the thing about writing about something that's in the news in a blog sometimes gets you more attention than maybe you wanted when you first wrote the post. then again...did i mean not to say what i had to say? did i not mean to test the waters to see if i had the courage to write a less vague post...to see if i would call virginia tech, the virginia state police, and anyone else that might want to hear that dr. robert miller may have hurt people years and years before seung hui cho was even born or at least too young to be out of diapers?

i hesitate to write more but i have already had inquiries. and it was 5:30 ET when i woke up and knew that i had to write more.

most of us have heard the alarming statistics about rape. look them up if you want the numbers. google does exist despite some people's strange denial. but i'm not here to talk about google right now.

and yet.

and yet i am a statistic. i am a part of that statistic, that fellowship of women and men who have been raped. the details? do they matter now? should i now stand trial for what i never did back when i was 18...because let's face it...the prosecutor in far too many assault cases is viewed as the guilty party until they have proved themselves innocent...did they dress for it? did they lead the other person on?

etc. etc. etc.

i'm not proud of never reporting that. i'm not proud of not being brave enough to face the scrutiny. but i did seek out help later in my undergrad years....when the pain had become too much to bear...when every break up felt like rape all over again because i'd dared to trust someone else...scene:

[enter dr. miller, therapist at virginia tech, the year is 1991]

end scene.yes. i was lucky enough to have dr. miller as my therapist. he was maybe the first person i'd ever told. i'm almost 100% sure of that. the thing was? he missed so many appointments that the trust i had in him when i finally could get the words out, especially the one he missed right after that with no explanation...no apologies...as if he never missed a step. after a few more misses, i had nothing more to say. why tell someone who is supposed to help anything else if they aren't going to show up?

i know. who hasn't skipped something or at least wanted to out of fear of getting too close to the truth? so after enough times of him skipping? i started to as well. why not? the trust bond had been broken...and that would be my only time i'd seek therapy seriously until 2002. and i'm not "all better" but i'm a damn bit better than i was and the acid in my stomach has started to fade away...

but i don't trust. i don't trust easily. people have told me that i'm a survivor now, not a victim. labels. there is truth to the statement that you have to move on. but there is also truth to the statement that until we get all the anger, the sadness, the self-doubt out...we can't move on.

the thing with dr. miller was...he broke the rules of a therapist by breaking the boundaries of therapy. while under his care, i was late (go figure) for my evil orchestration class and i parked in a faculty lot because i had one minute to get there and the professor was not cool with anyone walking in late. a pill bottle for some antibiotic fell out of my purse in my mad dash for the building and he happened to be pulling into the parking lot, saw it, stopped his car, told me i was parked in the wrong lot, i yelled that i was late and was going to get humiliated by that prof yet again...i turned around while running to the music building...i saw he picked up the bottle and put it in his briefcase.

did he dispose of it? who knows. probably. maybe. did he call or have someone else call that i had a half used prescription left behind? no. remember...hippa did not exist then. there were no rules preventing that. i had to go back to the health center to get another prescription. big deal.

but things got weird. i had my junior and senior recitals (i was a music major) all in the same year because i cannot do ANYTHING in the correct order or by the rules...i ran into dr. miller in the music wing when i was throwing my shit into my locker, running late for my radio show...he was in our section of the building...which was not his building and not a convenient way to get anywhere but to another exit out of the music section. i saw him. i tried to just nod and go. but he stopped me. he said he'd been to my recitals and that i was an incredibly gifted musician.

i think i might have said thanks but i ran up to the media wing and i am pretty sure i played the entire album of three different albums (yes...vinyl...) and didn't say a lot other than deal with an emergency broadcast test and do the station id on the top of the three long hours that day.

i never went back to him again. i never asked for another therapist. i figured that they all must be that way. until my heart was shattered in 2002...then i finally found someone who could help. or at least tries to even when i freeze up. do i trust anyone unconditionally? no. but i'm more aware of it now.

trust. trust broken first by rape...then by a the-rapist. am i a victim? am i a survivor? no. i think i just am...whatever that means. i try to catch myself when i stop trusting or can't trust...i have a long way to go. maybe that's my lot? maybe i'll never really be free of that. i can trust more. but it's hard. and yet i write this. but it was time. when i saw the nytimes update on my cell phone that named dr. miller as the doctor that had cho's record, i almost passed out. i've thrown up.

what will cho's records show? did dr. miller skip appointments with him too? did he care?

do i believe he *accidentally* took them home along with a few other records? no. no, i really don't. his lawyer's statement says that he did and *just* now found them. i'd like to think that cho got miller's attention. but i don't know how much miller changed. was he going to write a book of interesting cases? did he really not remember anything about those records in his home until they were magically found the other day? did the name not jog something in his memory AT ALL? even if it was just what he could remember without the record? how many records did he have? 5 other students? 50? 5000? if it was more like 5...i doubt he could have forgotten that he saw cho as part of a court mandated therapy program. and how many post involuntary psychiatric hold court mandated therapy sessions does the average therapist at a college get? nothing jogged his memory at all?

the important thing? he went to my recitals. why remember me? as i said...after that i never saw him as a therapist again...i realized i wouldn't get anywhere with a someone paying half (or less) attention or skipping sessions. but he remembered me. he followed me. and he didn't remember cho? not for a second?

no. we are not perfect. none of us are. but my head pounds...i want to scream...i want to tell you...anyone reading this...that 16 years before the virginia tech massacre, something wasn't quite right. did i turn out to be a serial killer? no. was something damaged? yes. did i report it? no. why? i knew others who saw him. same thing. did any of us say anything? no. why? because what could we have said? if you visit crazytown even for the shortest length of time, even just to talk, even just to hear that things were not your fault or at least not entirely your fault...you lose. i had said something to a med doctor at tech that i didn't think that the counseling center did much and i just got that look. if you've spent any time in crazytown, you know that look. it's the look that says...right...ok, well, you're crazy since you were so weak that you couldn't deal with your life yourself that i'm going to dismiss whatever you say...not listening...not listening...not...

not...

not...

will i call today? yes. 32 people were killed...33 if you include cho who turned the gun on himself. am i saying cho wasn't responsible for his actions? no. but dr. miller? what do you think? what do you think of what he did? did you do all you could do? what about those triage therapists who had no records (10 pages??? that's all he wrote?) to go by and nothing but an *unremarkable* psych evaluation despite the english department's warnings...

ah...but hippa existed by then. that misunderstood law. if you try to get a student help and you aren't a therapist (and even if you are there are restrictions)...YOU are in the wrong. i've been down that path before. i'm half convinced that a large part of my hatred of the university of illinois is because i have been on that same side as tech's english department...there is nothing you can do...and you can even lose your job...more than once."...teacher? what's my lesson? look right through me...look right through me....mad world."

oh dr. miller...seriously? you took the records home by accident? kind of like how you accidentally went to my junior and senior recitals and then found me in the music building before graduation and brought it up in public? you weren't allowed to be there nor did i say anything about it. not that you'd been in your office ever...why so many appointments canceled with no explanation. no apologies. no demands?



precrime. could we have stopped him...all of us who saw dr. miller 20 years ago? would they have listened? would they have cared?

the failure of the institution and the weakness of its' subjects...time after time...

an iranian friend of the family invited me and my parents to eat a homecooked iranian meal tomorrow night that is good for health! that was really nice of her to invite us...i'm not awake too much these days but i figure i should go with anything that has the chance of healing me, right?

chris should be coming soon now that the grant writing is over...he was trying to get a grant in before the deadline but he didn't make it in time after months of working exhaustively...and i felt like it's all my fault because if i wasn't sick, he would have been able to finish it...instead he spent every night at the hospital sleeping (a.k.a. not sleeping as they woke me/us up every hour for blood tests, etc) on a cot for weeks...and he did all my wound care...and my dad asked me about the grant last night and i burst into tears because he did all that because he loves me and i feel so grateful but my heart broke that he couldn't get what he wanted because i want everything in the world for him and it seems that nothing is fair...for anyone i know right now...

then? my therapist may be dying. yeah, the guy that basically saved my life when everything came crashing down that summer of 2002...the man who has talked to me about life and death all these months...and he didn't want to tell me but he couldn't avoid it when he said he had to take a month off...he has advanced prostate cancer...how is that fair? this man who has given his life to helping people...

my friend mark? his father is dying and i can't help worry about him. mark is my partner in crime in the game accessibility movement (see ablegamers.com) and we struggle to keep our non-profit afloat and i want to use that fundraising/sales background of mine but i'm too sick...i'm too sick to help...at least i can write papers and proposals to help get the word out about gamers with disabilities who deserve to have fun just like everyone does...fun does not have to be an exclusive club...and i feel a little better but i wish i could do more right now...

i know...i have to focus on getting myself well...but this is so frustrating...it's been so long...too long...i have to hang in there...see this recovery through...

but some days i just want to curl up and cry...and most days i do a little of that every day...not for me...just for how unfair everything is...i know...no one ever said life was fair...

call me patient 8. that's what the FDA does, thanks to my allergy to that chemical used in surgery. patients 1-6 died. we're not sure what patient 7 is up to but according to the company that makes it...it has no known allergic reactions...well, except for those death and near death ones the FDA has now confirmed. i'd say that i was in the "top ten" but there aren't ten of us yet but you can bet that there's gonna be a patient record pulling bonanza soon for surgical patients who died soon after surgery where that chemical was used.

i was going to write a longer blog but that's all i have in me for now. next time i'll tell you about the stop payment check "joke," gauze-gate, and now today? Sterile q-tip gate.

ok. so the blood wasn't bad enough to see (thanks gravity!). no...my vanity decided to walk in the room at the same time and it was the first time i'd seen myself standing up without the bandages...oh my fucking god. so i did what i do best these days...cried.

i mean it's vanity. i know that. pure and simple. but, wow...i mean i'm doing my best to cope with all kinds of shit from all directions and what makes me finally break down is seeing the scars and the unhealed everything with every bandage off, blood pouring down because, well, i was vertical (nearly went horizontal when things got a little cloudy for a sec).

sure, maybe you'd say that it was a normal response to everything i've been through in the last...well, OVER a month now. i mean who wants to see a preview of what things are gonna look like when the bandages come off for good when the surgical incision closes and i stop bleeding (stigmata!)? maybe i'll keep the bandage covering on for a few years.

but that's not going to help with the rest of it...my head is spinning and i want to crawl into a hole...and i HATE email. just so you know.

social media is really out of control...seriously. i just want to write old school letters and forget that people want to snipe you every chance that they get. i mean i'm sick. i almost died. i did die for a minute. i'm asking for common courtesy and all i get back is why i am an evil person. really? am i really that bad?

no. it's not from everyone. it's really from people i don't even know and have never actually met. i mean i guess they can be sick but if i say i am...forget it. they go after me like vultures. and you know what they say if you think this is about you? most people reading my blog know that i'm probably not likely talking about them. i just don't have time to react to people who are spoiled brats...not personally anyway. it just goes into a special file in my brain that's titled "seriously?"

i'm really tired. and i really hurt. and thank GOD that there have been people reaching out to me to ask if i'm doing ok, can we help you...or i'd probably be very very sad right now...because i'd probably have lost my faith in a lot right about now. i am blessed, i am lucky that this is not the case at all. for the first time in my life i can reach out and old and new friends have been helping and i'm amazingly moved...because i don't know why they do it...yes, that's a reflection on my own dark past and not them...i'm just proud to know that the world isn't as cold as some others have been treating me...

no matter what i say...it's wrong. i'm not trying to hurt anyone...really i'm not. i just am having a hard time recovering...it's not just the recovering bit...it's just how slow and how much it hurts...and i have flashbacks to the hospital...and i cannot believe i was strong enough to not break down into an anxiety attack...as alison always says...you do what you need to do. she would know for sure after all her battles with the med treatments she's had to go through.

chris is my knight in shining armor. i just am amazed by him. i guess that's a statement on so many other things in my past. but it's not just that. he has so much to do and yet he slept in the hospital every night on a cot in my room because he knew i would be scared...for 15 days. he even did some down and back trips to champaign to get stuff but he always came right back that day. i don't need a ring or a document or anything to know what we have...i don't need that outward display of anything...i don't have the words to express how thankful i am that he is who he is. as the surgeon said...as everyone says...he's a keeper. i already knew that a long time ago...

i can't remember any white light or dark shadows or any other ideas about dying temporarily. then again, i was under a pretty damn powerful anesthetic...maybe big pharma has outdone any possibility of seeing any previews of the next place...or maybe...

i wish i could curl up into the fetal position but i can't. it hurts too much to be in any position but one. i don't know why or how but the pain is getting worse and it's only making me more frustrated, mad...something...the doc said that i really don't need to top myself each time i come in with what's happened since last month...but seriously it only gets crazier and crazier and now i'm just crying at the drop of a hat when i think about what happened...when i flash back to everything that happened at the hospital. did i really go through all that?

six months of intense pain entered in order to get away from the pain...i know it doesn't seem like a logical thing to do...but i couldn't live the way that i lived for so long any longer. but i'm not yet convinced that this choice was anything more than "other" pain...the devil you know versus the devil you don't. it's hard to stay strong...it's hard not to panic...it's hard to breathe...

if by 40...that number gets closer and closer...

i should start blogging again...i have too much to say for facebook, WAY too many characters to say it in stupid twitter...i just want to blog/journal whether or not i have readers or not.

so i hurt. the open part of the incision will probably hurt for 2-4 more weeks...more painkillers...i just want to be free of it all. i thought, earlier, that chris was in the office when the tears started streaming down my face but he was around the corner and saw me crying...it's every bit of movement, every breath, every sneeze, laugh, tear...it all brings in the pain and it makes me so frustrated with my body...so frail...rehab is in the near future to get my muscles moving better once i can leave bed rest...my weight is 10 pounds under where it was before the surgery (even with the sidebar of having gained 35 pounds of fluids during my two weeks in the hospital...lost it all plus ten more. not sure i needed that extra ten to go though...but i'm glad that i lost the 35 fluid pounds! how did i do it? laid around in bed reading and watching tv with my feet propped up on some pillows. i know...it was tough but i did it. lol.

i'll write more about this but i'm still trying to figure out how this whole "dead for under a minute" thing makes me feel...did i go anywhere? is there anything out there? and what does that make returning to this place, to this heaven and hell mean?

sometimes i forget about this. matt reminded me of it when he told me tonight that he was titling his sunday sermon tomorrow after the title of the blog. i'm ready to stop being sick, i'm tired of inaction, i'm tired of being so still...frozen in time. what am i waiting for? oh year...to recover...from not just the surgery but all the years of pain. will i find heaven here on this earth? or more of the same hell? it's what we make of it. and i'm through with hell even if it's for the shortest of time...

surgery for the endo is now rescheduled from dec 17th to jan 5th...so now i have one more period left...again. all because this one came early. so another trip to the er...another lecture...accusations that there is no endo, no surgery...even no period. and of course the apartment people have to be bothering us again and i just want to know...WHAT ELSE???? of course it wouldn't be fair to tell me...advance warning would give me time to plan...

25 years. and for what?

from last week's er ("the book of abby") and from the old testament ("the book of job"):why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure, who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave? for sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water. what i feared has come upon me; what i dreaded has happened to me. i have no peace, no quietness; i have no rest, but only turmoil.i'm not sure where to go from here.

have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? have the gates of death been shown to you? what is the way to the abode of light? and where does darkness reside? have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? tell me, if you know all this.

yeah...so i don't know what the fuck is going on. but i can tell you that i'm already sick of it.

so every single muscle in my body hurts after three days on the new job that i had to take because i have to pay off medical expenses and pay for my fall university fees. meanwhile i still have work to finish from the last job and it makes me psycho to think about and how i wish it would just disappear. ugh...but it's amazing how that job is like riding a bike and that is both cool and completely terrifying all at the same time.

brilliant.i first saw requiem for a dream before seattle, back in the days of paul the chainsmoking alcoholic med student who admitted that emma thompson's character in "wit" had moved him to tears so much that it caused him to downward spiral into a depression coma for days.

when i got to seattle -- my detox from all the crap with paul and a few other cast of characters (or has it been the past few years that have actually been the detox from the detox?) -- i remember tom and i having a discussion about how everyone owns the movie but the real question is -- can you ever watch it again? but these days we have shows about drugs every damn night it seems on A&E's intervention that requiem is no longer that big a deal. drugs. lives going down the drain. same old.

the sirens are going off...it's officially tornado season for champaign-urbana. i must say...i don't feel freaked out like i did when I first got here. apparently we're going to get 60mph hail and a whole hell of a lot thunder and lightning in, oh, minutes from now...

not sure if you've been watching the tudors but you know me when i get in one of these moods where i try to find the just in an injust world...and i watch things like "wit" where all we can do is focus on the commas to keep from crying about the lonely life of academics.

i have two months of back work i need to do this summer, along with everything else in the world going on. or is it that the world is going on and i am nothing? i can't easily answer that question.

i can't wait to be finished with this whole degree. but i'm tired and it's getting harder to keep going on like this. so i must move on, i must move toward other things but how do i do that when i lost the will so long ago?

i remember lucia and i once making contingency plans in case we weren't really cut out for this business. she, of course, made it to the end, got married, got a great job at a great university...i don't begrudge her any of that -- she earned it all and earned it via a tough, tough road.

but i'm still here. and it's grim.

ok blogger outage is over. and the 20th was my 7th anniversary of this blog.

i was recently asked, via facebook, to identify the rest of the "terrible ten" that made up the founding of a chapter of a professional music fraternity i and -- go figure -- 9 other people helped found. i was kind of surprised that no one had that written down any place. but, while, sure there was a little disappointment that the history of the chapter has been lost over time. but at the exact same time i was also happy about it. then...worried about it.

we started the group in response to two other music greek orgs -- the two being music "service" organizations. anyway, how it broke down was this: the two service organizations were brother-sister organizations that pretty much did everything together. they were also heavily tied to the marching band at the school. but if you were a music major and you wanted to have a social life, you joined one of them. to join one of them? basically meant that you were going to tank your GPA that semester, expect to be woken up at any time of night (GREAT for roommate relationships), play the matchstick game (more on this later), fetch beers, be the designated driver whenever asked -- even if you were asleep and had no idea where they were at and more than likely you were going to end up with puke on your car -- get yelled constantly, going through more memorization than i have had to do for any class (but i'm not yet certain if it was more or less than what it took to stay in my high school band), oh yeah -- and wear this really large name badge that your pledge pin stuck through EVERYWHERE. by everywhere, i mean everywhere. along with that came the pledge books that were to remain on our person...EVERYWHERE. the funny thing? is while it took such a crazy mental and physical toll on me -- my high school marching band did way more harm.

i know, i know. whaaa. that all sounds soooo inhumane -- will someone call amnesty international? but there's a lot more to this than just what i've mentioned. that's just scratching the surface.

anyway...a few of us did some research about a professional music co-ed fraternity where everything about it was about fostering a community of musicians, helping the underfunded school of the arts usher events, judge local music competitions at high schools near by. so we decided to find out about the starting a chapter -- and back in those days, we had to do it by snail mail (yes i am that old). we founded it to counter the two other organizations and give musicians a chance to be a part of something that did NOT require that you know ever friggin' fact about every pledge class since the dawn of time. we even put that in our chapter's constitution.

anyway, i know things have changed and that there are now tags and books that pledges have to carry...but what had me when she asked me about who we were, i thought that the better question to ask was "why were we?" because i was scared that our names were about to be memorized by a new set of pledges. i'm not dead yet but i'm rolling in the grave we call life...create something with the best of intentions only to learn 20 years later it's just like the other two groups.

you know...a lot of stuff has happened lately that's made me wonder about the role that hazing has played in my life. the odd part of it is that any and all hazing i've been a part of happened within MUSIC departments.

a lot of people like to auto-blame the social greek system at universities. not that it's completely without merit and there aren't tons of examples that lend truth to rumors. my experience in a social greek organization in undergraduate was pretty far removed from anything i'd call hazing.

yes, i am a sorority girl and if you've followed this blog for years without really knowing me or knowing me at a point of my life where it just never came up, you may be very confused as to who i am exactly.

anyway...that's another story. but what's been bothering me lately has been hazing in marching band and marching band "greek" societies. there's a scheduled outage in a few minutes on blogger so i'll continue this later. but for now, let me just say that i'm going to call it out here as i work through it all these years later. you can decide for yourselves if it's hazing or not after i explain things but take my word for it -- while it didn't kill me, it also didn't make me stronger.

i'm so stressed about this whole endo thing. i'm trying to change things, i'm trying to avoid the crushing depression that enters in when i know i'm about to lose the next week and a half or two...just like every month. so far i haven't had to go to the ER but we'll see what the middle of the night or tomorrow will bring. i mean it's hard not to just curl up and cry...like i haven't already done that twice already today. i can't think, i can't do anything but watch stupid shit on tv and knit. yay. knitting. because, yes, my brain is on drugs -- the ones that keep my from losing my mind from the pain.