yagr,

It is so strange that your message is the first that I read upon opening my iPad this morning.

Yesterday as I sat in my psychopharmacologist's office a sign of about 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide hung on the wall across from me with those exact words. Strange that I should see them back to back like this.

I almost had to stifle a laugh when I saw them yesterday because my pp is ANYTHING BUT any single one of those things. She has lied to me on multiple occasions, she is so far from helpful that she "forgot" to call in a Seroquel refill so I was in withdrawal for a week (despite daily messages left by me and my pharmacy), she could bring Superman down with her negativity, she is quick with a roll of the eyes and even quicker with a dismissive remark (my favorite yesterday : "well, we don't always get what we want in life." Um, I never even came close to insinuating that we did?) and at least one of her colleagues refers to her as a "rattlesnake" and that's a good description of the type of kindness that she practices. She's 28 years old and seems to be in a constant state of fury.

So you see why I almost laughed when I saw the sign yesterday. It's new, never been there before, and I wondered if she had purchased the sign as a reminder to herself or if a colleague may have brought it in.

When I read your message I felt a bit embarrassed. Because the sentiments on the sign are all extraordinarily important and the final summation common sense. I'm one of those people who is usually quick to give others a break, if for no other reason that I know my own faults so well (and wallow in them minute by minute). So should I cast a stone?

Well. Yes, sometimes I think I should. When I'm told a lie, I should answer with the truth. When I hear or see someone being meaningfully hurtful, even to myself, I need to offer help by calling that person out. No need to go on.

Sometimes ya gotta be cruel to be kind.

I don't literally mean that, of course – it's just a jingoistic lyric that, stabbingly, makes a point (pun). The most important part of that sign is in the first question but I would replace the word true with "honest," because, honestly, one may not see the same as true as another. But honesty is something that both sides in a courtroom need prove – proof of lies on one side is usually a sure victory for the other.

Each can read those five words and a crowd can come away with one hundred different answers. Spare the rod? Let him dangle? You say tomato?

I cannot say that there have not been times in my life when I have believed honesty much more important than, for example, inspiration. It's honest to say, I think, that what inspires me may not inspire you. I need to wrap this up as I'm flogging the already flogged to death dead horse.

I have used words at least a dozen times in my life to shred destroy and twice as many times to maim. And I was deeply, deeply ashamed afterward. It wasn't until I was 31, in therapy, that I began to talk of these even-tempered outbreaks and that was after the last that had resulted in wholly unintended (?) consequences. We never reached any real answer but in looking at each situation I had been verbally destructive toward someone who had lied to me. I guess that I felt anyone who lied to me, or in two instances cheated on me, deserved punishment as severe as I could dish out. And I was so *******ed cold. I never raised my voice, I was never physically threatening, but I was so cold. Never feeling anger before, during or after... just a feeling that I had the right – maybe even the responsibility to myself – to somehow retrieve the trust that had been taken from me and put it back inside of me and to be whole again. As to why? Because I could. I have used my fist to hit one person one time in my life; at summer camp and with a boxing glove.

So. I have been verbally cruel in my life but not for the past 26 years. I know very well the difference between being cruel and being honest and I also know well how to be honest in an open, friendly fashion. And THAT is what I mean by honest critique. I cannot stomach the trite. As an example, I dated a woman for almost two years who was an alcoholic and attended AA meetings at least once a day. I genuinely wanted to support her and so I began to attend the meetings with her 3-4 times a week. I just couldn't stand it after a couple of months. The entire structure seemed geared toward the lowest common denominator and the phrases and Big Book stories were so repetitive and unrealistic that I just couldn't take it.

That's an example of what I mean by trite. And yet I am a faithful Roman Catholic and, until my most recent amputation, attended mass whenever possible and each and every time that I heard the most repetitive words in any mass, each time that I heard any Psalm from the Catholic Big Book, I felt a flood of emotion that I cannot describe.

Maybe the dichotomy can be answered with honesty: the wine at mass is much better than that served at AA meetings.

As you can guess by now I'm having a hypergraphic episode. As I have been writing I have been wrestling with, and losing, a battle to stay within reality. I really will wrap this up by saying that I still don't understand if honest critique is acceptable, or welcome, here or not. If I came here and complained of the blood dripping from the dead puppies hanging from my ceiling (my delusion yesterday – for weeks now they have been built around dead puppies) I would hope that someone – someone – would be honest enough to issue a reality check of some sort. I don't tend to read a lot of messages here, much less respond, but I read some messages about "dead puppies" with 90% of the responses being "turn around and give yourself a pat on the back!" And that doesn't seem like "support" to me.

Last night I had to get out of bed to help my grandmother feed my cocker spaniel, Susie. My gran died in 2002 (guess that's why she needed help) and Susie died in 1992. This didn't occur to me until I was rustling around the bottom cabinets trying to find the food and then going into a full panic attack because I was afraid that I had forgotten to buy any.

So I went from delusion to panic to just sitting in my wheelchair bawling within 20 minutes.

Let go and let God!


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