Talking to the Psychologist
Here I am on a Tuesday afternoon sitting across from a doctor, a psychologist, on the second floor of a building in Pittsfield. Outside in the hallway,also called the waiting room, is my husband and two kids. I can hear them chattering quietly. The woman is more into the questions she is reading to me off a state-mandated questionaire then she is in what is truly going on in my life. For the next 50 minutes,an hour to psychologists,I have to prove that I am sick enough for the state to help me.I have a whole 50 mintues to attempt to cram into the air,and her onto her clipboard,everything in my life that has played a part in making me depressed,an agoraphobic, anxiety-ridden, and all plus the issues with my degeneritive disc disease in my back, messed up vertabrae, fibromyalsia,migraine headaches, carpal tunnel in both hands,knee issues and on and on.
First the doctor turns the fan on. Is it okay she asks. Its an old building with dark stained door frames and the usual boring stained glass inserts in the windows that adorn most of these houses and buildings in the area.The rooms are small,they smell of musty and humidity-full wood. I hardly even take in her knick knack and personal pictures and items like I would with a doctor of my own choosing.let's face it, I am mandated by the state to come see this woman so they can try to prove that I am faking my condition. The doctor explains quickly why I am there,that she has been asked by disability to assess my medical conditions and help them to decide if I am worthy of the (Tiny) amount of money I may or may not get...This is where I get annoyed. I have worked since I was 15 full time. I never stopped working until the day that I fell down on the job. It wouldn't have been anything more than a fall that really hurt accept that I was 5 months pregnant. The tests and x-rays that any normal person could do to find out what damage was done was, I was unwilling to do because I had a baby growing inside. When that baby was born later (he is 13 now), I did all the tests they required as well as go to physical therapy 2-3 times a week. What they found was many things. I injured my back from the fall(duh) but I also had degeneritive disc disease,some screwed up vertabrae and so on. I didn't return to that job as I was loving being a stay-at-home Mom and my back was in such terrible pain all the time that it often spasmed.
~A few years later I went back to work part time and only seasonally as a retail worker in a popular candle shop. I loved working but I hated the pain as I had to carry 50 pound plus boxes up 3 flights of stairs. I returned the next season and by the next I was working full time at a homeless shelter. My back never got better, never really got worse.Then one day on a jet-ski, I came down on an ocean wave harder than my back liked and I was never the same. As for my anxiety and depression, that all happened between my next job and my Mother's death.
~So, there I sat, in this stuffy room with the fan blowing around the heat,looking at this older lady who had the power in her hands to decide whether I was "sick enough" to be paid while I get better. All the taxes I paid, all the taxes my husband pays, it all doesn't really matter. Oh, and the fact that my husband has to work 3 jobs to make up for the fact that I can't work 1 is also a problem.If he makes a penny over a certain state-mandated amount I get nothing. Forget that I was making as much as he was at my last job running a house, forget that he is only working because I can't or that if he doesn't work we will have big problems, he will have to quit his jobs to get to a certain amount so that I can "earn" an amount of social security that I have worked for and earned.
~The doctor forgets 2 times that I have already told her that my Mother passed away February 10th 2009. She is now asking me when I found I could no longer leave the house. I tell her AGAIN that I began having panic attacks with hyperventalating and vomitting, sweating and migraines after I found myself choosing between work and my kids and before Mom died. I explain again that by the time Mom died I was already unable to step foot outside the door. She then asks me if my Mother is still alive....I look up,into her uninterested eyes and say, "As I told you 3 times, MY MOM DIED IN FEBRUARY OF 2009. When she died she left me behind to care for my ailing father, lost sister and help my incarcerated brother with money. She came home one day from work and just died in her car,sitting there like she fell asleep....My kids and I found her there. Since then I have been leaned onto for financial help from my father (who has his own money),have had to watch him move into the apartment of a woman he cheated on my Mom with after 35 years of marriage, and I have had to deal with my sibling become addicted to hard drugs,lose one of her children and then move into our childhood home.There my sibling sits,rent free but charging another rent, selling everything my Mother and Father and all of us shared over a life time." The doctor is unaffected but says, "wow, that must be tough."
~See, I don't expect anyone to understand. I don't expect that she or anyone will know what it feels like to be molested as a child then to go on through my children's life trying to protect them from abusers only to have them become abused by someone no one could have expected. No one knows what it feels like to have such a wonderful, great,giving mother who,at the end of such a short 58 years and 35 of them with my Father, she loses him to another woman he met while being treated for a stroke. No one can really understand what its like to have your own mother look into your eyes and crying, beg you to make sure if she dies, that you will never let your dad sell all her jewelry that he gave her in order to live the high life with a woman who is only there for his money. Not many people know what its like to see their sister try to kill herself,purposely and through narcotics, while two little kids,her kids, need her to be okay.Then to have a brother who has been incarcerated more than half of his life,call weekly begging for money when the reason he is in there is for stealing money from others, including your own family, and he gets angry when you choose to buy your kids food over sending him money for designer shampoo. No one knows what anyone else in the whole world feels like. It can take one simple thing or a million different things to finally break a person's spirit and I have had 10 over the final one that did it.
~The doctor goes onto test my memory, to ask me what a panic attack feels like and how it is I go through life with out leaving the house. I tell her that until that morning I hadn't left the house for 3 weeks. By this time I am annoyed and pissed to be sitting there. I want to be healthy, I want to be taking my 2 kids to the amusement park and the lake without vomitting. I want to be able to work a job like most people in the world withoutt feeling like If I do one day my husband might come home to tell me,again, that he has chosen to take a job that will take him away from us for 14-28 days at a time. I want my husband to be the person I married, the one who wanted to work in town so he can see me and the kids, and not decide out of nowhere that he wants a change of job...I want to be able to work and know that someone will watch the kids until I get home but who can I trust after being abused myself by so many?
~I answer all her questions, I tell her all she wants to know truthfully. I don't embellish, I don't show my annoyance after the time when she asked me how many times about mom's death. We finish the 50 minutes of talking and I leave the room to find my kids and hubby waiting for me. I don't know if the state will help me. I am not sure where or when I will get better so that I can go to work again and earn money. One question resonates in my mind as I walk out of the old, stuffy building.."Do you know what you are scared of, why you are afraid to leave the house?" If I knew why or what, I would be dealing with the fear and finally living again. Am I afraid of going out and getting plowed into by another driver? Am I afraid of coming home and dying in my own car? Am I afraid that the man I've loved for 15 years will have a stroke and forget that he loves me like Mom experienced with my father? Or that I will find something out there and never want to go home like dad? I don't know...I suppose it all comes down to the fact that for the past 3 years my life has gone up,down,in circles and all over. I don't want or expect my life to be boring and unchanging but what if I come home to find my house burned to the ground(again) or my kids get abused(again) or the man in my life decides he doesn't love the woman anymore(again) or my Mom or another loved one dies on her way home from work(again) or my siblings need me to give them money and help put their lives back to gether(again). I would love to be able to just let it all come as it will but I am scared to death of what can come next....
~Stacy J. Roosa
8/19/2010
First the doctor turns the fan on. Is it okay she asks. Its an old building with dark stained door frames and the usual boring stained glass inserts in the windows that adorn most of these houses and buildings in the area.The rooms are small,they smell of musty and humidity-full wood. I hardly even take in her knick knack and personal pictures and items like I would with a doctor of my own choosing.let's face it, I am mandated by the state to come see this woman so they can try to prove that I am faking my condition. The doctor explains quickly why I am there,that she has been asked by disability to assess my medical conditions and help them to decide if I am worthy of the (Tiny) amount of money I may or may not get...This is where I get annoyed. I have worked since I was 15 full time. I never stopped working until the day that I fell down on the job. It wouldn't have been anything more than a fall that really hurt accept that I was 5 months pregnant. The tests and x-rays that any normal person could do to find out what damage was done was, I was unwilling to do because I had a baby growing inside. When that baby was born later (he is 13 now), I did all the tests they required as well as go to physical therapy 2-3 times a week. What they found was many things. I injured my back from the fall(duh) but I also had degeneritive disc disease,some screwed up vertabrae and so on. I didn't return to that job as I was loving being a stay-at-home Mom and my back was in such terrible pain all the time that it often spasmed.
~A few years later I went back to work part time and only seasonally as a retail worker in a popular candle shop. I loved working but I hated the pain as I had to carry 50 pound plus boxes up 3 flights of stairs. I returned the next season and by the next I was working full time at a homeless shelter. My back never got better, never really got worse.Then one day on a jet-ski, I came down on an ocean wave harder than my back liked and I was never the same. As for my anxiety and depression, that all happened between my next job and my Mother's death.
~So, there I sat, in this stuffy room with the fan blowing around the heat,looking at this older lady who had the power in her hands to decide whether I was "sick enough" to be paid while I get better. All the taxes I paid, all the taxes my husband pays, it all doesn't really matter. Oh, and the fact that my husband has to work 3 jobs to make up for the fact that I can't work 1 is also a problem.If he makes a penny over a certain state-mandated amount I get nothing. Forget that I was making as much as he was at my last job running a house, forget that he is only working because I can't or that if he doesn't work we will have big problems, he will have to quit his jobs to get to a certain amount so that I can "earn" an amount of social security that I have worked for and earned.
~The doctor forgets 2 times that I have already told her that my Mother passed away February 10th 2009. She is now asking me when I found I could no longer leave the house. I tell her AGAIN that I began having panic attacks with hyperventalating and vomitting, sweating and migraines after I found myself choosing between work and my kids and before Mom died. I explain again that by the time Mom died I was already unable to step foot outside the door. She then asks me if my Mother is still alive....I look up,into her uninterested eyes and say, "As I told you 3 times, MY MOM DIED IN FEBRUARY OF 2009. When she died she left me behind to care for my ailing father, lost sister and help my incarcerated brother with money. She came home one day from work and just died in her car,sitting there like she fell asleep....My kids and I found her there. Since then I have been leaned onto for financial help from my father (who has his own money),have had to watch him move into the apartment of a woman he cheated on my Mom with after 35 years of marriage, and I have had to deal with my sibling become addicted to hard drugs,lose one of her children and then move into our childhood home.There my sibling sits,rent free but charging another rent, selling everything my Mother and Father and all of us shared over a life time." The doctor is unaffected but says, "wow, that must be tough."
~See, I don't expect anyone to understand. I don't expect that she or anyone will know what it feels like to be molested as a child then to go on through my children's life trying to protect them from abusers only to have them become abused by someone no one could have expected. No one knows what it feels like to have such a wonderful, great,giving mother who,at the end of such a short 58 years and 35 of them with my Father, she loses him to another woman he met while being treated for a stroke. No one can really understand what its like to have your own mother look into your eyes and crying, beg you to make sure if she dies, that you will never let your dad sell all her jewelry that he gave her in order to live the high life with a woman who is only there for his money. Not many people know what its like to see their sister try to kill herself,purposely and through narcotics, while two little kids,her kids, need her to be okay.Then to have a brother who has been incarcerated more than half of his life,call weekly begging for money when the reason he is in there is for stealing money from others, including your own family, and he gets angry when you choose to buy your kids food over sending him money for designer shampoo. No one knows what anyone else in the whole world feels like. It can take one simple thing or a million different things to finally break a person's spirit and I have had 10 over the final one that did it.
~The doctor goes onto test my memory, to ask me what a panic attack feels like and how it is I go through life with out leaving the house. I tell her that until that morning I hadn't left the house for 3 weeks. By this time I am annoyed and pissed to be sitting there. I want to be healthy, I want to be taking my 2 kids to the amusement park and the lake without vomitting. I want to be able to work a job like most people in the world withoutt feeling like If I do one day my husband might come home to tell me,again, that he has chosen to take a job that will take him away from us for 14-28 days at a time. I want my husband to be the person I married, the one who wanted to work in town so he can see me and the kids, and not decide out of nowhere that he wants a change of job...I want to be able to work and know that someone will watch the kids until I get home but who can I trust after being abused myself by so many?
~I answer all her questions, I tell her all she wants to know truthfully. I don't embellish, I don't show my annoyance after the time when she asked me how many times about mom's death. We finish the 50 minutes of talking and I leave the room to find my kids and hubby waiting for me. I don't know if the state will help me. I am not sure where or when I will get better so that I can go to work again and earn money. One question resonates in my mind as I walk out of the old, stuffy building.."Do you know what you are scared of, why you are afraid to leave the house?" If I knew why or what, I would be dealing with the fear and finally living again. Am I afraid of going out and getting plowed into by another driver? Am I afraid of coming home and dying in my own car? Am I afraid that the man I've loved for 15 years will have a stroke and forget that he loves me like Mom experienced with my father? Or that I will find something out there and never want to go home like dad? I don't know...I suppose it all comes down to the fact that for the past 3 years my life has gone up,down,in circles and all over. I don't want or expect my life to be boring and unchanging but what if I come home to find my house burned to the ground(again) or my kids get abused(again) or the man in my life decides he doesn't love the woman anymore(again) or my Mom or another loved one dies on her way home from work(again) or my siblings need me to give them money and help put their lives back to gether(again). I would love to be able to just let it all come as it will but I am scared to death of what can come next....
~Stacy J. Roosa
8/19/2010
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