The Anals of History

” I spent a great deal of time sitting in the bedroom writing furiously and feeling that I was terribly important and that everything that I wrote would go down in the annals of history or whatever. And it’s proved to be… quite true.”

That magical time of year has arrived, my friends. Morrissey’s birthday? My birthday? Well, yes, but more importantly, it’s that time of year when I get pinned and mounted like a butterfly by my former mental health provider! And damn but they must hate butterflies. Yes, I’ve gone through proper channels, but in honor of Big Mouth’s birthday, and Morrissey’s, I’m about to write some highly inadvisable wroth born of misery.

So, if you follow my blog, you may be familiar with last winter’s hits, The Soil Falling Over my Head, and Much Ado About My Last Post , which detailed my previous encounters with the bloated Alien Queen that dwells in the gaping and unshaven cave where the heart of my former mental health provider should be. And while my previous, purely satirical, hypothetical post by Kylo Ren First Order Counseling Kinda Sucks, By Kylo Ren/Ben Solo may or may not have reflected anything IRL, I cannot say. What I can declare without hesitation is the full-on, non-consensual, raping my last few weeks of “therapy” felt like.

Just like Kylo, it began with a bad match for psychiatric care, which happens. So what’s a compliant client/patient to do? Like a pale, wounded Frodo asking Sam to move in with him — read the book! — I spoke about it with my therapist. Obviously, I was asking for it because we all know Frodo gets screwed, and definitely not by his “beloved Sam.”

Somehow, I forget how cruel people are, even those you’ve shared your troubles, wishes, hopes, sadness, and regrets with. I feel as though I have been beaten about the head until my ears ring, my other front tooth broken, and I have to call out of work again. But enough about my attempt at marriage. I have never personally experienced such cold, callous treatment from a mental health professional.

It was as if, this woman who had greeted me with warm smiles for two years transformed into the Bitch of Buchenwald before my eyes.

The first session after my complaint about the psychiatrist consisted of her trying to sign me up for an “intensive anxiety group” at another facility. Besides my general feelings on “group,” which essentially consist of abject terror of people, and the notion that someone may want me to friggin’ pray. I can’t pay an Uber to take me there 3-4 times a week. She knows this. But when I asked about keeping her as a therapist, she sunnily declared that I’d get a new one there. Not one word about what we had been working on in therapy was uttered by her. I brought it up. She swatted it down.

First off, I thought she was trying to be slick and get me to sign myself out of care there and into another program of my own accord. I later learned, by calling this other facility, that the program was a 60 day, out-patient, Benzodiazepine detox consisting of Group several times a week, and a once a week a check in with a psychiatrist. It was their doctors who raised my dosage of those by a milligram in less than a year. So now they kick me out for it? Not only was the program grossly inappropriate for me, but it did not consist of individual therapy at all, and they had no therapists taking new clients at the time.

After leaving and feeling dead inside for a day or so, I thought perhaps I wasn’t seeing things clearly. So I went back to her the next week. Again, no talk of the issues we had been working on. She started in asking about drinking and marijuana use. I responded as I always do, I have one or two drinks sometimes, and once and a while, with months passing in between, I may have a draw off a bowl.

Now, I have zero money, live in the midle of nowhere, with someone who doesn’t care for it, and I wouldn’t know where to find it if I wanted. Furthermore, I don’t know what’s in that stuff anymore. I don’t eat meat because, besides the inhumane treatment, its contribution to Greenhouse emissions (between 75 and 85%), but also because I have no idea what they feed or inject or do to those animals.  And while most doctors I report this to are mainly concerned with the alcohol because of my medications, she declared that I needed to accept a drug and alcohol diagnosis for marijuana, along with mental health to continue on there.

But no, apparently I’m a vegetarian, asthma and sinusitus sufferer who tokes up any old street weed and smokes cigarettes? Yeah, she added that to my diagnoses as well. I am that jerk who coughs when I smell cigarette smoke. It just makes no sense, unless they are bilking Medicaid, or have been all this time. (Yeah, I saw that segment on John Oliver on Rehab and “Liquid  Gold.”) It’s like they think those with mental illness don’t use the interwebz or like the phone. Urgh.

Now, to be clear, I live in a Medical Marijuana state. And in the past, like a dumb, young farm-boy trying to bring his droid into a cantina, I had asked about it because of my diagnoses. At the time she said she had referred other clients to prescribing doctors, but now my diagnoses, my mention of the state’s program, and my honestly reported use of marijuana became bargaining chips. I was told I had to accept the Drug & Alcohol diagnosis for marijuana to have PTSD on my chart, or I was out.

I had a heroin problem in the past on and off, between my dad dying a few days before I began my senior year of college, and my ex-husband who broke both my front teeth, on separate occasions, stole my money, beat me until I told him where I hid my money, etc. But I have 10+ years in full remission, not that I count, because I don’t for some reason. I was NOT taking a drug and alcohol diagnosis. After what I went through to lose that stigma and regain my life.

I left the lilacs I had picked from outside my house on her couch, and left. And now I’m out in the rain. I do have things moving through proper channels, etc. I had an intake elsewhere, and I’m waiting for an individual evaluation. But, yeah, I was fucked. Hard and without mercy.

So, in honor of my Mozzy, myself, and the three day weekend everyone gets because of my birthday (you’re welcome), I’m just laying this out there. Not to be spiteful. Not to hurt. But to help…me. Because I know my value now. Sure, I have my Morrissey/Smiths playlist on. It’s raining. And I spent the past few days crying into my pillow. But seriously, those unholy assholes. Without mercy. Kicking down a person they are sworn to protect. Thanks for the sodomy without the reach around!

Truly a story for the anals of history.

PS– I bet they never have optioned IP and never thanked the Academy. Ya know, like I have.😘

While you’re here: Please check out the wonderful work done by the people at The National Alliance on Mental Illness and donate.

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