one, whether they have cancer or some other condition causing chronic, severe pain, should be profiled like a criminal and denied medicine that improves their quality of life and allows them to function instead of being bedridden because they’re in too much agony to do anything else. Yet doctors are denying patients these necessary medicines because they’re afraid the DEA might come after them. So they’ve adopted a one-size-fits-all pain management regime that consists of less effective (and more expensive and time consuming) “alternative” treatments–and that size doesn’t fit everyone. Whatever happened to the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship? Since when do doctors have less authority than these law-and-order thugs who tell them what they can and cannot give to their patients? Methinks the people who approve of these ridiculous new drug laws are the same ones who loudly scream about “too much government.” This country is running amok with these sort of heartless hypocrites who want everything for themselves and could give a rat’s ass about you. You’re in so much pain you can’t sleep at night, can’t work, can’t take care of your kids, are a burden on your family, can’t have any quality of life at all? The injections of dangerous steroids and physical therapy aren’t working? Oh well, sucks for you. I’m fit and healthy and can afford to pay an expensive specialist out of pocket for opioids if I ever have chronic pain–but I’ll never be in your shoes anyway.
I read a website by an empathetic doctor who wrote a blog about this issue, and there are hundreds of responses, mostly from chronic pain sufferers. They are heartbreaking. Many describe contemplating suicide because the pain is so unbearable. Some had been getting opioid pain relievers without any problems for years, and their doctors suddenly stopped their prescriptions when the DEA began to crack down, in some cases pulling the medication from them cold-turkey, so not only did their patients have to deal with sudden severe pain, they had withdrawal symptoms as well. Some were forced to go to the black market to obtain pain medicine, risking arrest and the possibility of taking something impure or dangerous. The suicide rate among pain patients is up 30% since the DEA began to crack down, and many of the entries describe friends and relatives who died by their own hands, because they were no longer able to cope with their pain. But to the DEA, I guess it’s better to have no quality of life and end it in suicide or turn to the black market (heroin is easier to obtain than legal pain medicine) than to run a small risk (4% for pain patients) of becoming addicted.
Otters are my second favorite animal. There are many different types of otters–here are some of them. I think the drawings are adorable. I hope you can read the captions–I couldn’t make the chart any larger.
Lucky Otters Haven 