Starting a Fight to Stop a War

(Graphic stolen from this site)

by Minerva

I was once a part of an on-line forum. The subject matter isn't important, nor is the back door reason I joined the group. I joined this social media group about five years ago, maybe a little less, back when Facebook was not an issue and the only people on MySpace were teens.

I joined this on-line forum, made up mostly of women, though not entirely. We had a great time: joking, sharing photos, starting new threads (both germane to our overall topic and not), discussing things, planning crazy stuff we knew we'd never actually do, and getting to know each other personally. And fighting. You would NOT believe the fighting.

Or maybe you would believe it. Have you ever gotten dozens of women together for any great period of time? It's a frightening thought, I know, in the best of circumstances. Throw in one or two shit disturbers, maybe a troll or three, and the whole forum would go up in smoke in minutes. The site was shut down for days (once weeks) at a time fairly regularly.

But I almost always stayed out of it. I don't like fighting, and I'd either find someone neutral to play with or I'd leave. Unless, of course, I felt like stirring some shit myself, by poking at an intellectually challenged troll with a stick. Go ahead, Troll -- send up another lob for me. SMASH! Some things are just too tempting to resist.

Then one day I jumped into the fray with both feet. As I watched what was happening on the forum, I was so angry I was shaking. One very dim-witted poster (I'll call her Saint Ann) was passive-aggressively pushing a very painful button for another poster. Push, push, push. We begged her to stop. I e-mailed Saint Ann privately to say that I thought she might be unaware of what she was truly doing, but there was a lot more to the story and would she please stop? All of our efforts were not only dismissed by Saint Ann, but also actually served to strengthen her relentless attack.

Why do I care? I wondered. Why can't I walk away from this like I've ignored most of the others? Because someone is being hurt by this attack, someone I care about, was my answer to myself.

Nothing I knew to do was working. It was time for something drastic. I opened a new thread and typed in the title:

Dear Saint Ann: I Don't Like You

My head hurt, my throat hurt, my stomach hurt. Yes, I know how that thread title sounds, but I had a very specific reason for doing it: I was changing the subject. Now the focus was on ME, and how awful I was, or how brave, or wow, I never knew she was such a turd in the punch bowl or Really? Because I always knew she was a turd in the punch bowl!

I sacrificed my integrity on the board. Did it work? Pretty well. The pinnacle of nastiness was soon reached, and then died out. I was tarnished, but the focus had been removed from my friend. I certainly didn't do it alone, but I felt the need to throw myself under the bus for a friend. Dear Saint Ann: I don't like you. The follow-up words I chose were unheated and straightforward, with no name-calling or swearing, but they had to hurt, and I intended them to hurt. Yes, I was definitely a turd that day. And I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

I later apologized for my tactics, but not for my words. I made sure Saint Ann knew that I meant what I said. I held my tongue and kept my distance after that.

I left the forum a few months later, never to return. I miss a lot of friends there, but I do keep in touch with some of them. One or two read my blog and comment, occasionally.

The friend who was the original target of all of the ugliness quietly passed away last year, of the disease she had so fiercely guarded -- the same disease Saint Ann was trying so childishly to expose to the world. Wounds have healed with time but forgetting doesn't come so easily.

And this is why war will never end.

The Waiting

by Minerva


(Photo stolen from this site)

My sister-in-law is a drug addict.

She's been a drug addict since long before I met her, long before she reached adulthood. In fact, when I was first dating her brother, the man I would later marry, he told me that it was unlikely I would ever meet Kate. "She'll probably be dead before you get a chance to meet her," he told me, and he wasn't kidding.

But she didn't die. She got herself cleaned up, through a lot of hard work and the support of family and friends. She held down a job, took back responsibility for her young child, even went back to college. Her life became busy, full, and complicated, but in her own frenetic way she managed it. She went to meetings all the time -- Narcotics Anonymous, I presume, but maybe Alcoholics Anonymous, too. She thrived.

She met a great guy. He understood her past and was willing to take her on. They got married and had a baby of their own. They owned a nice home, had two bright and well-adjusted children, and life seemed very good for all of them.

Kate has been addressing, little by little, the things in her life that she has ignored for so many years. One of those things was dental work. When it became necessary to have oral surgery, Kate hesitated because of her need for pain medication. But there was no way around it, and she had the surgery and took the pain meds. At some point -- my grasp of the details is fuzzy at best -- Kate's addiction again took over. Was she immediately hooked, or was it after her bout with pneumonia? Was she using before the two major medical emergencies that hit the family, or did the enormous strain of those events push her over the edge?

In any case, Kate seems to have been at the eye of the perfect storm of crises, and when the storm blew over, Kate was a raging addict again.

After a stint in rehab early this year, Kate was battling back. We saw her this summer during a family visit, and she seemed jumpy, erratic and hyperactive, but as long as I've known Kate she's been jumpy, erratic and hyperactive. A few alarm bells went off in my head, but I kept quiet, because really, what did I know? What could I do? I knew nothing. I did nothing.

I got the call on a recent Sunday morning, from a brother who rarely calls. "Kate's in jail," he said quietly. The call came hours before Kate's parents, my in-laws, were due to arrive home from a trip abroad. They knew nothing of the arrest, nor did they know that Kate was using again. The last the family knew, Kate had been clean again for several months.

Kate's hard-won idyllic life is now in shambles. The family sits by and waits, wondering what will happen next. Moves have been made to protect children and finances, but otherwise, there is not much any of us can do. We wait. Kate sits in jail, as far as I know -- the crimes she committed as she savaged her life and the lives of her family are too many and too dark to list here -- and we wait.

Of all of the horrors inflicted upon families by drugs and by the loved ones who use them, the thing I keep coming back to is the waiting. People who are used to taking matters into their own hands are left wringing those hands, powerless, reactive instead of proactive. There's so little to do or say, and all of the pent-up anger, hurt, and fear are likely to be directed laterally, instead of at the user, who isn't there to take her lumps. When do we all start bickering? Who will start the snarling at one another?

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Dan, January 26, 2008

(Photo stolen from crazyscientist_11 on Flickr)

I don't believe you.

The death of Heath Ledger this week brought with it the expected suspicions, whispers and rumors. Once the truth of the actor's tragic death emerges, whether the cause was accidental or recreational or suicidal -- whatever truth it may be, people will say "I can't believe it" and "I never saw the signs" and "if only I had known, I would have done something." This is to be expected. This is how we humans operate. We believe in our power to fix things, to intercede and change the course of history. And often we can.

And often we can't. Sometimes we just can't fix what's broken, and then we let history have its head.

But there is a third scenario, one that I'm sure happens far more often than the other two. That path is the one I'm staring down tonight, the one I'm determined not to take any longer. That way involves the friends, family and coworkers simply shrugging their shoulders, looking the other way, shaking their heads. That's what I've been doing for years, without even thinking about it, but I'm not going to do it anymore.

You're lying to me.

Someone whose job crosses paths with mine is headed down a bad, bad road, and it may be coming to a head soon. I'll call him Dan -- Dan came in to my office Tuesday looking wrecked. Bleary, red eyes. Slow, slurry speech. Insipid chatter, silly giggle. Stoned on painkillers, again. Par for the course. And then, just as suddenly as he had come in, he walked out the door and was gone. I was busy, and had very soon put him out of my mind. And then I checked my e-mail and learned that Heath Ledger was found dead of an apparent overdose.

Wednesday Dan came in again, this time to see my boss about something. I didn't talk to Dan until he came out of my boss's office and stumbled past me. "Take it easy, shweetheart," he slurred, and weaved out the door. I stared after Dan as he left, then walked into my boss's office. "Wow," I said. "Dan looked wrecked."

"Man, he was OUT of it," my boss said. But we were both busy.

Wednesday night at about 9:00 I sat down with my husband and talked about our day. I told him about Dan; he knows Dan, too -- everybody in town knows Dan. And as the words were pouring out of my mouth, I was stunned to realize I had been complicit in a crime. I let Dan walk out of that office and climb into his truck and drive away, when he could barely form a decent sentence. I was shocked at my tunnel vision, my apparent indifference to a friend's crisis. Mostly I was disgusted that I didn't try to stop Dan from brandishing a deadly automotive weapon on the busy streets of my city. "No more," I told my husband. "I'm not playing along any more."

Bullshit.

The first thing I did Thursday was talk to my bosses about it. I had had a dream about it the night before, and it had clarified for me what I had to say.

Perhaps I was a bit hasty. Maybe I was being a zealot? I guess I should try talking to Dan first. Okay, I'll do that. Suddenly all my confidence was gone, and I questioned my judgment. I even questioned my own motives. I was not ready for any kind of confrontation, and I needed some time to regroup.

But there wasn't any time. Friday morning Dan lurched into the office looking for my boss again, and I sent him on in. I began a slow burn that turned to quiet fuming. I was angry at myself, at my boss (unfairly -- he was just as caught in this current as I was, looking for any branch to pull himself out), but mostly I was mad at Dan, a man I have always adored.

By the time Dan staggered up to my desk on his way out the door, I was boiling. Dan took off his glasses and wiped his bloody eyes. He could see by my dark scowl I was gunning for him, and though he didn't yet know why, I'm sure he could guess that it had something to do with his obvious drug use. Dan's many years of coming up with lies took over, and he began his patronizing, pathetic cover story. I cut him off.

"Don't come in here and talk to me when you're stoned," I heard myself say. I had no plan, and no idea that I would actually say anything to him. Rage had taken over.

"Yeah, I know," he said, agreeing with me! "I woke up this way, and I have no idea what's going on," he lied.

"Don't give me that!" I barked. "You've come in here three days this week stoned out of your mind. Don't tell me you woke up that way." I was ready for the string of swear words that never came. It would have been so easy. Just give me a reason to make the call, I thought. Your boss. The police. Your wife. Somebody needs to be called. Give me a reason.

"I know, it's crazy," Dan said. "I've been taking the same medications [code for Norco, Vicadin, and who knows what else] for years, and all of a sudden I think I'm having a reaction," he said, smooth as glass. Let me think back -- over the years it's been allergies, allergy medicines, back pain . . . am I forgetting any excuses? There's always a reason when Dan is stoned out of his mind, but it's never the handful of painkillers he pops in front of people he thinks are "cool" that could be causing the "reaction."

"Doesn't matter," I said, still furious, but rapidly deflating. "You are impaired, and you shouldn't be driving. I'm scared to death for you, but more than that, I'm scared for the people out on the road with you."

"I know, I know," he smoothed me over. "I'm calling my doctor to find out what the heck is wrong," he said.

All the air was out of my balloon. I had nothing left. No actual proof -- I am not one of the "cool" people he feels are safe to pop pills in front of, so I can only guess what he's taking. And I was the victim of my own game -- I call it Customer Service Karate: the art of taking a "punch" from an angry person, and using their energy against them. Pretty soon they have no steam left, but you appear unbruised, unbattered, fresh as a daisy It works every time if you can outlast them. Well, Dan had just done that to me. I was definitely battered and he outlasted me.

After Dan left he called me on his cell phone to ask a business question; I answered curtly and coldly. He thanked me for being a friend and for caring. It was the final punch. KO'd.

I'm gonna make two calls, and the second call will be to your boss. But you shouldn't worry about the second call.

Dan may have won the battle, but he hasn't yet won he war. I had to hear him lie to me, face to face, when confronted honestly. Now I know, and I know what I have to do. And my bosses are waking up to the reality, too. There may be hope yet.

As long as Dan doesn't kill himself this weekend, that is.

I can't believe it. I never saw the signs. If only I had known, I would have done something.