Can a psychic be a bully in disguise?

(I don't often post chunks of my journal, but this time I felt the need. Recently I risked sending some of my writings on psychic phenomena to a "professional medium", a former college professor of mine who had set up shop on an island with his own church. I was astonished at the tone of his response, which accused me of making the whole thing up, manipulating him, going out of my depth, and that the messages I received had no psychic content whatsoever. I felt myself being yanked down, and not knowing why. He concluded by telling me "I'm saying all this as a therapist, of course", an apparent swipe at my credibility/mental health. I used to think a psychic adviser would have some kind of sensitivity, but then I realized that ego, exaggerated ability and Long Island Medium-type manipulation of the public can be all part of the syndrome. 

In rhetoric, a tautology (from Greek ταὐτός, "the same" and λόγος, "word/idea") is a logical argument constructed in such a way, generally by repeating the same concept or assertion using different phrasing or terminology, that the proposition as stated is logically irrefutable, while obscuring the lack of evidence or valid reasoning supporting the stated conclusion. (A rhetorical tautology should not be confused with a tautology in propositional logic.)^[a]

Then last night I watched a 20-20 program about a psychic who stole literally millions of dollars from a mentally-challenged man, cleaning him out while leaving him so brainwashed that he still defended her. She went so far as to present him with a  "son" conceived through artificial insemination, named Georgio Armani, who was not his son at all. It was monstrous fraud, and an extreme, but pretending to have ability often means taking advantage of others and undermining whatever strength they have. That was the tipping point for me, so I decided to post this after all. Beware, folks, they are out there, and many of them are completely ruthless.)

I think my former friend destroyed any joy I took in my recent revelations, which I only wanted to share with someone who knew what I was talking about. His arrogant dismissal of my interest and ideas could not have been more condescending. “Speaking as a therapist” translates as: I know you’re having childish delusions, whereas MY messages are always right because I am the great medium, and you’re not. He even throws the fear of ghosties and ghoulies at me to demean and intimidate and diminish me, and to make himself feel powerful. He probably just tells himself I’m mentally ill and playing with fire and making stuff up. You have to have advanced degrees to approach this subject, and if you don't, you won't be invited to the Psychic Kiwanis Club banquet at the end of the year.

That accusation of making stuff up, as a survivor of abuse and one who was totally discredited by her family of origin, is particularly excruciating, and he knows all about that! We've talked about it enough. I am reminded of letting him see just a short excerpt from A Singing Tree, my first completed novel, which I don’t think he even read, and his comment, “I think you have to be very, very careful, Margaret, or it will just be seen as some sort of zany soap opera.” I think that is the worst single comment I have ever heard about my work, and I don’t know why I gave him a second chance. When I objected because I was devastated, he just defended what he had said, implying I was too touchy to be a published author and didn’t have the perception to judge it. He was only trying to help me, after all, and I should have been grateful. The novel wasn’t published, but was considered by Random House, Doubleday, Raincoast and a number of others and taken very seriously. Not. A. Zany. Soap. Opera. Nobody else said that.

His written apology several years (!) later was of the flavour of “it triggered all my issues”, i. e. “look what you made me do”. It wasn’t an apology at all. I put up with this crap for years because I thought he had some interesting ideas. In recent years he has hardened into the Long Island Medium of the west coast. It’s a tautology, something which neatly proves itself, and anything outside that tautology is bogus, suspect, or up for ridicule. He also heavily favors the “I’ve got two Masters degrees and a PhD, and you don’t” argument. It's been my experience that academics have the shallowest perceptions (and biggest egos) of any other single group. Their knowledge is completely conventional and often displayed for prestige and as a bulwark against criticism. How can you question a man with two Masters degrees and a PhD?

Anyway, the psychic thing, even if it was just tuning in on certain energies, was interesting to me.  I wasn't looking to have it validated, merely sharing it. He did, after all, tell me I had "undeveloped psychic potential"(and we won't get into THAT one here - I have been studying it for my entire life). In fact, up until now he seemed to be fairly interested in my exploration and felt it had some validity. I took a risk, and (as with most risks) it bombed and he hurt me, I will admit it, but mostly he made me very angry. For once in my  entire life, I did not soften, and soften, and soften my reply to carefully extract all my anger. I told him what I thought, which is that he has been at this too long and has become godlike to too many people. THAT is when leaders become dangerous, when they can no longer see their own limitations, and especially when they begin to “diss” other people to feel stronger in themselves and to shore up their "superior" abilities. 

I soon got some sort of reply from him and wondered what on earth I would have to gain by reading it. So I deleted it unread, along with everything else I had ever sent or received from him. His name is now off my contacts list forever. I no longer care about pampering his ego by listening to any sort of defense of what he said. I knew more putdowns were in the works. It was abuse. How do I know? You know when someone throws mud in your face. It is indeed a nasty sensation.

POST-POST BLOG POST POST: The last time I looked up this guy's name on the internet, there was absolutely nothing. As per usual, now, a few years later, he's everywhere, including interviews in all sorts of psychic publications. All the pictures look the same - he has a sort of Criswell expression now, a Svengali look that I never ever saw there before. It's what they call image-crafting. Oh my. He HAS changed, and maybe I see now why my message was so casually thrown back in my face (but then, he was just giving me his professional opinion, which is accepted by everyone - so it must be right - because it is accepted by everyone - so it must be right.)

"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Little sexpot (or: the smooch and snuggle)

It’s not that she wasn’t grateful. When you don’t get to go anywhere on a Saturday night because everyone thinks you’re a loser and full of shit, you should be grateful for any kind of social contact at all.

Or so her siblings thought. Her sister Noreen was thirteen years older than she was, and obviously Mum and Dad were going to trust her with her little sister's wellbeing. Besides, it was good for her to “get out”, much better than hiding in her room crying like she always did.

Her older brother Don had lots of friends too, and their wives came along, but that didn’t stop the “goings-on” that were considered to be all part of the fun. She noticed the minute she stepped into the babble and funk of these parties that she was the mascot, younger than anyone else by ten years or more. Was she game? A target? Who knew, but what she did know was that she was supposed to be grateful.

There was an obnoxious creep called Shivas, but after a while she figured out that it wasn’t his real name, that it came from his habit of making a certain drink called a Shivas Special. Chivas Regal and one ice cube. Another was Tang crystals dissolved in vodka.

They were all quite interested in seeing how the mascot would react to having her glass filled and refilled. After all, she was allowed wine at home. Lots of it. Her parents didn’t frown on her drinking and even seemed to think it was “good for her”. Her brother and sister waved the banner of booze at every opportunity, insisting it was an unalloyed good, even when they woke the next day vomiting and ashen.

The party deteriorated over time, got louder, with people bumping together and the smell of pot wafting under door-cracks. Once she felt a hand, someone’s hand, didn’t know whose. Then her brother’s best friend started smiling at her. She looked the other way. Like the Ugly Duckling, she just didn’t believe it at first.

But then he sort of beckoned with his eyes. Come upstairs with me. Upstairs?? His wife was over in the corner flirting with her brother like they always did. Did she dare to do this, could she sneak up with him and –

This is how it always happened.

It happened because her brother’s friend was a really good kisser. He knew the spots to touch. Her body responded like flame, though she felt overpowering shame at her reaction. She knew she wasn’t supposed to feel this way, to feel anything at all. But she also knew she had caused this, somehow. He managed to convey without words that he had always found her attractive and not mousy or fat.

All she knew about sex she had learned from books, the books stashed in her father’s bureau drawer under his underwear and pajamas. When her parents were away at choir practice, she took them out. They were very clinical and  did not deal with passion or pleasure, as if those sensations did not belong in the field of sex.

But she knew about erections, because he was pressing his against her body with force. Her heart beginning to race, she wondered if she would be raped. She wondered if she should fight back, break away. But the truth is, she loved the attention.

“Hey, you two!” a voice came up the stairs. “Get down here, will you? Quit messing around.” It was a woman’s voice, and at first she wondered if it was the man’s wife.  When she came downstairs, stumbling a little, she saw it was her brother’s girl friend, her makeup badly askew. The woman grabbed her around the waist and squeezed: “Little Lolita,” she crooned. “Little sexpot.”

The booze continued to flow. Her sister held court in an astonishing display of vanity and narcissism, “looking after” her little sister by ignoring her and handing her over to the good graces of Shivas and his endless noxious drinks. People made less and less sense. She felt more hands on her and didn’t know who they were.

She remembered trying to tell her sister about what was happening to her at these parties, what was being done to her. Done to her by married men with their wives in the next room (or even the same room). Her older sister rolled her eyes a bit and said, “I don’t know why you’re so upset! You don’t seem to have any friends your own age. This way you can have a social outlet with the grownups.”

When she told her a little bit about the seductions, she shook her head.

“Are they having sex with you?” For one second, concern seemed to flicker in her eyes.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re exaggerating. I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with a little smooch and a snuggle.  Look, we’re trying to include you and I really think you should be more grateful.”

Much later, she read about something called Walpurgis Night, a sort of witch’s Sabbath with hideous swarms of demonic figures that swept through communities leaving blackened wreckage in their wake. But this was supposed to be an advantage for her, a social outlet!

How many 14-year-olds wouldn’t give their right arm to be included in a group of adults with full-blown adult privileges?

She would go home after midnight, stagger into the bathroom and throw up all the Chivas Regal. The next morning, pale as a spook, she would throw up again, with her mother hearing her but saying nothing.

Her mother knew. She knew everything. Wanted to be rid of this social liability, to hand her over. Keep her happy. Later that day the family received a bouquet. She knew it was from her brother’s friend, the one who had pinned and groped her. It couldn’t be anyone else.

”Had a great time last night," the sloppily-written tag read. "See you next week."

It was not signed. Incredibly, her parents did not ask who had sent it, but put the pink roses in a vase on the table. 

Twenty years later, the family was absolutely horrified to learn that Little Sister had joined AA. It was a total disgrace to the family, who had never had problems like that and never would. It was obviously an act of hostility on her part. They could never understand why she wasn't more grateful for all they had done for her. When she began to see a therapist, it was even worse, for that implied that the family was crazy. Then they decided that SHE was the one who was crazy, and the matter was closed.

Post-script. Some years later my sister's lover, the one who liked to send me roses and take me to the movies, lost his job and all his money and (finally) his wife, and shot himself in the head. I suppose these things never end well. For me, they never end at all. 

Now they call it bullying

 

 

“Oh. My. God.”

 

“Here she comes.”

“It’s the suck.”

 

“Suckie.”  

“Suck of the world.”

She could never quite recall or understand when this name was fastened to her, but now it was so stuck that to rip it off her would be fishhook-like, tearing her flesh and infecting her in ways she couldn’t imagine.

There was another name, Maggots, but that was supposed to be an affectionate name, a pet name, the kind of nickname all the kids had at school, now pull yourself together girl, don’t you understand that all the kids are treated this way and all the kids have to learn how to take a little teasing so they can make it through the school day?

 

But “all” the kids aren’t razzed at the school dance because nobody’s dancing with them and all they can do is stand around gawky as if they weigh about 3 thousand pounds. “Whatsamatter honey, having a slow night?”

I don’t know, I try to be normal I guess, but (the guidance counsellor wrinkles up his brow in that “I don’t know what you’re talking about” way she will never see the end of, not even when she’s 50 years old and trying to communicate with a psychiatrist).

Don’t you make an effort to enter into the normal activities of the school day?

What about your social life?

 ("Suckie."

“Suck of the world.”)

 

She has thought about the end of the world lots of times, especially while getting stoned with her brother or trying to keep a guy’s hands off her at one of her older sister’s drunken parties. Some married guy. Her sister phones her up and says hey. You’re wondering why you exist again?  I guess you can come over. It’s as if she’s doing her a big favour by inviting her to an adult party. So she decides to come over.

 

Come over and watch people 15 years older than her get soused, whoop, fuck, and throw up. A guy named Chivas keeps topping up her glass and calls it a Chivas Special. Or is Chivas the name of the drink? She can’t tell, she’s dizzy and spinning around and puking and falling down. Her older sister is taking good care of her and her parents are not at all concerned, nothing bad can happen to her. Right. It’s still better than standing there at the dance by herself or finding notes stuck in her locker, CUNT. We. Do. Not. Want. You.

Some day there will be a name for this activity; they will call it “bullying”. For now, they call it “school”. For now, they call it “hung over and puking in the toilet and telling Mum I have the flu and being sent to school anyway and getting rocks thrown at me by the Catholic kids”.

Rocks?

Yeah, I meant to tell you that it’s

 

Young lady, I find that hard to believe.

 

 

Oh okay, so it isn’t happening then. So I’m not getting those cold stares from my “friends” and those puzzled, puckered looks from teachers when I show up in class crying: “Do you have a cold today?” Yes, a cold that feels like the end of the world.

And it’s lower, lower, lower when she is sent to a psychiatrist and begins to chat him up, flirt with him, make him laugh in that Old World way that shrinks always laugh, the stupid fuckers. He looks like Sigmund Fucking Freud with that beard. She hates them, hates every one of them, and lies about what happens. That’s what they want to hear.

 

"Suckie.”

“Suck of the world.”

A long, long, long time later, after she has finally beaten the alcoholism her sister generously bequeathed her in her teens, she will hear news reports about girls who killed themselves, girls who were only 15 years old, slender and pretty, girls who seemed to have absolutely everything she would have died for in Grade 10, but they died anyway, hung themselves, hung themselves because someone abused them, but it’s doubtful that anyone threw rocks at them or stuck notes in their locker.

 

No, this time it will appear on a screen, and absolutely everyone in the world will be able to see it.

 

Human meanness leaks out in all sorts of ways. Pieces of paper stuck to the inside of a locker with tape: “cunt”. Black magic marker on the inside of a biology text book: “stinking twat”. She will get in trouble for defacing a book and have to pay for it. You can’t rip out pages like that, it’s destructive!

You can’t rip out brain cells, blackened memories of a hell she barely scraped through. You can’t do anything but live around it, the carcinoma of social persecution. What was it about her that caused them to brutalize her so relentlessly? Why can’t she die? Is there another sort of life she can find beyond all this hate?

Living around it is like slinking around the outside of a shadow that is permanently sewn to your body. Don’t fool yourself, everyone can see, even though nobody has the nerve to say it now. You are here because of OUR generosity and you should be GRATEFUL we spared you, that we tolerated your presence! We gave you every chance to be social at those parties, and what did you do?

 

The Old World psychiatrist looks at her over his glasses. “Vhat you heff,” he pronounces, “is yoooth paranoia.”

“Paranoia? Isn’t that imagining you’re – "

“Yes, imagining! But zere is goot news. You vill outgrrrrow it.”

“Glad to hear it. Just one question?”

“Yes.”

"WHEN?”

 

I hate Facebook.

This post has been stewing around in my brain for months now, and I still don’t know if I’m ready to write it.  Or, perhaps, to be ostracized for it.

For me, Facebook was a matter of “should”. Hell, I’m a writer, aren’t I? I want to communicate, don’t I? I want to promote (and promote, and promote) my next book, don’t I? What’s the matter with me, anyway?

So I stepped, reluctantly, across the barbed-wire threshhold into an atmosphere that reminded me, most alarmingly, of the playground.

Were you ever bullied? Of course not! You wouldn’t be reading this at all unless you’re already on Facebook (and curious as to why anyone would crucify themselves by daring to say they hate it). And if you’re on Facebook, you have at least 1500 “friends” and have always been popular and have never been bullied and and and (as William Shatner once so eloquently put it) “blah blah blah!”

When I stumbled into this thing I was a stranger in a strange land. Though I had managed over the years to acclimatize myself to basic computer skills like email and blogging and setting up a web site, and all that sort of thing, I didn’t have a clue how to do Facebook and soon found that there were no instructions. It was that same old bitter dynamic that nearly destroyed me in my youth: I had gotten to the party far too late, everyone knew each other already, and they most certainly did not want ME around to clutter up their nice little tight-knit in-group.

When I finally figured out how to post comments, I gingerly reached out for help with the system and got exactly no response. There was this dense, embarrassed silence. It felt like I had just said, “hey, someone help me! I don’t know how to use the bathroom.”

I felt like an incontinent old lady stumbling around in the dark.

Soon, I was alarmed to learn that most of my contacts – feeble in number, at the start – had at least 300 “friends” (300 being the starting point for most people), and some had well over 1000. Some panic light came on in my solar plexus and began to blink, blink, blink.

I was bullied – a lot – in school and outside of it. This was before bullying came out of the shame closet and teen suicide attempts inspired compassion instead of ever-more-elaborate and ruthless forms of ostracism. I still can’t really figure it out: I didn’t have green skin, I didn’t have two heads. Believe it or not, I did have friends, and these friends tended to be loyal and close. In some cases, I call them friends still (though not on Facebook).

So I wasn’t some piece of shit meandering along with a target painted on my forehead (but you’d never know it from the way I was treated). I was persecuted – there’s no other word for it. I was more than unpopular, I wasn’t even on the screen. So trying to find my way on Facebook stirred up some of the worst feelings from the bottom of the sludge barrel. A thousand friends? Would I meet that many people in a lifetime?

Dumb, stupid, incontinent old lady me! These weren’t friends. These were, well, I don’t know what they were. I couldn’t figure it out. When I tried to answer the question (or statement) “what’s on your mind today”, and if my statement had any sense of need or desire for help or any sort of vulnerability in it at all, I was completely ignored. I couldn’t say anything remotely critical  or I was “corrected”. Get back in line, fruitcake!

Gradually this changed as I realized I had to “cultivate” these thousand-or-so friends, that they likely wouldn’t just fly into my nest spontaneously. And a funny thing happened. From that point on, if I ever said anything at all or even commented on some else’s “anything”, I was generally sniped at.

I was made to feel “geez, don’t you even know how things work around here?” – as if I didn’t already feel that way! In one case I tried to explain that I wanted to be careful who I took on as a “friend” and I would “unfriend” anyone who made me uncomfortable for any reason. Someone answered something like “wtf lady give them three tries then they’re out why don’t u lol?” Another said “I just let in anyone. Any old person who comes along, in the parking lot, out in the alley, hehheheheh.” The feeling was, OF COURSE you have to be careful, you fucking idiot, why are you making such a retarded statement anyway? Or else it meant, what? You have discernment? This isn’t about quality. It’s about volume.

You say it isn’t? A thousand friends. Two thousand? That’s volume.

I’m reading more and more articles now about how Facebook is making us all much more lonely in a society where loneliness is already epidemic. Every time I force myself to go on Facebook I feel palpably pushed away. It isn’t fun. Since almost all my contacts are in the writing and publishing field, 95% of what I read is  self-promotion, done in a breezy “oh by the way” style that provides a nice pink floral veneer. Call it the Facebook wallpaper scheme.

Shockingly, this even seems to apply to writers who feel they're renegades and outside the mainstream and standing up to the status quo.

Yes, I’m a writer too and the whole reason I got coerced into this thing is so that I can promote my next novel, which is written but not exactly published yet. Maybe this is my incontinent-old-lady mentality rearing up again, but I was taught NEVER to refer to my accomplishments in the writing field. You’d have to pry it out of me with forceps that I ever won an award, or was shortlisted (that weird sister to success that provides a sort of shadow-gratification for the up-and-coming). You’d have to turn me upside down and shake me to make me admit I had ever had a positive review.  I was a Canadian, and this was the proper thing to do. Anything else was inexcusable arrogance and rudeness and would alienate everyone for sure.

Now it has been turned inside-out and upside-down, and EVERY occasion, every launch, every luncheon, every book-signing-where-one-person-shows-up-because-they-think-it’s-a-different-book, probably about fishing, is now a chance to turn clownish cartwheels and wag your stumpy little Wheaten Terrier tail for attention.

I’m sorry, folks, but I am just so sick of this.

Yes! I see that this is the information age. Yes! I see that selling a book (nobody knows this better than me, believe me) is now so difficult that one must become a shameless self-promoter to get anywhere at all.

Yes. I get it.

But I have yet to see ANYONE on Facebook really express any feelings about anything except a sort of blandified, self-involved glee. If someone is feeling devastating grief, they stick a happy face over it. Though it was probably designed for it, it is NOT a forum for any sort of meaningful communication between human beings.

But there are people who spend many hours a day “on” Facebook. Lonely?  Why would we be that?

I haven’t cancelled my account just yet, and I don’t know why except I still have a thread of hope that my book will find a home. I believe it is now a requirement, unless you want to be viewed as a crackpot or a Luddite. And I am aware that Facebook is so popular now that you do not dare criticize it unless you work for the New York Times or something. Or the Atlantic Monthly. So what will I do if something does happen? Must I treat Facebook like the vast garbled bulletin board (or billboard, or flashing neon sign) of ego that it truly is, get in line, and say my say? Will I have to learn to cartwheel?

My immediate concern is that I will be crucified for daring to say what I really think about all this. It’s deeply taboo to say you hate Facebook. We. All. Love. It. Don’t we? You don’t? Just get off it, then. Shut up and go away. There goes freedom of speech – yet another casuality of the blandly conformist “we-think” that would make George Orwell turn over in his grave.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
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Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

A fairy tale from hell

There once was an ugly duckling

With feathers all stubby and brown 

And the other birds said in so many 

words 

Get out of town

Get out, get out, get out of town 

And  she went with a quack and a waddle 

and a quack 

In a flurry of eiderdown 

That poor little ugly duckling 

Went wandering far and near 

But at every place they said to her face 

Now get out, get out, get out of here 

And she went with a quack and a waddle 

and a quack 

And a very unhappy tear 

All through the wintertime she hid herself
away

Ashamed to show her face, afraid of what 

others might say 

All through the winter in her lonely 

clump of wheat 

Till a flock of swans spied her there and 

very soon agreed 

You’re a very fine swan indeed! 

A swan? Me a swan? Ah, go on! 

And they said yes, you’re a swan!

Take a look at yourself in the lake and 

you’ll see 

And she looked, and she saw, and she said 

I am a swan! Wheeeeeeee! 

I’m not such an ugly duckling 

No feathers all stubby and brown 

For in fact these birds in so many words said 

I'm. . . 

The best in town, 

the best, the best 

The best in town 

Not a quack, not a quack, not a waddle or 

a quack 

But a glide and a whistle and a snowy white 

back 

And a head so noble and high 

Say who’s an ugly duckling? 

Not I! 

Not I! 

Not I!