Category Archives: Commentaries: On what matters to me

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Flying a Cherry-Blossom Flag on Remembrance Day

11 Monday Nov 2019

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Flying a Cherry-Blossom Flag on Remembrance Day

What a misguided world… Someone else’s suffering cannot buy our freedom, bombing and terrorizing other countries/cultures cannot bring peace.

I do not argue that people like Hitler and Tojo need(ed) to be stopped, but war is an every day thing now. We have actively engaged/supported WW III for many, many years.

Weaponized peace-keeping is an oxymoron at best and a travesty at worst, and most of the world’s ongoing and newly erupting wars are still about what war has always been about: ethnicity, religion, and greed; the quest for resources, whether life sustaining like water, or ‘deemed’ valuable (fossil fuels etc) by modern economic systems, driven by political structures and power mongers in industry, who pull politician’s puppet strings.

When someone chooses to go into ‘service,’ especially in this day and age of voluntary service, they choose. Operative word. Just like I chose human services. Also a ‘front line.’ I am traumatized daily by the level of disregard for people, their basic human dignity, rights and needs, people just like you and me.

So those who choose the military, get no more and no less respect/gratitude from me, than anyone else making a living doing what they have chosen to do. It was not all those service men who died in WW I or WW II who bought our ‘freedom,’ it was a couple of nuclear bombs dropped on the ‘every day’ people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And before you jump down my throat, know that my heart bleeds for all of them who gave up their lives or lost everything in the great wars of the past, and those of today. My own father gave up his life as the result of a political battle, so that my mother, brother and I could live in a ‘democracy.’

My heart bleeds for all of us, daily. And for today, I choose to ‘fly’ a Cherry Blossom Flag, instead.

~Marcela: Cherry Blossoms Flying High
November 11, 2019

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Gratitude, for a young woman, I’ve not yet met…

10 Thursday Oct 2019

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My son, the hu(man) I love most in the world, is in love with a seemingly amazing young woman. He is happier than I have seen him in too long. He has worked with great diligence and purpose, on himself, on being a good (hu)man, on learning from that which has brought him self- and other inflicted pain. He has worked extraordinarily hard on accepting what is and what isn’t, on taking the best out of the worst, and on what life and happiness mean, to him.

I had nowhere near the insight into self, life, and the world, at his age, and I am grateful that I saw fit, before MY pain and ignorance perpetuated a cycle in HIS life, that many struggle to break, to change our present and future, by working through my traumatic past, and the ‘survival ‘skills’ that came with it. I am grateful that I never hid the truth of my realities from him, so that he got a balanced picture, of what some of my best successes, and worst failures, truly gave me, as a human, as a woman, as a parent, and give him, as a human, as a man, as someone’s love, as her love.

I am happy to have something to be happy about, in the midst of this, a brand new level of body-hell.

And Ima pay that young woman a surprise visit (we’ve not met yet), bearing flowers of thanks, at her place of work on Saturday.

Because I am grateful to her, for seeing in him, what anyone who meets him, often only briefly, sees, senses, is often awed by. What I have known, appreciated, loved about him, his entire life, along with the darker bits, because he has them, just like me, just like her, just like all of us.

I am grateful that they found to one another, because he is why I chose to live, more times than I care to count, in the past, and in very recent times, he is still the reason, for that, and his happiness of paramount importance to me.

I will bring her flowers because she may not have had the benefit of a supportive family, through the hard stuff, or cheerleaders, through her triumphs, so I want to welcome her, into ours, because we know how to do that. We know how to do all that, and then some, really well.

Gratefully unfiltered: Marcela.

October 10, 2019

🌻🥀🌷💐🌹🌸🌼🌺

 

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No Silver Bullets

31 Saturday Aug 2019

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(I originally posted this to a forum I belong to, full of folks just like me, desperate to Kill the Beasts. Many, have been on/off horrendous amounts of anti-biotics and anti-malarials/parasitics for months, years, decades, only to kill the very thing we need to heal anything, a healthy gut/biome, and to get sicker by the day, many to the point of absolute disability and with no quality of life. Many of the younger folks inherited it in the womb and have been sick most or all of their lives. But apparently, congenital and/or persistent Lyme & Co. do not exist and antibiotics are the cure. I refuse to use the word chronic, for it is a complete and utter misnomer  for this set of complex issues, but that is another elephant entirely. I personally know at least one person who has been absolutely mis-diagnsed with Parkinsons, and no-one want so hear that that Parkinsons meds are not working because she doesn’t have Parkinsons, she has Lyme, and likely other infections. MS, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, many others, are often misdiagnosed in people with Lyme and Co-infections like Babesia and Bartonella, because the Bugs impact the same systems as these diseases. Testing in these people generally comes up negative because we test for antibodies. A body under siege, a body whose immune system is broken, cannot produce, cannot show, antibodies in the blood. They, these bugs, wreak havoc on every single life-sustaining system in the human body, and they are neither simple to diagnose, nor easy to eradicate.)

No Silver Bullets 

Following weeks of various preparations (body/food/products/home), I took my first dose (125 mg) at 10 this morning, of this very old drug (almost 70 years and counting since approval for the pharma-market), with many new, as yet fairly experimental, off-label uses.

Providing all goes well, I will be taking 125 mg every three days for the next two weeks and then adding 62.5 mg every two weeks, and later, adjusting the dose frequency, until I reach my maximum daily dose of 375 mg, which my ND and I figure I will stay on for at least a couple/few months. I am not under any illusion that this will be a ‘quick-fix,’ or for that matter ‘the fix,’ but I have faith in my own capacity to persevere, and I have faith in the useful support I have found here and elsewhere in my world. This is not my first rodeo with a ‘really big lifey-life bitch-slap,’ though it is perhaps in the top 2 on the F-UGLY list, one of the most heinous of the heinous-nesses I have waded through to date, and for so many reasons, for real-for real.

If I have learned anything in the nineteen-ish distinct and wildly different (from one another) lives I have lived in this one skin, in several countries on 2 continents, over 58 years, and through (too) many lifey-life bitch-slaps, traumas and dramas, self and other inflicted, it is this:

There is no getting over, no getting around, no getting under, anything. There is only through. Shortcuts, at least for me, inevitably, turn into the longer, more painful, more laborious, more expensive (monetarily and otherwise), way around.

There is little space left in my world and person for anything other than taking charge of my own life and of course by direct extension, my health. The only way I know how to do this for myself or for/with the people in my ‘driven by human-suffering’ work-world, in one of the so-called ‘helping professions,’ is by arming myself with as much (useful and credible) information, by utilizing critical thinking skills, by exercising prudence, thoughtfulness, and by accepting responsibility for that which is mine: my choices, based on the information I have at any given time, in any given circumstance, and by not enmeshing myself in/with, that and whom, which are not my concern.

This does not mean that I am not frustrated as all f*** with my experience and the level of ‘are you kidding me,’ regarding the bugs who have taken up un-invited and rude residence in my/our bodies, but I am challenged with being furious, or blaming them anymore, because at the end of the day, they are just trying to do what we all do: survive, literally, by feeding off another living thing. And they, unlike humans, do not have the ability to think or feel. They are microbial-doers, doing what microbial doers do. Humans on the other hand, think and feel, and then do, often despite clear and present evidence that they ought to think, feel, and do, differently.

None of this means that I am not appalled, that I am not saddened, that I am not broken-hearted beyond description at the levels of ignorance, incompetence, conjecture, conflict, confabulation and all other messes in between, around these bugs, by both the mainstream and naturopathic medical communities, and their various offshoots like research and pharma, as well as Jane and Joe Average, and our, and the people closest to us, suffering (often for years, decades), as a direct result of all that chaos.

This does not mean that I will be ‘happy,’ for having had this experience, and it is highly unlikely that I will ever be ‘grateful for it,’ specifically, once I have enough energy back to do more than go to work to afford the gas to get there, the roof over my head, the food in my fridge, and the pricey protocols and supplements that keep me on my feet (barely),  just so I can go back to work to run the cycle all over again. But, it is my most fervent belief, that a great deal of  my physical, emotional and psychological suffering has only been exacerbated by the ‘fury’ of it all, at it all, at them who don’t, won’t, or can’t ‘get it,’ whether ‘it’ is related to the bugs, or any other lifey-life-bitch-slap in my more recent or further pasts.

This does not mean that I co-sign, sanction or accept the really bad, bordering on libelous actions and non-actions of my ex-GP, and all the other doctors out there who are quite simply, WRONG. It means that I know better than to expend my oh-so precious energy at trying to do anything about anyone else, what they do or don’t believe (in), it means that the only thing I can do about any of it, lies in my response to it, what I choose to do with it, how far I choose to allow unhelpful feelings to run it, or not. To that end, I have chosen to disengage, even if too late, from some of the conversations I found unhelpful here and in other parts of my life, and have tried to walk the talk I speak of above, to the best of my innately flawed, and acutely human, ability.

I cannot articulate strongly enough, my gratitude for this group. I have prepared as much as I humanly could under my current physical, psychological and financial circumstances, and I could not have done it half as well without some of the great information and support in this forum. I go into it knowing that I have done what I can to provide myself the best possible success given all of the unknowns, the complexity and myriad variables that are inherent to this treatment, these Beast, and most importantly, I know that there are few, if any, silver bullets in life, most especially in life with Lyme and Co.

Thanks for helping me start, I’ll post updates as coherently and as often as possible. I work full time in a fairly high-maintenance job, with a commute, and my work-hours spent supporting folks in the midst of their various lifey-life bitch slaps, with both of us trapped in most inadequate systems and resources. So in the event I am not present here as often as I would like to be, please know, that I appreciate so many of you so very deeply! I have also learned to set and respect my own boundaries (because they are there to ‘keep me in, not others out), and there are times when I simply cannot engage with anyone, in the e-world or in-human, in regard to any topic, never mind foraging in the deep, dark forests of the Beasts occupying my (and your) body, and the entirety of many of our lives.

With love,
Marcela, doing battle with some mighty tiny, but mighty powerful, Beasts, and the systems around us in the world.

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I Understand Why They Kill Themselves

11 Sunday Aug 2019

I understand, why people want to, or do, take themselves out, choose to end their lives, their suffering, because of this thing, Lyme disease and its co-infections like Bartonella and Babesia, to name just two (see ref. 1). I understand, why it is a viable solution, to end the degradation, dismissal, derision, disrespect, and disdain, of not only those working in the sick-care systems (worldwide), but even of folks in their closest circles, and even of those who also suffer, or have suffered, these illnesses. For the handling of these illnesses, the myriad misconception and full-on ignorance of them, in both the mainstream and Naturopathic communities, has created multi-systemic (political/medical/personal) discord, disagreement, controversy, mis- and non-diagnosis (2) & (3) and I understand, for I am one of them.

I understand, because the disease(s) in and of themselves and the havocs they wreak on every system of the human body are brutal, serious, life-altering, often crippling, potentially deadly, and they manifest differently in different humans, depending on if/when they were diagnosed, if, they/we were treated, and with what, and when.

I understand, for just like me, they are skilled and adaptive survivalists, these bugs; transmuting transformers, and they play hide’n seek with the adeptness and skill of a lion stalking its prey in the Serengeti. They are beasts, for real-for real. Personally, I have an ever-changing array of  symptoms which at any given time include neuropathy and other neurological issues, frightening and serious heart palpitations and other heart issues, debilitating kidney pain issues (I’ve literally peed blood more than once), joint issues, breathing (constant air hunger) issues, blood (anemia) issues, crippling pain issues, a multitude of serious vision issues, pounding pressure in my head issues, and white lesions in my brain documented (by an MRI) and categorically dismissed as ‘nothing to worry about,’ by both a Neurologist and my (ex)GP. And I suffer a hundred other, issues, and my scores on an empirically tested-for-validity screening tool used for clinical diagnosis of Lyme and Co. (4) & (5), were OFF the charts, literally, off the charts.

But clearly, none of this is brutal enough, for my (ex)GP to, and I quote, “believe in chronic Lyme.” Chronic is her word, I never mentioned it in the endless, always-ending-in-tears-in-my-car appointments with her (and others) since last December, and it is not brutal enough for me to get any MD to a) retest me for Lyme and Co (see below for more on that entire mess), and b) to engage with me in anything more than absolute and utter dismissal once they hear that I am working with someone else, it is not brutal enough for any of them to follow me on this unplanned and unwanted journey, because I need regular blood work and ‘someone else,’ is not allowed in our flawed system, to requisition it.

The sole reason that I remain walking and talking, at times barely, is because of that someone else, my well-informed, open- minded, and constantly curious Naturopathic Doctor.  She understands these bugs (as well as anyone really can at this point), and has done the work to have (pharma) prescriptive rights, at least as far as our flawed system allows any ND to have those rights. The sole reason I am able to function at all, is a Naturopathic doctor whose own GP has labeled her as ‘just an anxious young mother,’ because she too, has Lyme disease. Her own child, may have congenital Lyme disease (6) & (7). Unlike so many of us, and in her own words, she had a ‘screamingly positive lab test,’ and like so many of us, DESPITE  that, she is just as dismissed, just as derided, just as disrespected, by her own GP.

I understand why people walk out of Dr’s offices crying because their tests came back negative, I did, because it means that they/we have nothing, nothing at all to back up, effectively treat, their/our mile-long symptom lists (4), and their/our ever deteriorating physical, financial, psychological, spiritual and emotional health. The two-tiered testing system in Canada/North America is flawed beyond belief for a thousand and one reasons, but you can read more about that for yourself in reference (8).

And even for the folks who manage to get a reasonably accurate diagnosis, or are lucky enough, for it is truly a lottery, to have/find an open-minded enough, never mind Lyme-literate MD, treatment is not simple or straightforward by any stretch of the imagination, because ‘transformers, hiders, mimickers, the ultimate eluders, like me, the greatest of great pretenders’ (9). For that is what I do, every day, pretend that I am alive. I pretend it with my work-folks (clients/patients), I pretend it with my colleagues, I pretend it at the gas station, at the grocery store, and I pretend it during the rare-to-never interactions I have with friends and family.

I understand because adding injury (literally) to insult, many of the known and widely used pharma interventions only serve to send the beasts further into hiding (10) whether via the bio-films or cysts they create, which (the hiding) is then too often perceived or labeled as ‘remission,’ cure, even. More often than not, the antibiotic and other drug cocktail treatments used are creating an environment in the body that is ideal for what are known as chronic, persistent and/or late stage Lyme. A further complex reality is that (too) many folks are not host to just one bug, and because there are many strains, of each of them, and not all of them are bacterial in nature, Babesia for example, is a Malaria like blood parasite, so by direct extension, the beasts are extremely difficult to a) diagnose correctly and b) treat effectively, never-mind eradicate.

I understand, because like so many others, I have exhausted my financial (never mind the physical/psychological/emotional) resources just to stay on my feet, and while many of the pharma and other drugs I have used/am using have been/are, at least partially doing their job, a job, I am beyond exhausted by literally working full-time just to work full-time just to stay on my feet, and barely, keep a roof over my head. And while I understand, fully, why the true eradication of these beasts is a marathon and not a sprint (see ref. (8), (9) and (10), like so many others, I question almost daily, whether I have anything left, that is worth continuing down this, the ugliest, the most contradictory, most complex, most debilitating of rabbit holes I have yet fallen into, and we know I’ve been down a few, self- and other inflicted, over the years.

I understand because, how we are treated, my co-sufferers and I, mega-thousands in the groups I have chosen to engage in alone; dismissed, humiliated, patronized, ignored, mis and undiagnosed, is perhaps the greater travesty, and tragedy, the most savage brutality, of it all.

“In the fullness of time, the mainstream handling of Chronic Lyme disease will be  viewed as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of medicine because elements of academic medicine, elements of government and virtually the entire insurance industry have colluded to deny a disease.”

– Dr. Kenneth Liegner (11) & (12)

I understand because along with (one) of the many known bacteria that cause Lyme disease, I  am very likely host to Babesia, and possibly other, Beasts And please hear this: I am not contemptuous of the Beasts. The bugs are only doing what any living organism, including humans, does to survive; we feed off another. The damage inflicted by the (in)humans, however, those in positions of power that they either lord over us, or refuse to use as a method, a tool to support us with, is a bigger affront and travesty than anything the bugs are doing, for they do not think or feel. The (in)humans, however, make blindered, boxed, defensive, uninformed, CHOICES. Choices that contribute to the ruin and relegation to bare survival, of (too) many a human life and potential, just like mine.  It is nothing short of hilariously, painfully ironic, to the point of utter and complete idiocy, that the roof over my head, the food in my fridge, the pay in my bank account, are supplied by, the very ‘sick-care’ system that brutalizes me every.single.time I have to engage with it, the (in)humans in it, on my own behalf, in regard to this illness.

I am NOT, let me be very clear, NOT a fan of Donald Rumsfeld, and it makes me a bit sick to repeat anything he has said as worthwhile, but in the context of Lyme and its many complexities and co-infectious friends, it fits because a position of not knowing everything about anything, is always a good way to stay teachable, and to my mind, always desirable, but most especially so, within the context of this, my and others’ current reality.

“….as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t   know.”

-Donald Rumsfeld

I understand why people exhaust their resources, all of them, trying to know more, trying to get better when convention has failed us at every.single.step of the way. I understand why people from every walk of life and in every socio-economic and cultural group and status known to human kind jump onto every mainstream and alternative therapy bandwagon. And I understand why at the end of the financial, physical, emotional, psychological and social-support road(s), when our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our relationships, our self-worth and our self-esteem lie broken and bleeding on the ground behind us, people want to, and do, take themselves out. I understand so fully I can taste it, the why, of people choosing to end their lives, because of this thing, Lyme and it’s co-Beasts, the sick-care system, the rabbit holes of social-media ‘medicine,’ and the (in)humans, inhabiting all of it.

None of this means I want to kill myself, or have any plan to do so, for I do NOT. It means I understand why people want to. It means I understand why they do (13). I always have, in regard to other traumas in former incarnations of my life in this skin, but never this deeply, this profoundly, until now. And if you have read this far, and have at least taken a peek at the references I have laboriously and purposefully chosen for you, out of hundreds collected since last December, you will, I can only hope, better understand me (and others), where I’m at right now, why I am exhausted by the diseases, as much as I am by having to become my own doctor and researcher so much of the time, and what my next step will be

Any and all comments that I do not find helpful, or kind, will be unceremoniously deleted, and the commenter’s presence in my life, in electronic and/or real-realities, just as unceremoniously, dismissed. That, is how much space I have left for people with anything but true compassion, empathy, and even more importantly, REAL critical thinking skills.

All my love to those of you who continue to qualify in the desired categories noted directly above,

~Marcela.

August 11, 2019

Postscript: I will not, cannot respond to, and will delete any questions and/or messages specific to my illness and/or treatments, or who my ND is, and will write a separate piece in the near future with a timeline of my undesired acquaintance with these Beasts and what I have learned, what I have done/am doing about it, along with my anecdotal evidence of the efficacy (or not), of any and all of it to date. And while I want to support others in this same leaky boat, and it is most certainly a part of why I went to great lengths to put this together in the first place, at this juncture anyway, I am literally just barely keeping my own head above water. So if you are in my boat, thank you, I love you, I get it, but I can only help myself stay afloat in this moment.

References

  1. https://www.lymedisease.org/lyme-basics/co-infections/about-co-infections/
  2. http://danielcameronmd.com/misdiagnosing-lyme-disease/
  3. https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/All-Disorders/Neurological-Complications-Lyme-Disease-Information-Page
  4. http://www.lymeactionnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/MSIDS.pdf
  5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590688/
  6. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/press-release-ground-breaking-recognition-lyme-11th-luche-thayer/
  7. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/when-lyme-disease-strikes-an-unborn-child/
  8. https://www.columbia-lyme.org/diagnosis?fbclid=IwAR1VDi_s9LY7ZxyUzIULChWQEsr7VXzJC7cxWswwTPr-ppiVapZr6SYzgMo
  9. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-can-t-i-get-better/201311/are-my-anxiety-and-depression-due-lyme-disease-0
  10. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6287027/
  11. https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/5985449_Kenneth_B_Liegner
  12. https://www.mdpi.com/2079-6382/8/2/72/htm
  13. https://www.lymedisease.org/anthropologist-lyme-suicide/

 

 

 

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Life is Not a Black and White Photograph

03 Sunday Feb 2019

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Talking about this very concept, idea, led to a mass Marcela un-friending, online and in-human, a few years ago. Even following lengthy and meticulously laborious explanation and clarification on my part, these folks continued to deliberately misinterpret pretty much every word I articulated/wrote, and to convince themselves and others, that I was co-signing, excusing, or even welcoming nasty/brutal life events, acts of rape and other violence and vileness that had occurred/been perpetrated against my (or others’) person, physically, emotionally, psychologically, culturally speaking. Things are not as black and white as, if I don’t hate it, I must love it. Drives me crazy, this kind of thinking. We live in living colour, in the grey areas, in the pastels and neons, we travel on goat trails, detours, derailments and on hair-pin turns, but people insist on thinking in terms of black and white, and on linear highways. I do not miss said (un)friends. Not even for a second, but the memory of it all still breaks my a heart a little. Fortunately, I have people in my life today, who get what I was/am putting down in relation to this train of thought and its (positive) impact, on my person and life.
~M.

 

Posted by | Filed under Commentaries: On what matters to me, My World(s), Unfettered

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Ageing is Not an Act of Violence

12 Saturday Jan 2019

I really, really dislike the language in the so-called “how hard did aging hit you challenge,” currently making the rounds on FB. It asks us to post (y)our first ever profile picture and the most recent one. It’s actually an interesting little game, except for the abysmal language and all of the assumptions and implications inherent in it.
 
Unless, like some folks I have loved, we die (too) young, ageing is one of the most natural and normal, not to mention unavoidable processes, known to human kind, and using this kind of language to describe it, is just another sad, sad example of how we create false ideals, ridiculous, unrealistic expectations and concepts of youth and beauty, by virtue of the very words we use to talk about them, or the ‘loss’ of them, as if they are to be grieved, as opposed to accrued experience and wisdom celebrated.
 
Ageing does not hit people, and saying so implies (rather explicitly), that it is a violent act or event, which in turn implies (rather explicitly), that it ought to be avoided at all costs. And while violence is certainly at least partly responsible for some of the visible signs of ageing on my person, the markings on my face and body, the lines, the furrows, the lumps and bumps, are the stories of my life, and I am loathe to describe them as having been “hit” by ageing.
 
My other beef with this particular FB ‘game,’ is that it generates comments such as: ‘you haven’t changed a bit,’ you still look the same’ and similar bla blabbidy bla, and I call BULLSHIT!
 
I, and everyone I know and have seen engage with this, do not look the same as I/they did even a few years ago, and if we haven’t changed, inside or out, we’re doing it wrong, life that is, or getting botox-ed to death.
 
It’s thoughtless, mindless bullshit like this that makes me want to leave the e-world altogether, but since it is one of the only ways I ever engage with some folks I would truly miss, I chose to qualify my own participation with this lil’ bitty rant.
 
The picture with the spiky red hair was taken in approximately 2009, the other one two weeks-ish, ago. I have had a million and one good, bad, ugly and indifferent experiences since then. I have had at least 12 hair styles and as many hair colours, I have gained and lost and gained and lost at least 50 lbs altogether in that time, and I have enjoyed and suffered many happy and brutally painful times in the 10 years between these two photos, and it shows; as it should.
 
PLEASE: STOP treating getting older as if it were a disease. PLEASE: let’s try to understand that getting older, really does bring more than just ‘a loss of youth,’ and ‘diminishing’ beauty, it is the only way in which to truly know, appreciate, accept, and love yourself, and by direct extension, to know, appreciate, accept, and love, anyone else.
 
The devil-chick is my actual original FB profile photo. That, has also changed, in that I am just MORE her as I age, and there is little to nothing graceful about it. As it should be, for me.
Peace,
~Marcela.
January 12, 2019
Images and writing: All Rights Reserved.

Posted by | Filed under Commentaries: On what matters to me, Rants & Other Musings: Unfiltered-Raw

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Marcela’s World is a No-prayer Zone

20 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by in Commentaries: On what matters to me, Rants & Other Musings: Unfiltered-Raw

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Marcela’s World is a No-prayer Zone

Someone posted a very disturbing (to me) thing again recently about how saying shit like drive safe ‘is really just a prayer.’ What this particular piece of bla bla had to say, is that whether you like it or not, you (in this case me) are praying. Prayer is a distinctly ‘god-tinged,’ religious, spiritual etc etc… thing. You can call it whatever the fuck you want, but don’t tell me how I am to (mis)interpret words to take on what you need them to mean, especially when I utter them. When I tell people to ‘drive safe,’ what I mean is: there are fucking morons on the road or ice, or fog, or Elk, or lions and tigers and bears, and it is a reminder to them to pay-the-fuck-attention! Not a prayer. Again, you call it whatever the fuck you want, when you utter it.

I cannot, simply cannot do another god-tinged thing. I cannot read it, I cannot co-sign it, I cannot. I will not. If you feel it’s ok to god all over me, overtly and/or covertly, why in the fuck is it not ok for me to Atheistically-realist all over you? It is not that I don’t have faith, it is not that I refuse to believe in something, or that I don’t believe in anything. I have faith in real science, I have faith in my ability to do everything from fuck up to succeed and all points in between, and generally I tend to do it in a manner of proportions most epic. As well, I most certainly have a strong, very strong, belief: I believe in reality. I refuse, to believe in something that is not there. I refuse to believe in nothing. I refuse to allow something outside of me to take credit for all the good/bad/hard/easy/beautiful/ugly things I’ve done/survived/been subjected to over the course of my life, and conversely, I am neither cursed/blessed nor unlucky/lucky. I wasn’t handed recovery, and no evil force made me use substances, no one ‘gave’ me an education, a great kid, years of success and/or crash and burns of previously noted epic proportions! Shit happened/I made shit happen, I broke, I fixed it, I worked my fucking ass off, I rinsed, lathered and repeated. At times, I have been supported (and not) by a handful of humans. Real, fleshy, humans.

My life, what was, what is, is the direct result of circumstances, some beyond my control, and the available to me choices I made/make in the midst of said circumstances, with whatever capacity I possess(ed) (or didn’t/don’t), at any given time. My best and worst are not always the same depending on everything else going on in my worlds. Whether said choices have led me to the next epic or mediocre, yeah fuck that, I don’t do mediocre, but I digress, whether those choices have led me to the next epic success or fuck-up, has everything to do with reality, there is nothing fucking mystical or mysterious about it. The bear didn’t bite my friend’s ass when she was out on a bike ride in the sticks because of some weird fucking cosmic correlation, and it didn’t have hidden meaning. The bear bit her ass because she was in the sticks, on a bike, and scared the fucking bear when she came around the corner, and because the bear was a fucking bear. Kinda like I am not the fucking elk-whisperer, I just keep moving into their home and native land. 1 + 1 = 2 whereas 1 and 1 together mean 11, but it’s still true. And that shit, comes from a girl who hates MATH, cause it’s the only really ugly four letter word.

The bear bit her fucking ass because it’s a fucking bear. I say drive safe because I want them to pay-the-fuck-attention. I do not fucking pray. You do whatever the fuck you want, believe whatever the fuck you want, and allow me to do the same without your overtly covert missionary drivel.

Clear? Great. Peace.
~Marcela.

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Ashley Madison: Why did it become so popular to cheat?

08 Friday Jan 2016

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I recently signed on as a blogger for a fundraising effort for the YWCA, The Rose Project. The  myriad issues facing women young and old, are addressed here, and very near and dear to my heart, in more ways than I can articulate. This is the first post of many I have in the works in support of this effort. Please check out the site, contribute with your hard-earned cash as you can, and enjoy some really good reading, written by some really smart folks.

AshleyMadisonIn the course of my informal social research on Ashley Madison (AM), I formulated the following thoughts: Monogamy is a personal choice, morality is pliable at best, and utterly subjective at worst, so these two concepts in and of themselves offer little in the way of answers to the question at hand. I have turned this question over in my mind to the point of distraction, and put it forward to my various networks. There is little consensus and so many opinions that I could have written a book, but I was able to pick up on several themes.

It seems to me, and apparently to others, that when we choose to be in a committed, monogamous, relationship, whether dating, common-law, or religiously and legally sanctioned by marriage, we have entered an agreement with our partner, to be, duh, monogamous.

The folks I communicated with agreed that the trademarked AM tagline is very telling and I keep coming back to it, and its underlying messages: “Life is short. Have an affair.” I believe that at least part of what is so attractive to people about AM and similar sites, is that at the core, we have become a culture of entitlement. One in which everything has become a matter of fun, adventure, personal rights and deservingness, and the pervasive attitude that everything, including humans, is replaceable. If we’re not getting what we want from what and whom we have in our lives, we can get a new one, a better one, a different one, and it’s OK, AM says so! Life is short after all; we should have our cake and eat it too! Our wants have become perceived as needs, and perhaps, a growing laziness to do any real personal work, driven by unrealistic expectations of love and good relationships, are also at play. In Why Women Cheat: A Married Man goes Undercover on Ashley Madison, Charles J. Orlando discovers that many of the women want more (attention) than they have in their committed relationships, but are unwilling to leave their partner for any number of seemingly valid reasons; including standards of living provided by a spouse, staying for the kids, staying for social standing, and the like. It feels like a copout to me. My professional life informs me that well-adjusted, separated/divorced adults can provide great co-parenting, and come to good decisions about money, without living, and modeling, a lie.

The other question I keep coming back to? Why would I commit, lead my partner to believe that I want a monogamous relationship, when I don’t? What happened to just being straight up? Even if I have simply changed my mind about what kind of relationship I want? What has happened to personal integrity? I am reminded of the simple, but oh-so-difficult-to-live-by Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz, specifically, Agreement One: Be Impeccable With Your Word. Translation: be honest; don’t lie, don’t deceive, if you have agreed to be in a monogamous relationship, don’t cheat; you have given your word.

The Truth About Love... When I polled my friends and colleagues about their experiences with cheating, most admitted to having done it, and for the record, I have too. We all had various reasons and justifications, but the common threads in this piece of my social research are that we subscribe to monogamy, none of us felt/feel good about having done it, and all of us had intense guilt shame about it. Many of these folks also thought that any culturally accurate answer to the question of why it has become so popular to cheat, needed to examine how our core values in relation to throw-away mentality, has changed over time and in the age of consumerism, (perceived but unattainable) perfection, better, bigger, more.

Stuart D., the one public responder on my personal Facebook page, to a request for perspectives on why AM has become so popular, resonated strongly with my own thoughts about consumerism and the commodification and quantification of everything in our culture. He offered what is for me, a stunning insight into how sites like AM are contributing to the consume/commodify everything mindset, and how that is related to our ability to perpetrate violence: “Once we accept that people can be used and tossed aside violence is a very short step away if we are unhappy or unfulfilled in any way.”

I would add to that the scintillation of an adventure in a life fraught with responsibilities and meaninglessness, the (false) promise of complete anonymity (read: secrecy) because it’s the Internet, the pretense of no harm no foul, and the road to all willing infidels is paved in gleaming gold. In some ways, it is the Eldorado to feed the core of human greed; it offers the appearance of something (extra), and risking nothing. It has been my experience in life and love, that the greatest risk (and reward) of all is the vulnerability created with complete honesty and transparency in relationships. And maybe, just maybe, that is another of the possible answers to the question; Why it has it become so popular… to cheat? Perhaps it is because sites like AM provide the seeming opportunity of getting something, without risking anything, but most especially, not our oh-so-vulnerable hearts, and the potential of someone seeing our truest self.

And then there is the entire issue of AM and similar sites being an ‘online’ thing, and the disturbing trend of psychological disconnect that happens for folks in online interactions, and falsely feed ideas that these interactions are not as bad as engaging in person, even when ultimately, the encounters often become real time and real life, real cheating.

I invite you to consider the quote about Love in the image attached to these thoughts and share your perspectives on it, as well as the following questions:

Do you think that cheating is so popular through an online venue because folks feel as though because it was instigated online, it isn’t as bad?

Do you know anyone who has used sites like AM and what was their experience?

What are your thoughts on making an informed and thought out decision to use a site like AM, after having committed to a monogamous relationship?

What do you think about current cultural norms of replacing what is, or feels broken, as opposed to working on or fixing it?

~Marcela.

Images/Quotes:

https://www.ashleymadison.com

Love is something Different – Melanie J. Williams

 

 

 

 

 

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Political Fruit Salad for Breakfast in my Canadian World…

20 Tuesday Oct 2015

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20151020_123328[1]I was set to comment about normally reserving this venue for my personal poetry and other less political offerings, but clearly I have just met some of my writing if I think it isn’t political in one way or another. I have believed for a long time now that the Personal is indeed Political, and politics in one way or another are inherent to everything I do and write about.

This bit here, is literal in the political sense, and quite the tippy-top of the Iceberg in terms of the many thoughts I have about the political topic du jour here in Canada. I have however, come across enough nit-picking this fine day, to warrant just a little bit of an as yet under-caffeinated opinion.

We made huge strides in so many ways last night! So while all of the nit-pickers are busy looking for issues to nit-pick apart, I will focus on the good shit:
-Voter turnouts were the highest in decades (and not all of the numbers are in yet, particularly those of folks who registered on voting day, that queue here in Duncan was peopled well.
-Advance polls were the highest, 71% more folks voted in advance polling than in 2011 SEVENTY-ONE Percent!
-More Indigenous voters than ever before! Many communities actually ran out of ballots
-70,000 students voted in advance polls alone, and we know that historically student turnout has been poor…
-32 of 42 possible ‘no to Enbridge’ Candidates voted in, 7 pro Enbridge candidates defeated
-Trudeau actually has a lot of very smart plans for this country in terms of families and other social policy. This is huge in my world, HUGE!
-Harpo, and by direct extension many of his corrupt cronies are OUT for fuck’s sake! No outcome could be better than that fact alone!

We have STOPPED Harper!The hardest part for J.T. is yet to come, and it is up to us to avoid jumping on the finger-pointing bandwagon when things don’t go exactly our way, because really, put yourself in his (or Obama’s for that matter) shoes, just for a minute, and think about what it might feel like to walk into and through the quagmire he just quite willingly and with such great effort and passion, inherited! We have as much to do with it as Harpo did, because we closed our eyes for 10 years and pretended he wasn’t there. If young J.T. starts going sideways it is up US to hold him accountable, whether we voted for him or not.

For the record: Green is my party, I voted orange, and red won. I feel as though we all did. And like I’ve eaten fruit salad, always a healthier choice than picked nits.
Peace,

~Marcela: well nourished.

Sources:

CBC News

Global News

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R.I.P Toller Cranston.

25 Sunday Jan 2015

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indexIt’s weirding me out a bit, not necessarily in a bad way, because these things happen to me often, have happened for decades…

It’s odd(?) that I was just thinking the other day, yesterday, actually, of how important you, the book ‘Toller’ (which I dog-eared and re-read almost to destruction), the Great Strawberry Queen, were to me in my tortured youth. That book, the glossy full page photo of her in that book, kept me alive more than once.

TheGreatStrawberryQueen.TollerCranston1You wrote in that book about having swallowed a large amount of some kind of OTC medication in the hopes of going to sleep forever, but waking up disgruntled the next day, disgruntled, surprised, about having woken up feeling slightly better than you normally did… made me smile then, makes me smile now, the thought of your surprise and disgruntled-ness! And the irony of it, of course…

TC1-0242And when I thought about you, yesterday, I wondered what ever happened to my well-loved copy of that book, and realized that I would need to get a new one… I did that, today…

RIP Toller Cranston, but in living colour! You, your brazenly beautiful artistry on ice, on canvas, in life and love of it, my experience of you, your life, is one of the things that shaped me. One of the very important things.

I got you, I always felt that if you could stay alive and practice your art in all ways, speak your mind the way you did, speak to me without knowing I existed, then maybe, just maybe, I could too.

All my love and wistful tears, for the early loss of a soul I felt such a kindred attachment to.

~Marcela: Unfiltered. Living in Audaciously Vivid Colour, and out loud(er). Always, louder, always going higher.

(Photos sourced from: Amazon.ca, http://www.skatepsa.com/In-The-Loop-Issue-2.html, https://www.facebook.com/TollerCranston, and http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/20973064_signed-serigraph-toller-cranston)

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