Tag Archives for Invisible Illness

Horrible Boss Flashback

It never goes away, does it? The involuntary visceral constriction when someone reminds you of a terrible episode in your life. Did the person with whom you imagined yourself building a life break your heart or did you break theirs? Did someone you loved dearly suddenly permanently pass from your life? Did a trusted friend unforgivably betray you? Did you have employers who inappropriately inserted themselves into your personal life? I’ve experienced these situations, and more, that have sometimes made life more difficult than one wishes it to be. However, the incident of which I was recently reminded was the inappropriate treading into my life, which my last employer felt they had the right to do.

I ran into someone recently, whom I had the pleasure of working with on a project for a short time, not long before I became ill almost four years ago. Lucky for her, she did not have to bear the same degree of pain, humiliation, and strife I did to cut ties with our former horrible boss. Hearing the name of the company where we used to work made me cringe. Since the end the legal action I had to take against the company, I’ve done all I can to limit contact with anyone who worked there so I can maintain my peace of mind. Especially those former colleagues who blindly supported my former horrible boss without knowing the truth about what I was subjected to.

My former horrible boss tried to deny me access to my disability benefits when it became clear that I couldn’t return to work after my hospitalization at the onset of my illness. She demanded answers to embarrassingly inappropriate questions about my health. She later terminated the part of my extended health benefits that paid for the many expensive medications I take to function daily; and even worse, she terminated my employment without notifying me about a year into my illness in an attempt to strip me of my long-term disability benefits. On top of all that, she launched a campaign of misinformation within the company to explain my sudden then extended absence. The stress of trying to cope with all of this and my poor health and constant pain was, at times, too much to bear.

The person I ran into knew the crux of the situation because she had heard details from a mutual friend. She expressed her sympathies that someone, anyone, could have done any of what our former horrible boss did to me; especially because the early period of my illness was when my doctors had no conclusive answers about what was happening to my body and I was truly fearful for my life. Instead of being able to direct my focus on my health alone, I was forced to cope with the added stress of an employer who felt they could insert themselves into the most intimate parts of my life. When I refused to share what was happening to me, in part because I truly didn’t know, but mainly because it’s against the law for an employer to ask. It set in motion the series of events I listed above – and much more I try never to think of – that I still sometimes can’t believe. The right to protect my health and personal information caused a protracted legal case that thankfully vindicated me and ended my former horrible boss’s persistently violent prying into my life.

Even though all of that happened, the best thing about this flashback, about any flashback, is that it’s no longer part of one’s current reality. It may be difficult to be transported back to a particular moment when something devastating happened, however, that living moment is gone. Better still, I know I have the protection of the law and the emotional and psychological tools to bolster me if ever the smallest thoughts of that situation resurface in my life, and if any do, I don’t have to stay with them or delve beyond the surface of those memories unless I choose to do so. In this case, where anything involving my former horrible boss is concerned, I choose not to delve deeper than necessary to describe how she attempted to intimidate and deprive me of what I needed to care for myself. I choose not to allow who she was, and probably still is, affect me beyond a momentary tremor in my subconscious because I survived and beat her attempts to harm me during a time when I had to dig deep just to keep living.

 

The Difficulty Of Being Loved

FACT: When we are loved, it’s not always easy to accept it and take in the full meaning of it.

The difficulty of it lies in trusting the realness of receiving something immeasurable without any expectation of having to give a single thing in return. It’s especially difficult when we have lived lives where we survived abuses and/or significant traumas where love and tenderness were withheld to increase suffering. How can a person trust a reality where things are given without a price or obligation attached, when one’s whole existence screams that it isn’t possible to have that, to be worthy of that, or deserving of another human being who regards your being with tenderness and care?

I’m a witness to this struggle now. I’m seeing this unfold in the life of one of my friends and the mental health toll is enormous. My friend’s partner is in the midst of a major health battle and seems incapable of accepting, or acknowledging, how deeply they are loved and cared for by so many people. This person could be told every hour on the hour that they are loved and they still might never believe it. The exhaustive effort invested in repeated attempts to show love in tangible ways with the gifting of things, through deliberate actions, physical emotional comforts, and just being there are all dismissed as insufficient or outright meaningless; which makes the giver, in return, feel unloved.

Being on the receiving end of this dismissal may be a deeper pain than never being loved. Watching someone I love live through something like this makes me feel helpless. There isn’t enough I can do or say to make this situation better. I can be supportive. I can tell my friend kind words or make suggestions about how to cope. However, I know my actions and words only salve the pain during the moments when we interact. When those moments end, my friend is the one who returns to living this difficult reality. A reality that – if I’m reading things correctly – is not going to end well, no matter how much I hope for an alternate result.

As this situation unfolds, it’s getting harder for me to understand why people make living the lives we have so much harder than they must be. Why do we treat each other so harshly? And why, when we are most in need of it, do we reject the kindness and love of those closest to us?

 

Bonnie Raitt – I Can’t Make You Love Me

 

Conflicted Canadian On Canada Day

Today marks 150 years in the millennia that the land we call Canada has existed. It is the 150th year; I am told is most significant, because this is the anniversary of when this land became a sovereign nation under the rule of a government formed to manage, then control, the land and all the people and resources that inhabited it since time immemorial. It is the anniversary of the sliver of time marked first by exploration and curiosity of what lay beyond horizons; then scarred by the efforts of all that has been done to erase the pre-historic presence that welcomed the adventurous spirit of strangers to share in all that could be seen before them.

Today is the day that marks the efforts of erasure, which continue even in the choosing of an arbitrary number representing a blink of an eye in the vast time that this land and its people have stood strong. I have benefitted from all the efforts of erasure to live in a country where I have freedoms, privileges, and opportunities not always available to the people indigenous to this land. People whose history cannot be contained by the 150 years of celebrated oppression, violence, and ignorance of what existed before and continues to thrive even under endless attempts to snuff it out. I benefit from the stereotypes that paint the Indigenous Peoples of this land as undeserving and incapable children requiring constant surveillance and micromanagement as the boundless wisdom they hold is ignored and this land faces the same plight to which we have sentenced them.

While I and others are free to live life, wherever and however we choose within this young nation, the Indigenous Peoples of this land to whom the number 150 marks only a brief moment in their history, remain relegated to pockets of land reserved for their kind. Where their status as non-relevant bodies in the vast time and geography of this land is perpetuated by restrictive rule of laws. When that status was deemed insufficient to contain the internal savages of nations within this celebrated nation, it was paired with re-education to break the spirits we now know are strong and eternally bonded to the land.

How can I celebrate today? How can I celebrate only this selected 150 years of the history of this land? How can I celebrate a country that describes itself as multicultural and calls itself a mosaic, when its Indigenous Peoples and many of the peoples that came after them are not treated as equal or worthy as those who have arbitrarily plucked this number from the timeline?

 

Canadian Native Flag designed by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Curtis Wilson