Tag Archive for 'Wendy'

where we’ve been

Published
by
JAGA
on October 17, 2008
in Julies, Unknown, julies (lc) and others (lc)
. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

it’s been a long, long, long month. since october 3rd through the 15th, we’ve been at the mother’s house almost every single day and night–only 1-3 nights when we weren’t there. she needed help cleaning her house before her 2 sisters came from out of town for bryan’s wedding this saturday. her house hasn’t been dusted in who knows how long and everything was dusty and dirty. the non main areas of the house were ultra cluttered and disorganized and just a mess. the main areas needed general pick up and deep cleaning because the bare minimum has been done for a long time. furniture needed to be moved and rearranged because it had been on the list for years and it needed to be done in order for there to be room for guests and for things to “look nice” and in a way “perfect” for her sisters…. as if things have always been this way and she isn’t as ill and out of sorts as she is.

one of the bigger Julies finally told the mother, “I’m disabled for a reason,” when referencing to the mother that we needed a break away from her and not going to her house when we said we would and that this was taking a huge toll on us and we were burnt out by everything. it took us so long simply because we can only manage so much concentration and energy to do anything and so what might have taken ordinary people a weekend for the amount of work that needed to be done and we did, it took us basically 2 weeks… and we still didn’t accomplish everything. there is a lot left to do and Sean came over several times to help and Loretta came over towards the end to help put things in order and get the basics done on things we just couldn’t get to because we were running out of time and our OCD couldn’t let go of certain things to ignore all the dust and dirt and crap of things that needed to be done and since we were doing it, it needed to be done right and while it took time, it took less time to do it right than to go back and do it over at some point and we had no interest in doing it over at any time in the near future and so we needed to do it then. even if it pissed off the mother because we weren’t getting everything done and it wasn’t getting done in the way she wanted or in the time she wanted and we weren’t listening to her towards the end to ignore the cleaning and just make it done and ready somehow. well fuck it, it’s fucking family coming to visit and if they can’t cope with it and realize the situation and that we did the best we could, then fuck it. damn it, some of us felt like if she still needed shit done, her sisters could help, because they are sisters after all. fucking hell she is ill.

we did let the mother know clearly again that we had no intentions on taking care of her when her health gets even worse. she’ll be going to a home or some place and other people will care for her, thank you very fucking much. we’ve cared for her as a child and as an adult and still to some degree do a lot of shit for her, and fuck it, we just aren’t doing it for her when she is totally in need of 24/7 care. fuck that. i don’t care if she is my mother. she fucking doesn’t deserve it from us. maybe if she cared for us as a child and cared for herself throughout our adulthood, then just fucking maybe we wouldn’t mind the idea of helping her when she gets older and more ill, but fucking hell, she isn’t coming to our home and we aren’t going to hers. and amazingly the mother seems to understand that and says she doesn’t want to do that to me or bryan. guilt i suppose or maybe she’s just saying that, but she seems to be sincere about it.

it seems hard to believe that so much time has passed and we were at the mother’s for so long. in coming out of the fog or whatever state we were in, the realization that we put our entire life, our entire personal to do list, our entire well being, our entire sanity, our entire everything on hold, and put away and pushed aside, all for her and her sake. we tried to tell ourselves it was for our aunts sake as well because they needed a nice enough place to stay, but really, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if they saw how things normally are. it’s like in the moment while it was happening we just didn’t seem to “get it” how much time was passing and how much we were putting aside all for the mother. on one level we knew it, but on many more greater levels, it wasn’t connecting. i guess it was just a dissociation and denial of the reality and truth of what was happening.

Sean said that he doesn’t want this to happen like this ever again. that he will pay for half of the cleaning the mother needs and call professionals in– that he doesn’t want to see us go through this again and what it did to us, etc. i think he saw more of the depth of the stress and toil and problems that this caused for us and our system and functioning than we did or do. he did see the mother as we knew her to be growing up and in our adult years for many years… he saw the mother we knew… the one who takes her stress out on us, simply because that’s what she does and who she targets…generally. the mother who was rude and snarky and bitchy to us when she wasn’t getting her way or what she wanted exactly or how she wanted it exactly… when her control wasn’t there over us and we were doing things the way we wanted to, when, how, and on our time schedule and not hers. he saw our anxiety when we didn’t realize we were anxious. the only thing we noticed was that we were irritated with the mother and couldn’t stand her and angry and hating that we were doing anything for her. i thought it was just that others inside who have mother issues had come forward closer to the front suddenly, as i’ve experienced this sudden “okay or no feelings or nothing or fine” to this sudden out of the blue intense internal feelings and issues and stuff that we’re fighting to keep under control and not show it to the mother that we can’t stand to be around her and don’t want to be there and certainly don’t want to be helping her or doing anything that pleases her, etc. apparently the mother irritated Sean too by what she said to us and around us, that interestingly, I didn’t hear or notice at all… but I’m guessing others inside did since they suddenly were triggered close by. The amnesia and separation was there for that.

There’s more… so much more to say and write about and get out in the open, but we are running out of time for that today.

We have therapy today with Cec… the first time since the beginning of September. And the stupid fucking thing about all of it is that my Medicaid was back dated which means we could have been seeing Cec all this time, but the fucking agency are assholes and idiots and really not for profit as much as they say they are cuz they fucking don’t work with people in our situation (we always get our Medicaid back dated but they seem to think we can afford $200 a month to pay them to see Cec regularly and then of course, oh geez, we will have a credit with them or they will owe us when our medical comes through as always). There’s more about this topic, but it’s what it is and we are bitchy and wanting and asking too much and spoiled. Spoiled because we had a reasonable therapist (Wendy) who worked with us all those years in our financial situation and still accepts a small monthly payment until someday our situation changes and we can pay her more and pay her off fully. We expect things to change and to be able to pay her fully off at some point in the next 5 years.

We are bringing Sean with us to therapy and he will be going in there with us as support. Cec didn’t want to meet him or anything anytime soon. This was several months ago. We gave her a heads up voice mail message and Billie is prepared to tell her to deal with it and that it is our fucking therapy and not Cec’s and Billie will royally be pissed if Cec takes issue with it. We clearly don’t have the best close connection or care too much and won’t concede to whatever Cec wants just because she wants it this way or that. We’re not in the mood for it and it’s our therapy and not Cec’s. There’s so much crap that Cec can’t and won’t give that we need and this one thing in addition to everything else is just one that we aren’t dealing with because we refuse to let Cec have her way on this. And if she throws a big tizzy about it, it only pushes us further away to get another therapist, which we are working on as it is. For many different reasons. Cec is still a good therapist, but there are things we need that she can’t or won’t give for any number of reasons and there are things that just don’t work in the long term for us with her or with the agency. It really doesn’t help that every 3 months (and less when all is taken into account) that we have a disruption of therapy for 3-6 weeks or so, simply because of the medical issue that always takes care of itself in the long run but the agency is all about money and less about working out a payment arrangement, etc. Whatever. And it is really less than 3 months because beginning Dec. 1st, we’ll be in this situation again and chances are it will be mid-late December before everything is taken care of and by then the holidays and whatnot will be around and well, whatever, in a month and a half we’ll have another unnecessary disruption of therapy. So yah, that really doesn’t bode well for conducive therapeutic relationship crap.

After therapy tonight, we go to the dress rehearsal and afterwards to the dinner. The father will be there at both. That brings up a shit load of emotions and thoughts and system confusion and disruption and uggh, it’s a mess, and conveniently we are sidestepping it because we’ve got to go and take care of a few things and then get dressed and ready for it and head to therapy and then all of that.

The father has been in town since Wednesday and tonight will be the first time we see him and first time we speak to him. We feel stupid and so babyish for being so anxious about it and worried and stressed and uggh. There’s been a lot of intense emotional pain as others come forward. They even cried for a brief few minutes, but really cried, which we haven’t been able to do for so long. It happened when we took Zoey outside to go to the bathroom. It was definitely young ones crying. It’s just so weird. And validating and works on any denial by me or others inside. I haven’t been consciously trying to focus on the whole father shit and the abuse shit and all that stuff. And yet sudden emotional pain and stress and freak out will come, seemingly from nowhere, unexpected and just definitely not contrived or created or instigated or nothing…. and this makes the reality of the abuse more real and true and less made up somehow, like somehow we are screwed up and we must be this awful daughter and person to falsely accuse him of such a thing. It’s hard to explain, but it just makes things harder to slip into the direction of denying and invalidating when we really want to do that because it is so much easier than standing strong and saying he abused us, it is real, he is a child rapist, etc. That is really hard to do, especially around family that is invested in denial and people who don’t want to hear or know that sort of thing anyways.

we’ve got to go. we feel so all over the place. we’re a wreck and utterly exhausted. and it’s october of all fucking months.

and there are quite a number of us that wish the father would fucking admit that he abused us. and we know we shouldn’t wish that and want that from him and we wish that it wouldn’t matter, but somehow it matters right now to quite a lot of us. but he didn’t when we confronted him 8 years ago and he’s extremely unlikely to do so now.

julies, Julies, others, and whomever around

Just Another Morning

Published
by
JAGA
on October 1, 2008
in Julie
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

I need to go and get my Medicaid taken care of today at DSHS as it really needs to be done this morning, particularly if I want to try and see Cec today. We’ve been out of therapy since the beginning of September. That is never good for us at all. We called DSHS yesterday and the final part on their end had been taken care of and so all that was left was turning in a bill for our spenddown. We were realizing as well earlier this morning that we probably don’t have that many more times that we can utilize this bill before all the portions of it are used up for the spenddowns, at which point we won’t be seeing Cec anymore. So more pressure and a push to find someone privately that we can make payment arrangements with and someone that takes Medicare. There’s other reasons besides that one that we need to find another therapist, but that is one of them.

We’ve been awake since 5 or 6 am. The last two nights we’ve woken up after only a few hours of sleep. Tried falling back asleep, but then finally got up. Now we should be getting ready to go to DSHS to get this done and make a phone call to Cec to try and see her today. She didn’t return our call from last week to make an appt with her. This bothers us, but we’re trying to give her the benefit of the doubt until we can speak with her– something Wendy taught us and that we’re appreciative of.

In some ways it just seems easier to wait another week to see Cec and take care of this medical stuff tomorrow or Friday. In other ways I know we really, really need therapy right now. A lot of stuff is going on and therapy is just so very much needed.

All we want to do is to go back to bed and hopefully sleep, but I know that means we’ll probably be in bed until this afternoon. We have so much to do around here, business oriented stuff and personally, and yet we seem to only be able to do a little bit a day and sometimes not much of anything. I feel depressed and sad and something… something I recognize so very much. My heart aches inside and I feel the weights of so many things that I’m carrying. And sadness, such deep sadness within.

Such is life.

Julie

Therapy Crap

Published
by
JAGA
on March 24, 2008
in B.J., Billie and Julie
. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

I just gotta say

Fuck Therapy! Fuck Therapists! Fuck IT ALL!!!

Yah that freaking makes me feel better.

And no I ain’t explaining right now cuz I don’t fucking want people thinking and not saying or thinking and saying what freaking whiny ass people we are who want and need and expect too damn much from therapists and therapy.  So when enough of us can deal with whatever people are gonna think or say then we’ll explain more.  

I will say that I’m tired of this therapy crap.  I’m tired of more or less getting screwed in some way.  I’m tired of not having shit ass money to pay for therapy.  I’m tired of it being the reason we get pushed the hell out the door of therapy when paying a low monthly fee towards accumulating therapy bill was cool for a lotta years.  The latest–basically told stay away until you have money to give us or until you get the right insurance.  This is basically told to us at the non profit agency place that won’t give us sliding scale because we have insurance but the co-pay is way too fucking much and they won’t slide scale the co-pay.  They also won’t let us make a low monthly payment towards the growing co-pay debt that we’d pay off some fucking day in the future.  But if we had insurance and lost our freaking ass insurance and had no insurance then they’d give us the sliding scale.  And I don’t care what they say but I know damn well Medicare pays more than what we’d be charged for that sliding scale based on our income if we had no insurance.  I saw their damn sliding scale chart a few weeks back.  But if we had no insurance when we first came to them and asked for help, they’d say sorry, no room, no space for that, go fuck yourselves and have a nice day and good fucking luck with your mental health crap.

Yah yah yah I know that ain’t what they really say but they basically are saying that when they have to turn people away.

The best thing yet– we can get 30 minute sessions for a little bit more than what we asked to pay for our co-pay.  And if we pay for two 30 minute sessions, it is less than one 50 minute session co-pay.  It ain’t that big of a discount but it still is less.  Go fucking figure and no you can’t have two 30 minute therapy sessions on the same day with our insurance.

So I don’t know, maybe we’ll go pay for a 30 minute session and I’ll bitch at Cec simply because I feel like bitching.  Not like she has any control over any of it.  I’d just like to explain to her why the fuck I’m saying fuck therapy and fuck therapists. Just fuck it all.

There’s this deal in our head that we always hear when shit like this happens: 

“Oh, it’s Julie.  She’ll be fine.  She’s fine.  It’s no big deal.”  It doesn’t fucking matter that we aren’t doing well, that therapy helps us keep a grip on things in life, that we fucking hurt, and just crap like that.  It always seems and feels like to us that they just “dismiss us” with a wave of their hand and just assume and decide that we’ll deal with it and we’ll be fine and it won’t be a fucking big deal to us.  That they wouldn’t do that to some other client but they’d do it to us because “we’re fine and can deal with it.”  Well, FUCK NO WE CAN’T FUCKING DEAL WITH IT!!!

And yah I know we’re asking and wanting and expecting too damn much.  It takes money.  You need too much and expect and hope for too damn much when you only pay shit. 

I’m fucking frankly tired of the shit ass crap I’ve got to deal with inside when shit like this rolls down hill.  I don’t know all the crap but I sure as hell know more than any of the Julies know about.  IT SUCKS! It is FUCKING HARD.  And ya know we’ve been sucking it up in a lot of ways, well like maybe not to other people, but I think so, with all the bullshit and jerking around of therapists in the agencies that we’ve gone through since we lost Wendy.  So then we find Cec and we’re dealing with this crap.  And there’s that list of crap that Cec can’t or won’t meet our needs on and well, again, we need and ask and expect and want too fucking much and especially when we pay shit.  

The Julies called like well over a dozen therapists that are closer to us and so less of a commute and whatever.  Of course like nearly all of them had full caseloads and only a few of them took our insurance.  So we have a crap load more people to call.  We’ve gone through the referred list.  Now onto the damn phone book and just start asking the basic questions and creating a new list of names and numbers.  

I frankly don’t fucking know that our system is ever really gonna trust another therapist again to any degree.  We’ve been with Cec for over a year now and hardly anyone has really come out and talked with her.  Yah so some of us have shown up, but like tons and tons of people who’ve shown up in therapy over the years with Wendy haven’t even come close to coming out.  They don’t come close to the surface, it’s like just way deep and buried.  They stay the fuck away or cause problems within but behind the Walls and other things and basically ya can’t find out a damn thing and info stays locked inside.

I ain’t ever felt like this like I do now.  I seriously am questioning what the fucking point of trying to do therapy is.  WHY?!? Why the fuck bother when we basically get pushed out the door for some fucking reason or another.  The first time was because we needed “a therapy break” of who knows how the fuck long– one day it was 2 weeks the next fucking time it was a month or several months and the next time “maybe we don’t ever return.”  It kept fucking changing every damn time we turned around and she sure as hell knew we didn’t agree with her decision (yes, the therapist’s decision) we needed a therapy break.  We fought with her and basically begged and pleaded for an extension to not have it happen in the spring on us.  She agreed and extended the “deadline.”  Well we spent at least 6 months almost constant every session trying to not be forced to have this therapy break of unknown fucking time and determined entirely by her as to when or if we return.  Then some shit happened and we left and our therapist was pissed because we left her before she forced a “therapy break” on us.  FUCK HER.  She did a number of other fucked up things.  That was our first major therapist that spent any time with our system and first time our system really opened up.  We saw another therapist for a short time who first diagnosed us (so before that first therapist I told ya about) and so yah, she saw a few from our system, but we left her for varied reasons.

Then there was Wendy and our system over the years opened up to her and like tons of us showed up in some kind of way to communicate to her.  She put up with a shit load of crap from us.  But due to financial and insurance reasons we got referred out by her.  Never mind what we had set up for years financially that was working and never mind that we had spent 8 1/2 years with her for therapy.  Never mind we were being sent out to an agency with who knows what kind of therapist and what kind of knowledge they had on dealing with multiplicity.  Okay, whatever.   Bottom line: our system opened up to Wendy big time over the years, and some inside had just begun  finally after years of trying to get them to share, they had finally begun to talk and tell.  Then: leave me, go away.  I don’t care what you say. It doesn’t matter enough.  Leave me, go away.

So 2 long-term therapists our system opens up to and 2 therapists that basically tell us to leave and go away.  Yah so first therapist we left before she totally ditched us and the second therapist we begged and pleaded and went out the door kicking and screaming emotionally.  So now there’s Cec and the agency and we’ve basically been told the same thing.  Our system has slightly opened up and has tried hard to trust and open up to Cec, even though no matter how hard we try, in some ways it just ain’t budging no where.  Oh yah, I know, we just have to pay $200 a month for 4 regular 50-minute sessions.  They didn’t really kick us out or force us to leave.  You just can’t return and have an appointment until you can pay.

I fucking frankly figure that if we do go in and pay for one session that it’s gonna be a session towards saying good-bye to Cec, if and when we find another local therapist that we can arrange something with our insurance and co-pay amount.

And the big fucking fun ass thing about this– Well, you see…. we’ve been without our secondary insurance before… but we always do the paperwork and letters (eventually) and push to get that secondary insurance coverage.  Not only that, we make sure to get it back-dated.  So ya see, all of this co-pay shit becomes totally moot once that happens.  The two other times we’ve been in this “space” of no secondary insurance, they let it slide or let me ride through it and still see Cec while I waited for it to get re-instated.  But not this time.

I’m here now and need to go.  I don’t feel like talking about it really; it is what it is and there isn’t really anything we can do about it.  It’s exhausting trying to deal with it and it brings up so much for us.

Billie, B.J., and Julie at the end