"Bad Beth" comes out to play; you were warned.

My doctor called me this morning, and it seems that there are going to be a series of tests set up by neurology and maybe cardiology to prove what we already know; if my body happens to react the correct way at the correct time. That is the problems with tests, is that you can go to a doctor saying, “Doctor, I’m throwing up 8 times a day, I can’t live like this.” And the doctor will send to for the “EKG vomit test” on Thursday at 10:30. And you are hooked up and they monitor you for the 15 minutes of the test. Only you don’t happen to vomit in that 15 minutes. And you go home and vomit an hour later, and seven more times that day. And the doctor sees you a week later and says, “The vomit test came back perfectly normal; there is no evidence of copious vomiting......have you been feeling depressed lately?”

And since it has now been 348 days of doctor’s appointments, specialist appointments, tests, tests and more tests (not like I am keeping count). And the medication I am on from all this testing is….pain medication (and not enough of it!). So a bunch more tests to demonstrate exactly how heat intolerant I am or how much my blood pressure drops or how much my heart rate goes up just doesn’t sound that interesting to me right now. I guess they could find out another way that I could get gangrene. I have found out that even when doctors tell you exactly why you might feel crap in a particular way or on a particular part of your body, since there never seems to be a solution to get rid of feeling crap, it isn’t that uplifting. So if anyone wants to do these tests instead of me, help yourself; some free Canadian medical stuff right here for the taking. Or I could do them and have 382 days of doctor’s appointments, medical test and whatnot.

Yesterday, I was a woman possessed (not like today....oh no, not at all). By 5:00 p.m. I had it bad, this unbearable feeling of the need for being hit. I personally thought I had left the last of that crap behind several years ago but yesterday after a series of social abuses (where people and agencies who hold you in their power wait until you are helpless and then fuck with you) I had the itch so bad I couldn’t sleep with sedation. The basic scenario goes like this mentally: if you are close to me and appear to be dependable, then obviously you are a liar and I want you to show me your “true face.” Your ‘true face’ is when you slap me in the face, or hit me, or punch me, or throw me down the stairs, whatever.

There is a part of me we will call “Bad Beth” who believes that this is the real face of all people, which anyone who gets close to me is only there until the day they show their ‘true face’ and then leave. So “Bad Beth” is going to help that along by making them show that face early (and then force them to leave). Now, how that is supposed to help anything I don’t know but hey, “Bad Beth” seems pretty adamant. The problem is that once I manage to provoke a person to actually hit me, instead of calming me down I go bat shit crazy; Usually laughing like a maniac and shouting at them, “That the best you can do you weak fucker, I though you were going to try to hurt me? Then come on and hurt me. Look like this.” And then I will hit myself in the face, “Got that fucker! Can you manage that?” And between all this I am laughing this rather demented laugh (and sometimes crying simultaneous), or I will give them a knife and tell them to move it to the next level.

Now “Bad Beth” has everything perfect, Beth is getting what she always deserves (being beaten, or hell, rape me too while you at it), and she has proved that this is who people “really are.” Yes, very useful. Of course, “Bad Beth” would be quite happy to destroy my whole life. And when I read the main character in J.M. Redmann books, I recognized way too much of myself so, okay, now I can guess why I do it; yeah, I’m a whole Greek Play of re-enactment fun. The problem is that when you have that itch, you’ve been in that low beat for a couple days there is no magic I know to stop it. I can stop myself, mostly, from letting it leak out onto Linda but it doesn’t stop me from stopping my wheelchair today in the street in front of turning car with a rather demented smile muttering, “hit me, hit me, hit me.” Last night my night caregiver told me she is quitting in another couple weeks, forever. I asked as she lay me in bed what it would take for her to hit me (she is a rather foreboding “capable” and strong woman). She said that she doesn’t get provoke into hitting people, she just warns them.

“Do you want to test that?” I asked.

“No more of this, go to sleep or I will…” She mocked pulled her fist back.

“Yes please!” I leaned toward the fist, “Do it, do it!”

“Go to sleep.”

Shit.

Yesterday after another asinine dental appointment made simply because the person doing my crown is different from the person who looked at my teeth. I had to take a taxi back because I thought I was getting a ride back but I was wrong. The taxi ride back cost $16 and was mostly spent trying to explain what ‘autonomic’ means. Taxi drivers always ask me right away “What’s wrong with you?” even before they want to know where I am going. As I transferred into my wheelchair the driver said, “You know…..you should really try yoga.” Yeah, okay, that one goes into the scrapbook next to OTHER wacky health advice I got from my mid day home care worker: “You should wear more red, it will make you healthy, red is a healthy colour.” How ironic because today’s health care worker wouldn’t bring me a knife simply because I wanted to release some of that healthy red out from my arms.

“You shouldn’t have told me what you were going to use it for,” she said, “you should just have told me you have an apple around here you want to cut.”

“I’m not ashamed of it?” I said, “Are you? Should I lie to make YOU feel better?” (see what a bundle of joy I am to be around).

Damn, I’ve only done cutting twice in the last 3.5 years and this time it wasn’t will power stopping me but simply because I can’t get anyone to bring me a knife. I don’t know how long this inner storm is going to last, probably a few more days, at least as long as doctors, OT and everyone keep calling me several times a day to tell me where and when. “Yes Boss! Requesting permission to pee Boss!”

Remember what all those authority figures used to say before they hit you; “This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you.”

Well, here I am; come and prove it.