getting over it

i had my own conversation with a friend, not long ago, on the challenges of overcoming abuse. i have heard sermons on living the overcoming life, and often interjected into them have been statements about getting over the past and moving on. but those statements have been made with little understanding of what it is one who was abused is really having to get over.

my friend was sexually abused by her step father for most of her childhood. i was verbally and emotionally abused by my peers, my step family, and some of my cousins, for the duration of my childhood. the kind of abuse isnt the real issue. what happened isnt the real issue. and there is more to it than simply healing the hurt feelings over such betrayal and assault. its not about hurt feelings.

the harm that people did to us when we were children, whether physically or not, carries with it greater psychological harm. that is what traumatized us the most, and what followed us like a stalker long after those people had been left behind. what they did was terrible. but why they did it, and did it over and over, is what bewildered us, confused us, and convinced us to be victims. if that were not the truth, then once we left those people behind we would have been fine, and there would have been no more problem.

if you grew up in a good home with loving parents, or even a single parent who loves you, if they are supportive and involved in your development, and teach you how to handle situations with wisdom, and instill confidence in you not only for what you can do but for who you are, then living the overcoming life is not the impossible dream. but if you grow up in house where you are constantly told you are the problem, you are the reason these things happen to you, then overcoming is a foreign word. you will have to overcome yourself, and change yourself, with no tools or resources with which to accomplish this. and no blueprint with which to redesign yourself. and nothing with which to accurately gage your progress.

and you can be sure of one thing. there will be no shortage of significant people to tell you you are failing in that too.

im sorry. does this sound overly dramatic? it may be, to the person who did not grow up used and rejected. that person has no concept of how utterly fundamentally undermined a person can be in their very inner structure as a person. that is what i had to get over. to become a person, to stand on the earth and believe i am as significant as anyone else. even to believe that whether i have anything to offer or not, i am here and i will not be chased off. i will live and have my being as freely as anyone else. it just had more challenges for me than for most to pull this off.

but we can get over it. it takes more than just choosing to. it takes learning a whole new way of being. it takes the attitude that other people dont determine who you are, and dont have the right to do you harm. it takes practice. just acting like you believe in yourself is enough to cause strangers to react differently to you than before. walking with your head up suggests strength, and makes you a less desirable target. and less of a jerk magnet. and its a good beginning place.

getting over it wont happen overnight. but it doesnt have to be never either.

Technorati Tags: abuse

a tail of two kitties

its been an eventful weekend already. this will be a lengthy post … so be ready.

it started thursday morning. i had maggie and thor in the cat room, where they go on their own now when i nudge them a bit, and usually wait patiently. as i was bringing nozi in thor did the unexpected and broke his pattern. he dashed out of the room. when he did, my reaction was to try to shut the door before he reached it. he got mostly clear of the door … all but his tail. ouch! well of course he cried out, but ran again when i reopened the door. he didnt act any differently than he ever does when trying to escape the inevitable, and ran back into his room after a lap around the house. that evening when we got home, we saw he was acting like he had a problem. his poor tail had a gash in it, and was obviously paining him. so next morning, since the beau was on the first day of his first week vacation, after dropping me off at work, dropped thor off at the vets. he had a dental on his plan, so the doc put him under, cleaned his teeth, and stitched up his tail while he was out. that little ten pounds of cat is all muscle, and like a small tiger when he doesnt want to cooperate. we had to give him a rinse off when we got him home, as he had pissed in his carrier. that was more difficult than i thought with him still loopy from the anesthesia. maybe worse as he was all freaked out from being dizzy. we got through it mostly unscathed, except for the scratches on the beaus hand. then off to the cage to recoup.

this is the second tail we have had to have repaired this year. gizmo had his tail bitten by nozi in a scuffle not long ago. it gave him quite the abscess, which he licked enough to drain it, and then the vet cleaned it and bandaged it. his was bandaged for over a week, and had to have wet and then dry compresses, along with antibiotics. but he left his tail alone, and didnt need to wear the collar which he wouldnt stand for any way. thors tail, on the other hand, is in open air, and he wont leave the stitches alone, so we have to put the collar on him, and keep the little tiger caged because he runs all over the house banging into everything with the collar on.

sigh.

friday wasnt over yet. we had purchased a storm door from lowes, and scheduled the installation for friday, when the beau would be home. apparently, for a 36″ door they will send the contractor out to pre measure the door jam to make sure there will be a good fit before you ever buy the door. but for a 32″ such as ours, they do not consider it necessary. i dont know why. the contractor took one look at our doorway and knew it was not going to fit. the door wouldnt fit into the recess properly. this caused us no little trouble. it was my early friday, so i was off work by then, and at my hair appointment when the contractor arrived on schedule at home. so he and the beau, most displeased by now, went to lowes to see what alternatives were possible. none of the doors were suitable, mostly because they either wouldnt fit as well, or were not what we wanted. the beau was really pissed off when he found out about the pre measure policy for larger installs, because he wasnt even told he could choose that as an option. it is standard on the larger doors, but available on the smaller ones for a mere $35. available, that is, if youre told about it. which we were not. so the clerk that sold us the door made the decision to save us $35 without even asking us. this resulted in the beau, and me too really, being really irate, demanding a refund, and getting $100 cash from the store manager for all the trouble it caused us, the time it used up unprofitably, and the personal aggravation. so we did not get the door installed, we did not have time to work on getting stuff ready for the neighborhood garage sale happening the next day, and we still had to bring thor home from the vet.

geez!

saturday went better than i thought it would. the beau took some boxes to the post office, and by the time he got back there were hundreds of people going from house to house that had sales going on. we werent ready at all, but started putting stuff out anyway. people started coming up and buying stuff before we even got things organized. it was crazy, but in a good way. we made over $200 in the first couple of hours, and got rid of a lot of stuff, and all with a later start than every one else.

so now its sunday morning, and we have no plans except going out to the bass pro shop later today. i still have today, monday, and tuesday off, and the beau is off till next monday. a well deserved vacation too. we both have had really busy days at work.

ahhh … long weekends.

Technorati Tags: memorial day weekend,cats,home improvement,garage sales

and the beat goes on …

Technorati Tags: work,conflict

this morning we wont be taking the phones off service at the usual 830 time. the office manager is going to talk to us about resolving conflict in the workplace. great. just great. we had two employees who were all upset and in tears yesterday, both for entirely different situations. there are ten of us, all female, all between the ages of 40 and 60. it was the two who have been there the longest, one twenty years and one nineteen years, who were so up in arms. and it usually is. they are both the kind you have to walk on eggshells around, or they get their feelings hurt. but neither of them is careful for anyone elses feelings. not that i dont like both of them. i like everyone i work with. it just kind of surprises me the lack of professionalism and maturity i see at work. its so often ‘all about me’. we have four doctors in this office, all who are of the utmost professionalism. its not that they are without conflict, because they have to hammer out their own scheduling differences too. that was what one of the outbursts was about yesterday - which IV nurse was going to work labor day weekend. i cant imagine what would happen if the doctors acted like that. the other outburst im not really sure about. the nurse involved had just come back from a few days off. her friend and coworker had given her a heads up about a fussy patient who was on the phone, or on voicemail, or something, and she just flew into a tizzy about having just her brother - who, incidentally passed away several months ago. the friend-coworker finally had enough of walking on eggshells, and told her she wasnt going to apologize for delivering messages anymore. i was proud of her for that. i told her she wasnt responsible for anyone elses emotional well being. we do what we can to be respectful and courteous, but we cant go around trying to protect every one from any little thing that might set them off. everyone is responsible for their own reactions and responses. we are theoretically adults. yeah right.

exasperated

yesterday i was really peeved by the time i got home. our office manager had been in a huff all day because her mail hadnt been dealt with during the week she was on vacation. i believe it was only one person she felt should have taken care of it. but she was demonstrating her bad temper to every one except the IV nurses, as far as i could tell. she was blaming it on us talking too much. the thing she usually overlooks is the time she spends chatting with the nurses, as well as looking things up online - i have seen her monitor on other things besides her work during the same work hours we all have - and the other inconsistencies in her administration of corrections and allowances. she has on two different occasions expressed my perfume has given her an instant headache, on those really rare days i even wear a little. but one of the business office women wears a very heavy fragrance every day - the kind that fills the room and stays there - and what is more she reapplies it at both smoke breaks and at lunch in an attempt to cover the smell of her heavy smoking. she is the only one who gets to have two additional breaks a day to accommodate her habit. any of us can go down to the first floor to the snack room and get treats when its not busy, but woe to the one who would go twice a day every day and stay gone fifteen minutes each time, regardless of patient flow. she isnt the only one with inconsistencies and moody temperaments. there is usually something petty going on.

mind you, i dont dislike working there. every time i feel gripey about the pettiness, i come back to the fact that its still the best place i have ever worked. and really, for ten women to work as well together as we do is pretty amazing. my little gripe sessions are shared only with one other at work, or i stew about it while i take my shower in the evening, and then im fine by the time im done, as if all that annoyance goes down the drain with the soap and water. it is only annoyance, and i dont want to make a federal case out of it, because then i would be doing the same same thing that aggravates me in the first place. wouldnt that be amusing?

so having gotten it off my mind, im ready to start a whole new day, and have fun at work, and make the front office a cheery place for patients to encounter on their way in and back out of again.

thanks for listening.

Technorati Tags: work,office,coworkers

crashed . . .

. . . but not burned. when i turned on the computer this morning, all i got was a screen notification that said my system file was corrupted, and nothing could be opened. ack. dig out the restore cd-rom.  lost all our files, pictures, bookmarks, settings. sigh. it could have been so much worse, however.

when i got to work i found out one of my coworkers, who had been building a house on some recently purchased property, had withstood some damage from severe straight winds that had blown through during the night. upwards of 80 mph i believe. she and her husband had just sold most of their belongings and moved into an RV to live in while they continued building, having just sold their old property as well. they have horses, so they were building a barn attached to the house. the RV was parked next to the barn. the wind sheered the barn structure, but left the house structure undamaged. the RV was rocked, but left upright. this was at about 2:30 am. the horses are fine, they are fine, and the 2 cats and 1 dog are ok. i dont yet know if their RV is still livable.

so my minor inconvenience is nothing more than mildly annoying. but i did get my previous old fonts back, and i am pleased with that.

i have begun praying in the last few days for all my coworkers, and coming headlong against some serious strongholds that have been around for some time. it can be like stirring up a hornets nest when one begins to bring down old strongholds. things have gotten stirred up a bit here and there at work. but i am not backing off. i will pull harder and more fiercely until the walls come down. its invigorating to be in spiritual battle once again. i didnt realize how i missed it.

google Tags: prayer, spiritual warfare, storms, computer crashes