When They Need For Me to Not Need

There was a time in my young life when I believed that being needed by someone equated with agape love.

I believed – and whole-heartedly enough to commit my entire human life and future into the the human hands of a person in deep need – that giving oneself unconditionally was the pathway to love.

Perhaps I got what I deserved.

Because, like most humans who give, we hope for some type of reciprocation.

And desire for reciprocation, requires others to give back in some reasonable way.

So this would be wrong. Because in my world, it seems that people need me to not need.

And clearly, thirty-seven years later, I still seem to have what they call selective hearing.

Meaning, they tell me what I need and how I should get it and if I don’t comply with their pronouncements (pronouncements that don’t require sacrifice from them, only sacrifices from me), I am being difficult.

Perhaps I’m just a difficult person.

Because I keep hearing that they need for me to not need.

They need for me to just hear.

To just hear how I have let them down.

To just hear how much they hate being around me.

To just hear how much of a “selfish bitch” I am.

To just hear the liberty to tell me to “F off” when I try to communicate my perspectives and needs with sincere failure to make myself heard.

To just hear, again and again until I sit silent with the pain and absorb it all (yes, I have been advised to do this…and also told I never take advice)…essentially, how much I have let them all down.

__________

It’s a Monday morning, again…and like most days but especially Mondays, I attempt, essentially, to not let anyone down. Including myself.

Back in February I got a message in my NP office portal from a nurse stating that I had not done bloodwork ordered. And that they couldn’t provide me proper healthcare if I didn’t do that. Actually, I didn’t see this message until early April when I simply needed a refill on my blood pressure medicine. (And spoiler alert…as you read on…I was NOT overdue on any blood work…none…nada…)

This was a BP medicine prescribed in Alabama that a different Pennsylvania doctor had refilled in 2020 simply on my word and reading the medicine bottle.

This was a BP medicine that later, the NP I had seen for over two years, routinely discussed and monitored with me, as did other nurses in their office. I had simply run out. Because I was cutting them in half or quarters as the NP told me I could do, and, somehow in my move August 2020, I had enough refills that took me through April 2022. Somehow, in my move and transfer of RX to pharmacies, it was just that situation.

Suddenly, when I requested a refill via the portal – assuming that literate humans could read and refer to prior office notes – it was demanded that I drive in for an office visit (almost an hour into Lancaster) or the NP would not refill, since she didn’t originally prescribe it. It was stated that maybe the medicine wasn’t right if I were cutting them in half. My stating back that the NP had told me to do that (and, one nurse by phone told me simply to not take it, since I had been having some episodes of low blood pressure, likely due to weight loss, anxiety and stress or possibly even post covid issues…things no one can ever answer, despite me seeking answers…) fell on deaf ears.

What ensued was a string of time-sucking and otherwise upsetting communications through a portal and various phone calls, navigated through many prompts designed to keep someone from reaching a human being, where it appears several different people kept answering messages and not truly hearing or reading what I thought were my fairly simple and clear communications. Requiring my communications to become more lengthy and referencing.

I was told by the NP staff to call the cardiologist, who issued a refill last fall when I was there for some testing, but that RX was never sent to the pharmacy. It only existed in portal notes, and there was no RX to print out. I called and spoke with their nurse (at the cardiologist), who told me to contact my NP (primary care provider), essentially.

I then called back to the NP office, spoke with a receptionist who clearly understood the situation – (I was going out of town, could not make it in for an office visit, and had scheduled one for mid-May, in response to the sudden demand to schedule an office visit for what seemed to me to be no legitimate reason). They took notes and said they would straighten it out, essentially.

About thirty minutes later, I get a call from yet another nurse in their office. I step outside my studio to talk, thinking she will say “sorry for all the confusion, your RX has been called in.”

See, a week before, in the process of me trying to not let other people down, I saw emails from the portal and assumed it was just the RX was called in. I didn’t read it, because I was reading other important stuff. I went to the pharmacy and it was not ready. Nor could they access the refill the cardiologist had made.

As I stood outside that day, after optimistically receiving the call and caller ID, stressed over wondering if I had enough money in my account to get gas to go to Delaware for a job where I’d make significant money I would receive two weeks later, I looked up and saw a storm had blown my 2nd floor gutter off and it was dangling...

The nurse was rude to me, and I increased in my emotionality and upset. I was told the NP was on vacation, and I could yell all I wanted (she thought I was yelling at her, which I told her I wasn’t…I was trying to be calm and explain my situation…that it was impossible for me to come there that day for an appointment…she was now telling me I simply had to come there and have them take my BP by their staff, in order to get my BP medication filled…and I insisted she stay on the phone with me while I marched up to my office and gave her 3 readings…to which she rudely told me I shouldn’t take my BP when I’m upset) but the NP would NOT refill my BP medicine unless I came there in person.

I was flabergasted.

Stating logic that it would seem even a small refill on a needed medication to take me two weeks seemed appropriate, and that the stress this simple request was producing was not helping my anxiety or BP, and that I did not at that time have the money to fill my tank to drive an hour, plus needed to finish work so I would get money to go to Delaware the next day for work, seemed to be lost on her.

All she heard was her own need to tell me what was required of me, to essentially, meet the confounding needs of that office and that system. A system we are all ensnared in, and that beyond the essentially faceless medical establishments and protocols required of us…into almost every aspect of our functioning lives these days.

No amount of reasoning with her – for her to hear the particulars I was dealing with in my life and my need to simply go to the drugstore and pick up a refill on a BP medication I had been taking since 2018 (that is four years) without any real issue – permeated her ears.

But oddly, by the end of that day, I got a call from the pharmacy telling me my RX was ready. I asked, “Who called it in? Was it the cardiologist (finally) or the NP (finally)?”

The response was that the NP called it in.

In my portal, another different nurse said the RX was called in but the NP wanted me to keep daily readings until my visit.

This escalated my stress, since it is hard to figure how to download daily readings to take in, and to methodically do that. The NP had specifically told me last year to not fret over monitoring that and other things so closely, which added to my anger and head-spinning confoundment.

Now, word came from some nurse that the NP suddenly was telling me to do THAT.

I mean, I’m already dealing with enough people and situations who make the rules and then break the rules…now…this un-navigatable system seemed to be keeping pace with that theme. I’m already in endless loops of a variety of people and systems that seem to be gaslighting me, and like words I read once penned in the early ’80’s in some genre of literature…they seemingly escape like arsonists burning the superstructures of souls…

Nothing hurts me more than feeling like I’m witnessing some type of personal crime before my very eyes that I cannot articulate without sounding like I’m the one perpetrating some crime, or somehow crazy or otherwise horrific of a person. When I say crime, I suppose I’m speaking of real or perceived wrongings or being wronged. There seems to be no acceptable pathway to make my legitimate needs and desires known to these personas without being accused of making everything about me.

Because, nothing is ever to be about me, because, it is always about them. If I don’t make it fully about them, then I am making it also about me, and that, is not acceptable. Any inch of something being about me is interpreted as me demanding for everything to be about me!

Any moderation on my part at something while still allowing for normal flexibility and fluctuations, is interpreted a certain way leaving me feeling I am only as good as my last mistake. Mistakes always noticed, compliance never acknowledged.

This happens, because we are not privy to another’s inward battles. We interpret things wrongly, since, we are not them.

Yet, it remains confounding…since I do believe in facts and reasonable truth in narratives…and I do believe a neutral witness would be left doing some type of facial contortions if they saw what I saw and experienced – if it were possible to have a true (entire) witness, other than God Himself. Which, it is not.

My metaphor of wanting or needing a witness would also simply serve as evidence of my own guilt – because I seem to be the subject of guilty until proven innocent, with no pathway to speak on my own behalf without it being used as evidence to prove my guilt! Guilt is established through hearsay, circumstantial and superficial evidences, misinformation, disformation, ignorance, opinion and flat out refusals to receive information and facts to the contrary.

I am already judged, and my sentence is already pronounced. I am not even permitted to ask how long. Because…um…I don’t know…why? Because that might allow me some sense of insight or reasonable sense of control in these processes?

Oh but control, that’s the issue. It’s a control issue and the controllers tell me, essentially, I am being controlling – or would say that – if I were to dare question their own need for negative control.

How horrible or terrible – which is it…is it terrible or just plain horrible – to say, or especially write such a statement!

__________

Oh…now I recall…this actually happened around mid-April, not early April. The request for the BP medication refill.

Because I recall making mention with my BP request – since I assumed the NP read the messages to her personally, since I select in the portal to whom they are sent, and she understood that I was facing many life stressors for quite awhile and that it was important to me to build a holistic relationship with a primary medical caregiver – that my transgender son who has blocked me from their life because, among other reasons, I don’t see that he is a woman (?), had fathered twins with a woman. That I had just learned of this mid-April and not by my fishing for any information whatsoever, I was simply informed by someone, and was reeling with this recent addition of personal difficulty in which I am expected to cope with.

Silently.

Actually, it is not fair to say I’m expected to cope with that, because, it was expected that I should not even be informed that I was a grandmother. Just to clarify, what it is that is expected of me.

When I showed up at my appointment mid-May, I was asked upon sign-in to fill out a standard mental health questionaire! The form asked (in my mind) a number of vapid and ridiculous questions, given all things particular in my situation. I was already getting into full sarcasm mode and contemplated for a moment, answering every single question with the worst answer possibly! HA.

The fantastic dark 1980’s comedy Network comes to mind! (Later a true dear friend who can be counted on as a voice of reason and laughter thought it funny, but was glad I didn’t do that, lol…)

I simply wrote N/A across the whole thing in large letters and handed it back. This was highly irregular and quite frankly, beyond insulting.

In my dark-humored mind, I also think now (and likely thought then as I took the clipboard into the bathroom) about the amazing part in the old film Alice’s Restaurant…it’s the part in the song where he reads on some draft form, “have you rehabilitated yourself, kid?”

He goes on to say, “You have a lot of damned gall asking me if I’ve rehabilitated myself…if I’m moral enough to join your army and burn, rape and ravage women and children after being a litter bug!”

This is my intermission of sorts here…ha ha…I actually just typed that from my paraphrased memory of the song! Let me now Google for the exact quote and intersperse the YouTube.

“Kids, this-piece-of-paper’s-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-
Know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-
You-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-
Officer’s-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say”, and talked for
Forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had
Fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there,
And I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it
Down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the
Pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the
Other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on
The other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the
Following words:

I went over to the sargent, said, “Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to
Ask me if I’ve rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I’m
Sittin’ here on the bench, I mean I’m sittin here on the Group W bench
‘Cause you want to know if I’m moral enough join the army, burn women,
Kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug.” He looked at me and
Said, “Kid, we don’t like your kind, and we’re gonna send you fingerprints
Off to Washington.”

Back to that mid-May office visit.

When I went to the “pre-person” who takes vitals and notes, the nurse (one whom I later learned, by name, had her hand in this portal communications fiasco) had the gall to ask me, “So what brings you in today?”

I was stunned.

I was angry.

I said, “You mean YOU don’t know?”

In my mind, I really didn’t NEED to take nearly four hours of my day (by the time it would be said and done) to attend some weird argument over why I couldn’t simply get my needs met, yet again…in response to a portal message saying I needed a refill, to wait several days, to show up to the pharmacy and pay for it, and take it home. I was there, in person, at immense cost of my time and much else, to comply with their demand I come there, to have my BP taken, in person.

The beginning of the insult of this is that they couldn’t trust me to take my own blood pressure? And to send the info in their messed up portal, or speak it over the phone?

Is there anything unclear about this?

I refused to answer her, I said that “I didn’t need to discuss this with a middleman, I would discuss with the NP.”

I mean, I’ve taught kids before. And, I was a kid once, too. This reminded me of that game pass the message. You know, that hilarious game that isn’t so funny when you are a fifty-eight year woman carrying heavy, heavy weights and can’t seem to properly communicate “I need a BP RX refill” to the satisfaction of people and a system wherein the left hand has no idea of what the right hand is doing or what really happened or was said.

At the moment, I could tangent off about family systems, too….but I will not.

When the NP came in, she said she was told I was a “Hot pepper.”

On my drive home, I was chatting with a good friend who said to me, “Did she really say that? Did she really call you a ‘hot pepper?'”

And I replied, “Yes.”

She astutely observed how terrible it must be to work in an office with all women on staff! The linguistic jokes and digs among themselves and toward patients, I surmised from the comment, must be at Fahrenheit 451.

In this conversation, I was pretty upset. She noted that I was tearful…I later read the office notes. Because, I am a curious and literate person.

I learned that the NP did not read the messages herself. She suggested going forward that I call and ask for a direct phone call from her. (I have attempted this since then, with more confusion of messages passed and fielding of direct requests. I asked for a refill on glucose monitoring strips…I have the machine model as NP told me to send her when I got home. So she could refill. The person taking the message, since I refused to use the portal, communicated my need for test strips in some way that I showed up at the pharmacy and they had a whole machine ready for me to purchase, with all supplies. How does this happen?

In the office visit, the NP denied that she asked for me to do daily BP readings. She flipped through the portal messages and could not find this note to me, and I was so flustered as I tried to log in on my phone and find it. I felt anxiety increase, because of the time constraints of the whole situation.

When I got home, I located the message and the nurse’s name. The particular nurse who told me that the NP (she used her name) told me to take daily readings. Which the NP denied ever saying. But which her nurse (one of several in this confounding “conversation”) put in writing, speaking on her behalf. A fact, I could not quickly locate. A situation that made me feel like being a patient these days is almost another full-time job.

A recognition that even if I had found that message and showed it, I imagine it would be regarded as irrelevant, or spun in some way so that I might understand their needs, rather than their taking proper responsibility to reciprocate understanding my needs. In reviewing all portal communications, I even noted several times where I said “thank you” and apologized for any confusion. Where I re-worded and attempted to clarify the issue.

An observation which made me grateful that other than some high blood pressure and needing to keep an eye on blood sugar stuff (I am not diabetic, but, with family history and some high labs, previously, I need to make sure I’m eating OK and things the same), I think, as far as I know, apart from occasional tachycardia and anxiety, I am healthy as a horse. For my age.

At this mid-May visit, I mentioned the request for the bloodwork and said I had not realized I didn’t do anything ordered. She looked in my records and agreed, I had the labwork she ordered last August or so already done. Within that week as I recall. She said what I received was just an automated message.

An automated message signed by a particular nurse’s name. (Another nurse)

An automated message in some layer of Dante’s Inferno that didn’t cross reference with the test results from that bloodwork order also residing in that same portal.

Yep, my bad!

I tried to communicate my life stressors (the most recent round) in that office visit, which had affected the context for my response and upset – things of which I don’t think she quite believes my narrative, nor truly acknowledges the fact that all of this is actually my situation. I don’t think she nor anyone there is hearing how difficult my life has been for well over five years. Or at least, without thinking to themselves…after this time frame, surely something is wrong with her if she isn’t over it already.

They don’t understand me, nor what I do, nor my particulars…though I try to tell them in whatever way a ten minute visit permits. Oh, and my visits aren’t ten minutes.

I imagine they must think I am making this stuff up. They must think surely, one person can’t have all these things happening. I imagine they think I just can’t cope with things, or cause these problems.

Rather than recognizing, “Wow…you are amazing that you are coping with all these things…,” they judge, possibly. And I suppose, I may be judging them, too.

The fact is, that I, and all of us, fail at times to fully recognize the unseen battles we all face at various times and seasons.

Sometimes, we (and I, at times) just need for others to not need.

We just want to see or hear it is all fixed, even if it is not, or is unfixable.

We put out and project our time-line, our terms, and passive admonitions of calls to toxic positivity or compliance with unasked for advice.

Who gives advice to someone without taking time to fully understand the situation(s) and ramifications of their advice?

Well, many people.

It’s a perennial thing we all face…advice given by those who are unwilling or unable to walk with us through the entire consequences of their ill-spoken advice to us. Advice which possibly arises from what will meet their need for us to not need.

Actually, in my realm, several who accuse me of “never” taking their advice, were actually never really asked for their advice. At least, not in the way perceived. Advice came through impatience and judgement, through my repeated attempts to be heard, understood, and receive reasonable responses within the person’s power to respond.

At least, as I see things.

But again, I don’t see clearly. I don’t hear. Only these people, see clearly and hear precisely.

___________

But back to the NP situation. Over three months later, it would only make things worse if I went in and told them about my recent alternator fiasco from beginning to end…they would not believe me, or worse, not care.

At the mid-May visit, she did take notes about the one nurse who called me and was so rude. There was a comment made at the end of the visit that it might not be the first time. She said she would look into this situation and inquire what actually happened.

On my drive home that same day, hours later, the NP called me and said she talked to the nurse and office person and things were in fact, as I said it, in terms of what was said to me. I had run errands in Lancaster since I was there, and it was dinner time.

Mid-May is usually, in recent years, a difficult time.

There is the anniversary of my father’s death on May 10, and then Mother’s Day, and then my birthday on May 16. I don’t recall all that I was saying back to her, but I was emotional and spoke of several things, including the situation with my son. I believe she was impatient, said I was breaking up (I was crying, so it must have sounded like a bad connection), and then the call dropped since I was on the part of a country road where I always lose reception.

Or, perhaps, she hung up. I would believe anything at this point.

I do not recall any real apology.

What I sensed was (whether accurate or not) that I should just get over this whole miscommunication… it was now resolved...that simply acknowledging that what I said actually happened would just make it all better. No real asking forgiveness (OK, that is a spiritual thing…apology is simply regret…asking one’s forgiveness requires vulnerability…it requires the wronged person to complete the exchange…in some ways…and they may not do that…in the moment…or ever…) for causing me undo stress, upset, taking my time unnecessarily…

And there were subsequent days where I kept re-visiting the portal, forming and re-forming messages and references to the actual communications that if any reasonable person paying attention would have studied, the truth of the situation would have been evident. But, I did not send those messages.

Because, why bother.

I suppose I was just trying to wrap my head around where things went wrong…

I am always in the wrong, when ensnared by either these types of situations, people or otherwise.

I am expected to hear, but not be heard.

They need that I have no needs…or…that my needs stay in line with their conditions.

__________

So this morning, after having the CBC and A1C prescription for over three months – yes, in my world fasting after midnight and getting to a lab early the next day is not a simple thing – I accomplished this, too.

Last night, amid the plethora of things I need to do in order to not let anyone down (which basically are my clients right now, since apparently I’ve let everyone else down that I might expect to be present for me in my time of practical and emotional need) and for my own survival, I planned to get to bed extra early, not eat, not have my normal routine this morning, and get myself to the lab.

As I sat there, masked, feeling more pressure and discomfort than usual in having two tubes of blood drawn (probably I’m dehydrated…drinking water overwhelms me and takes time…would you believe someone could be overwhelmed at drinking water?) I made talk with the technician. I ask about her weekend I suppose, or something…

She told me she was exhausted! That her three grandchildren had been there.

I asked how old!

All three boys, under five years old. They call them the “wrecking crew!” I listened, looked in her eyes and was happy for her. Truly, you cannot divide the infinite. Someone else enjoying a slice of the joy pie doesn’t mean less for you.

Not in God’s good world of Shalom.

I think the conversation had proceeded first from discussing Mondays…it’s going to be a busy day she said…I think she asked if I had a lot to do and I responded simply (because that is what people need from me) that “yes…lots to do today…”

I had thrown on a dress quickly and pulled my hair up. Likely I may have looked like some middle-aged woman who did not work outside of the home, I suppose.

Perhaps she thought I would go home, read a book, vacuum my house, enjoy sitting outside, and snuggle with some animal. She didn’t know I would go home, run a bath, get out mid way…and spend three hours on this writing.

On my drive home, my thoughts continued where they had left off when I fell asleep last night and when I awoke this morning, forcing myself up and to not lose the territory I had gained by getting into bed by 10:30 and not eating anything after midnight.

I thought of many things, and especially words spoken to me this weekend.

I thought about how I responded to a client’s email as I sat waiting for my turn to get blood drawn. Because, I need to acknowledge that person’s deposit payment on a project I need to have done by mid-October. I cannot let them down.

I thought a lot about how from my view, pretty much my entire life has been about not letting people down.

I thought about a horrible time period in 1992 when I let people down. And I also thought how even in that, I took care of some practical matters first, so I would not let that set of people down. And this made me think of particulars I was privy to about a different tragic situation years later when a good friend took their life, and how I learned that they took care of some practical business that very morning.

I thought about what I should do next today, when I get home.

And I decided I should finish up my Sheetz coffee, and write, in hope of using my gifts to help others.

Or maybe, this is simply another selfish pursuit.

I thought about how if most people weren’t so doggone responsible, the suicide rates might be even higher. I wondered to myself if studies have been done on correlation between responsibility and these things. I thought about how can one even measure someone’s responsibility and faithfulness?

Is there some metric?

Is the outcome of investments of all sorts the measurement of success?

Or the measurement of culpability?

The measurement that says, you did not give enough of yourself.

You are not enough.

And, you are too much.

In fact, you are so much, we can’t stand being around you.

I thought about the piece I want to write that will tell why I think the story and narrative presented in a certain classic holiday film would never take place today. At least not in that understandable script, if, at all…

In a nutshell, we now live in a climate of the synthetic.

And that is why that story would not take place.

We live in a climate where people say phrases on Twitter about being so so grateful…

Little bird tweets of which they don’t seem to have the slightest inkling what these tweets even mean…