Oh no it couldn't be

(Two middle-aged women, overheard talking at Tim Hortons yesterday).

Oh well you know I can’t stay in the sun longer than

Well, aren’t you using sunscreen?

Isn’t it a little late for that, I mean

Oh my God, I’ll bet you were one of those people who baked in the sun.

I don’t bake in the sun any

Use sunscreen

By the way I got some news about, you know, all that trouble he's been having

Oh, tell me, what did they find?

Oh well, they didn’t exactly find anything

Whadda you mean? He went through every test that existed, didn’t he?

Yeah, and they kept not finding anything, and he was, you know, wanting to give up. And I said, I've been with you twenty years and I'm not about to give up yet.

Well, why don't you just have the tests done again? These machines, you know

Yeah, and that’s about all there is now. Machines. No real doctors.

Tell me about it. Doctors don’t do anything at all now except sit there and delegate.

Then you get to the hospital and your body is stuck in a big tube, or you have to get your insides reamed out

(giggles)

So they still don't have a clue what it is?

No, I told you! I got the news on (muffled)

News. What do you mean by news?

They think they do know what’s wrong with him.

So, what, tell me!

Depression.

(silence)

No.

Yeah, see it’s

Oh NO. No, no, no, no, no. That’s what they all say now. It's the disease of the week.

Yeah, but he -

It’s just a way of pushing those pills. Maybe it’s his adrenal glands.

But he’s been so –

Everybody gets that way. Listen, I know what will help. Turmeric.

Turmeric? Isn’t that something that goes in a pie or something?

No, no. It’s a miracle substance. I’ve seen it happen again and again.

But I’ve tried everything like that. I mean, alternative stuff. He just sits there

Get him out! Just get him out more. Talk to him. Get him to be more positive.

This isn’t a matter of will. That’s what the doctor said.

Doctor?

Psychiatrist.

PSYCHIATRIST?

They’re not witch doctors, you know.

They’re not? They’re funded by the pharmaceutical companies! You should know that. They’re nothing but pill-pushers.

But I don’t know what to do. He’s talking about killing (muffled)

(Silence)

No.

(unintelligible; sounds of weeping)

No.

But it’s true that (muffled)

No. Just get him out more. I mean, spiritually this might mean he’s trying to break out into the light.

LIGHT! He wants to jump off a bridge!

Keep your voice down! Everyone can hear you.

Yes. Everyone is uncomfortable about this.

Well, no wonder!

When he took a six-month leave at work, no one phoned.

(low voice, almost unintelligible) It's because people don’t know what to say. And when you're away that long, after a while they start to talk.

It’s like they just expect him to pull himself together.

Well, what else can he do? Just lie there? Take pills and turn into a zombie?

They don’t “turn you into a zombie”.

How do you know?

Well, I –

OH GOD! Don’t tell me YOU’VE been conned into this!

I couldn’t stand it any longer, he couldn’t work, he felt useless, he was around the house all the time talking about suicide and how much he hated himself. I couldn't sleep either and I

Listen, everybody’s depressed now. Next year it’ll be something else. And every time, there’s a drug for it.

What else can we do?

Well, maybe there’s a higher purpose in all this. You know, as if you’re about to break through to joy.

Is that what they told you at that retreat?

Don’t get sarcastic with me.

I wasn’t! Don’t you hear me?

Not if you take that line with me. Listen, if you expect any support at all, from anyone, you’re both going to have to stop the pity party.

But this isn’t self-pity.

Who told you that, the “doctor”?

I read it in a book called

Oh, for God’s sake, a BOOK?

Yes, a book. I wanted to find out if

That’s worse than pills!

But better than turmeric.

Oh, now you’re being sarcastic! Hey, don't forget I'm your best friend! Who else is ever going to listen to all this? 

Nobody.

Right, so don't talk to anyone else. And don't tell me anything more. It's better that way.

(One of the women gets up and storms out. After a while, the other woman leaves. It is obvious she has been crying.)

Crap advice

Actual Facebook post, July 18/14:

Margaret Gunning

Sometimes I'm so tired it's like I'm living below the floor of
my threshhold of energy.

(FB "friend"):  Nice phrase, but -- ??? Overwork?
Or health issue? All kinds of safe-ish energy boosts
available, from matcha green tea to B12
to stuff like Adrena-tea and Rhodiola.

I think I'm just tired! I
said it when it was 1:00 a.m. and just really bagged. Um,
nice advice though.


Maybe it's too early in the day for a rant, but here goes. This is an example of the many things that gall me about Facebook. Last night I was well and truly bagged. I had stayed up so late I lost track. Still, it had been a good, even hilarious day, much of it spent with Caitlin and Ryan who act as a fizzy tonic to my sometimes discouraging life. I was just saying, Whoo, boy, am I ever exhausted. Wow. Can't even describe it!

So what did I get, from a complete and anonymous stranger?

Advice.

Not only advice, but advice delivered in a didactic and even judge-y way: "Nice phrase, but - ???" seems to indicate that I'm putting a lot of fancy words down on the page for nothing. (Three question marks seems like overkill to me. What? What? What?) Or for something: a cry for correction.  Being completely bagged, it could be I was guilty of trying to garner some sympathy, or at least empathy, and I failed miserably: instead, what I got was this. Then came the barrage of theories:

Overwork? ("Are YOU suffering from overwork? Fatigue? That tired feeling? YOU need. . . ").

Or health issue? ("Why aren't you looking after your health issue? and/or Why are you talking about your health issue here, which is completely inappropriate? Do you even KNOW what your health issues are, and what you should be doing about them?").

All kinds of safe-ish energy boosts available, from matcha green tea to B12  to stuff like Adrena-tea and Rhodiola.  (So here's the infomercial, not quite as if she is selling the stuff, but nevertheless magazine-like, delivered in a flat news report tone, implying - I think so, anyway - that for God's sake, don't I know that there are tons of "safe-ish" energy boosts that are readily available to alleviate this mysterious fatigue that I'm complaining about? It's solution syndrome, the thing that makes people with chronic conditions keep their mouths sealed shut. Here, I'll fix it for you - don't you even know about this, aren't you willing to even TRY this? - and then you can just shut up again.)

It's not so much the message (which is pushy enough: "the answer to this whole issue is blah") as how it is delivered. There is no sense of  "you know, I've had fatigue too. I've tried some things, and this really worked for me," or even "why don't you give this a try?", or even "Try this, dummy!" Such a tone implies, at least, wanting to help instead of a sense of "oh my, that's a very elegant phrase you just wrote there, BUT. . . ",  before launching into a lecture.

Another assumption, given the content,  is that I am automatically "into" herbal and alternative cures. Not that I haven't explored them. Through the entire course of my perimenopause (and PLEASE don't tell me how I handled this the wrong way!), I tried remedy after remedy, including some that nobody talks about now because they have been completely discredited as a useless or even dangerous waste of money and time/hope. Remember St. John's wort (now found to be hazardous and ineffective), soy powder (can cause cancer), and evening primrose oil (which might work if you dabbed it behind your ears)? All of those attempts went down the toilet, literally, and I finally went on the pill for a year, which almost instantly fixed everything - I am not kidding, the symptoms just STOPPED and never came back, with virtually no side effects. That was fifteen years ago, but I know some people would still think I was weak or brainwashed by the patriarchy.

I quickly learned to keep my remarkable cure to myself, however. If I talked to women about it, more often than not I got a look like this:

(Maybe that's why, throughout my entire life, most of my close friends have been men. Not politically correct, but true. As a rule, they're more direct and have fewer labyrinthine hidden agendas and unaddressed power vacuums. And no, they don't grab me in back alleys. Well, maybe once.)

Presenting a list of herbal cures to someone you don't know is insulting, because it makes the assumption that the stranger you are advising thinks they are relevant. Take them for yourself, share them with people you KNOW are open to them, but please, don't proselytize or try to win me over to your (obviously superior!) side. And if you must recommend, RECOMMEND, don't just present me with a laundry list which keeps you on the shielded side of vulnerable. Here. Here it is. Too bad you're the way you are, but hey, cheer up, I've got the cure.

For God's sake, I was TIRED, bagged, not in need of a course correction in my sad little life. But no. No "poor baby", not even a "tough shit". What really drives all this compulsive and automatic correction, beyond towering ego, is a profound discomfort with anyone else's pain. It must be "fixed" now, and at all costs. At the same time, the self-proclaimed savant can wear the mantle of mastery and gain admiration and respect. Pretty sweet deal, I'd say.

I won't name the person in last night's FB encounter, but she was a bossy-big-sister type, the likes of which I have encountered before and hope never to encounter again. But it will happen. Any time I have expressed any sort of vulnerability on FB, I get an avalanche of not-well-meaning advice from people who would really rather I shut up, because my statements subconsciously remind them of all the crap they have not addressed in their own lives, all the stuff they don't want to look at. I am annoyed and even infuriated by the quick fixes they spew, unsolicited, playing "expert" to keep from facing their own unresolved shit. 

This was not a statement of  "I'm tired, does anyone have any advice out there to help?" This was not a "I really need some herbal remedies that have worked for people." This was, "boy, I am so bagged I can hardly think straight." Immediately, like a suckering vacuum, my statement drew a sour and self-righteous, even judgemental weather report from someone I barely knew.

Who has been unfriended now. Because to be honest, she is no friend of mine.

Order The Glass Character from:

Thistledown Press 

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

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395534131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+glass+character

Chapters/Indigo.ca

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%2520glass%2520character%2520margaret%2520gunning&ikwsec=Home