attackfish (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
attackfish) wrote2013-01-22 03:41 pm
attackfish) wrote2013-01-22 03:41 pm
Entry tags:
Getting to know you weirdos meme
Ganked without attribution from people on other people's f-lists
I know very little about some of the people on my friends list. Some people I know relatively well. But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's Parker ...she likes money and cereal." I'd love it if everyone who's friended me did this. (Yes, even you people who I know really well.) Then post this in your own journal [only if you feel inclined]. In return, ask me anything you'd like to know about me and I'll give you an answer*.
*Providing it's answerable/suitable for public posting.
I know very little about some of the people on my friends list. Some people I know relatively well. But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's Parker ...she likes money and cereal." I'd love it if everyone who's friended me did this. (Yes, even you people who I know really well.) Then post this in your own journal [only if you feel inclined]. In return, ask me anything you'd like to know about me and I'll give you an answer*.
*Providing it's answerable/suitable for public posting.
no subject
I agree with some of your points and disagree with others, and expanded my thought-bubbles from this discussion into an essay-length musing on my LJ.
I recently read this excellent piece on Mother Jones http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/ptsd-epidemic-military-vets-families that included a brief history of PTSD, including an episode where Patton slapped a soldier who was recovering from "nerves" and called him a coward. At least people don't tend to be so out-and-out assholish these days, but a lot of people are still afraid to face and accept the reality of it. Though that's true of most mental illness, depressingly enough. (u c whut i did thar?)
no subject
I know. For some reason, LJ decided to send me multiple notifications that you had linked to me. I would delete them, and a whole bunch more would show up in my inbox. *shakes head* Anyway, I've been thinking, we do need to tell more feminine narratives (because the patriarchy doesn't just disdain the female, but the feminine) but what we need isn't just more traditionally feminine narratives of heroism with women at the center to balance out the traditionally masculine ones with men at the center, but instead people of all genders in all narratives.
Making this more complicated is the way that genre works in it's current form. There are narratives of domestic heroism, but they're usually not fantasy or sci fi. Part of the appeal for a lot of people in fantasy is the same as the appeal of cop shows. Good and evil are often clearly laid out. It's very clean in a way that real world war and crime isn't, and domesticity can't be. Also, domestic heroism with supernatural elements is often labelled horror, not fantasy.
Also, there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone deciding that they are ill suited to a type of heroism. For example, I would make a godawful diplomat, and there are wonderful, tremendously loyal, heroic people in my family that we are all grateful they never became parents. In other words, when it's time to lay down the sword, it's time to look not only for difference ways to sacrifice, but different ways you personally can sacrifice. Or, it would not have made Eowyn any less heroic to me if after the war, she had said "I hate this, I'm miserable taking care of children, and I'm not serving them well, and if I keep doing it, I'll burn out. I need to find another way to serve. Not that those would have made her moreheroic either.
As for the article: I'm not at all surprised that secondary trauma occurs. Not in the least.
"Somebody at the VA told me,'Kids in Congo and Uganda don't have PTSD,'" Caleb tells me angrily one day.
What the fuck! Of course they do, holy shit! That's the psychiatric equivalent of "They're stronger than us. They don't need clean water and good food."
I've written before about our reluctance to deal with the aftereffects of war and violence in an essay I wrote about disability and fantasy, and the way we still treat people with PTSD or disabled vets is a symptom of this. The dead are dead. We can pin any stories we want on them, or forget them. It's the living, the families of the dead, the walking wounded and the permanently disabled that force us to remember there are consequences to war and violence. They rub our noses in it just by being there.
I have PTSD from being stalked twice. I've also managed to give PTSD to my mother, along with my brother, due to the terror that having her children have chronic episodic potentially deadly illnesses gave her. There are so few resources and so little acknowledgement of the toll caretaking takes, and how much trauma it can cause. That might have a whole lot to do with secondary trauma, especially for spouses.
Speaking of horror, The Exorcist and other stories of supernaturally afflicted children really do capture a lot of the real terror of caring for a sick kid when you don't know what's wrong, far better than any popular so-called realistic portrayal I've seen.
no subject
There are absolutely many different kinds of heroism, and it's a great injustice when groups of people are locked out of aspects of it, e.g. women being seen to be bad mothers--including, too often, by themselves--when they're working to provide for the family, or men like your dad being seen as inadequate nurturers. (The Doofus Dad stereotype needs to die in a fire.) It's the work of both fiction and activism, I think, to recognize and celebrate the huge variety of heroism out there and the huge variety of people being awesome.
Ugh yeah, the stupid in that comment you quoted made me haz a sad. PTSD in situations of deprivation or conflict might possibly be less problematic than in first-world countries, since a deprived or dangerous environments may call for heightened alertness and aggressiveness. In that case PTSD could actually be beneficial to survival, if no less painful. I hope that's what the VA person was clumsily trying to say, because otherwise the level of ignorance is just staggering.
Victim-blaming is supposed to be a defense mechanism to the fear that bad things can happen to you for reasons outside your control. PTSD sufferers seem to up there with rape victims on the long list of "people to scapegoat in order to deny it could ever happen to me." If only she weren't so promiscuous and didn't wear such short skirts (because I'm not That Kind of Girl), if only he were tough enough to snap out of it (because I'm not a wimp), and so on and so on.
You know, outside of being in personally dangerous situations like war and crime, it seems the most likely way to get PTSD is by helping people. Caregiving, as in your mother's case and as with military spouses, is surprisingly hazardous, and reporters and humanitarian workers also suffer trauma from the things they've witnessed. It's another aspect of the service and sacrifice involved in heroism (of all kinds) that you put not only your life, body, time, and future but also your mind on the line when you care enough to extend yourself for other people.
no subject
God, the Doofus Dad. My dad's an absentminded professor type, and can't cook, and there was a lot of "what do you expect from a man?" jokes. What?
I hope to God you're right about what the VA person meant, because otherwise, I can't deal with the stupid. And it is true that while I was being stalked, I didn't recognize my symptoms as PTSD because I was too busy using them. Hypervigilance was necessary, not maladaptive, and while I was in survival mode, I was too terrified to realize how traumatized I was. So in a place like the Congo, PTSD would be serving its original evolutionary purpose. Which is, um, horrifying on an entirely different level, I suppose.
It gets even more ridiculous when people start victim-blaming for inherited illnesses. Obviously my genetic disease wasn't real and I was just sick because my parents were bad, or because I was a bad kid or something. Yeah, I don't even know. The Just World fallacy is really pernicious.
There's a reason why therapists who treat depression have staggeringly high rates of suicide, and I don't think there really is anything much more traumatic than watching somebody close to you hurt and almost die over and over again and being unable to do anything about it. And I say that as the person who was almost dying on a regular basis. *shakes head* Caregiving is also tremendously devalued in many societies, so how dare we allege that it is grueling and potentially as traumatizing as war? And then there's more victim blaming. "If you really loved your parent/spouse/child/whatever it wouldn't be a burden" bullshit.
no subject
That reminds me of John 9 ( http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+9&version=NIV ), where Jesus's disciples asked him whether a man blind from birth was blind because of his sins or his parents'. Jesus replied it was so the works of God could be shown through him, then promptly cured his blindness 'cause that's how the Jeez rolls, yo.
Though I'm not a Christian anymore, this chapter still resonates with me not because of the whole magical healing aspect (which I've never taken literally, not even back when I went to church) but because of the message that a person's inborn harships are not a punishment but a potential for greatness and meaning.
That's what the spiritual agnostic, or more accurately lover of story, in me says anyway. The rational and scientific part of me says it's just random chance and could just as well be anyone or their loved one so shut the fuck up you science-ignoring ignorant ignoramuses.
Evidently the rational part of me has a bit of a temper. And a low tolerance for stupidity.
"If you really loved your parent/spouse/child/whatever it wouldn't be a burden" bullshit.
I hope for the sake of their souls that those horribly hurtful words were a misguided and ignorant attempt to get her spirits up. Which makes it no less wrong, just helps me feel less stabby.
It's all the more wrong because the barest glimmer of common sense should tell anyone that love makes it harder, not easier, to watch loved ones suffer and fear constantly for their safety. In my planned essay about Eowyn facing down the Nazgul as a metaphor for caregiving (your sharing your mother's story gave me the impetus to write it--you're making me all kinds of productive here), the title is in fact "Love as a Battle" and the argument is that love is the risk Eowyn is taking in that scene. The Witch-King's threat is specifically that he will not kill Eowyn, just Theoden. Surviving a loved one after pouring one's time, energy, and spirit into their care really is the kind of spiritual flaying and eternal torment that the Nazgul promises her, one that Eowyn can walk away from by not committing to protect and care for for her uncle.
She refuses to do so because she knows her spirit is stronger than any torments Mordor can threaten: Yes, the loss is hard and it will never really end, and yes, maybe she can cut her losses by refusing to commit herself completely to this difficult and terrifying process. She knows that it will be a compromise of herself to give anything less than her entire self, though, and though others will be completely understanding of her choice she could never forgive herself.
It's also significant that the prophecy set things up so that the Witch-King would be afraid of a woman but not a man. (I also read a humorous fanfic that pointed out that hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, Ents, Gandalf, etc. etc. are also not Men. I really should hunt down the link for the essay.) Caregiving has been primarily, though far from exclusively, a woman's domain, and it makes sense that the Nazgul as a sickness that inflicts the mind should fear a woman. He had even better reason to fear this particular woman who had been caring for her ailing uncle for years, something that may have given her the courage to look unblinking into the eyes of fear itself.
I'd like to dedicate the essay to your mother when I write it, would that be okay? If you'd like I could send the draft to you first to make sure I didn't misrepresent anything or accidentally share details you wouldn't want me to, though I don't think I know anything more than what you shared on LJ.
no subject
I personally think to be rational in this world is to be pissed off.
I hope for the sake of their souls that those horribly hurtful words were a misguided and ignorant attempt to get her spirits up.
Mom usually heard it from people who were trying to guilt her into not asking for help, because in the insane troll logic universe they claimed we lived in, if she really loved her kids, she wouldn't need any help. It was just one more justification they used to abdicate any responsibility.
The thing is, I've never been the caretaker for another human being, and I have only second hand experience with my mother's difficulties caring for myself and my brother, but I have nursed quite a few animals through long term and terminal illnesses (it comes with having seven birds and eleven dogs) I have lost birds that for more than a year before they died, I had to hand feed every day. I've lost dogs that I've had since I was a little girl, and who when the medication was no longer able to deal with the pain, I had to decide to put to sleep.I've taken care of a dog who had to be held up while he peed, had to have his bowl held up to him when he ate, who had to relearn how to walk, and who was terrified of me, because he had been abused. If I didn't love them, it wouldn't hurt. I wouldn't spend every waking (and a lot of unwaking, I tend to dream about my charges dying, and I know Mom did too) moment worrying, and running over and over every possible thing I could do to make it a little better. How would love possibly make it easier? It makes you do it, but it makes it so much harder.
Oddly enough, one of my White Lotus fics (I figure this is far down enough in the thread that no one is going to casually run across this) has as one of its themes that trust isn't about truth and belief but about giving somebody the power to hurt you, and the difference between love and trust. So this has been, from a completely different angle, on my mind lately. I'm really interested in reading your essay, and I'm really flattered you would want to dedicate it to my mother. She's actually a huge LotR fan, and Eowyn is one of her favorite characters. The idea of "love as a battle" in caregiving is really fitting. When you're caring for someone, and everything is going wrong, and you're terrified they're not going to make it, you face down the world, fate, death, darkness and pain, even God to say no, you will not win. And sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes, not often, it does.