Tag Archives: screaming

Dec19

Abusive Relationships

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Trigger warning: This post is about an abusive relationship I was in and an abusive incident I witnessed. It does NOT contain graphic violence, but may be upsetting to some readers.

Man Standing on Parking LotI was still in the parking lot of the Denny’s in Escondido. I’d already seen a presumably homeless man treated unkindly in the restaurant,and now I was hearing a man yelling at a woman in the parking lot. Suffering seems so much harder to escape in the Babylon. I think it’s because when there are so many people living packed together, there’s a better chance of seeing some of them having a difficult time in public.

I heard the yelling when I rushed out of the van on my way into Denny’s to deal with a restroom emergency.

The car was parked several spaces closer to the building than I was, but still on the outskirts of the lot. A man and a woman were standing outside the car. The guy was yelling words like fucking bitch and fucking liar, while the woman stood silently.

I tried to pass them without gawking. For one thing, I needed to make it to the restroom immediately. Also, I try not to be a Nosey Nelly even in low-drama situations; people don’t need me staring at them while they try to live their lives. During verbal altercations, there’s probably little I can do to make things better, so I just kept walking.

From my own experience, I think it’s better not to get involved in the abusive relationships of strangers. Very seldom did a stranger try to intervene when my abusive boyfriend was clearly treating me badly. The times someone did try to get involved, watch out! My ex wanted to fight the person who wanted to help, sometimes leading to that person calling the cops. A stranger trying to help might break the immediate cycle of violence, but I’d pay for the intervention later.

I’m not saying don’t intervene if you witness abuse happening. Each of us has to decide on an individual basis what to do in such a situation, but be advised, your intervention could be dangerous for you and/or the person being abused. Also, the abused person is probably not going to allow her/himself to be rescued. S/he’s probably not going to allow you to whisk her (him) away. The person being abused may not be ready to leave the abuser for a whole list of reasons.

When I came out of Denny’s the guy was still yelling at the woman. He was also pulling things (her things, I assumed) out of the car and dumping them on the asphalt. The theme of his tirade seemed to be lying bitch.

The Man was using the internet on his phone when I got back in the van. I don’t think he’d even noticed the screaming. He knows how to focus on the task at hand.

It’s weird how this isn’t even triggering me, I’d thought as I walked across the parking lot. I hadn’t realized that being triggered doesn’t necessarily lead to being huddled in a ball, sobbing, unable to function.

I certainly felt upset. Granted, I hadn’t gotten much sleep, it was early in the morning, and I was jacked up on coffee. But what was going on outside my van hit a little too close to what my life had once been. I had been the woman listening to someone who claimed to love me call me a liar and a bad person while he threw my belongings out of the window of our moving vehicle or destroyed my things in front of me.

While I sat in the van feeling upset, the yelling guy got in the car and sped out of the parking lot. I saw the woman climb over the low spot in the fence separating the parking area from the scrubby vacant lot next to it.

I felt like I had to do something, say something to help the woman. I didn’t really have a plan, but I grabbed a few bucks and walked over to the woman. I figured if she’d been dumped with no money, she might need bus fare or a cup of coffee or a hamburger. Giving her a few bucks seemed like the least I could do.

Her back was to me when I walked up. Are you ok? I asked from a distance. I didn’t want to startle her.

She turned around. She was young, probably no more than 25. Her hair was bleached platinum and her heavy eyeliner had run with her tears.

I”m ok, she said, then stooped to retrieve something from the ground. He threw my things over the fence, she said apologetically.

That wasn’t kind, I said. Then, I used to have a boyfriend who threw my stuff out of the windows of the van.

I couldn’t tell if she heard me or was too distracted to register what I said. I didn’t really want to talk about me, but I wanted her to know she wasn’t the only person this sort of thing had happened to.

About that time, a guy on a bicycle rode through the parking lot, and the woman was concerned about her backpack sitting next to the parking space her dude had vacated. I don’t want that guy to steal my stuff, she said, then hopped over the fence and strode purposefully over to her backpack. The fellow on the bike didn’t seem to be paying attention to her or her things.

I want you to have this, I said, handing her the cash. I thought maybe you could use it.

Really? she said. Thank you so much! She said it like I’d just handed her one of those giant checks Publishers Clearinghouse gives to their sweepstakes winners.

You really deserve someone who is kind to you, I said awkwardly while she stuffed things she’d retrieved from the vacant lot into her bag. I feared I wasn’t doing a very good job counseling her. I hoped my pep talk sounded better to her than it did to me.

I wish I could do something to really help you, I told her. I don’t live in this town…I’m only here because I drove my guy out here to buy a car… I knew I was talking too much, but that’s what I do when I can’t do anything actually helpful.

She started talking about where she was born. I guess we’d both realized talking about what was actually happening was too awkward.

About that time her guy roared his car back into the parking lot,and the woman gathered her things quickly. I said bye or good luck or something equally useless and high-tailed it out of there. The last thing I wanted was to interact with her recently screaming guy.

By the time I got in the van, the woman had gotten into the car, and it was squealing out of the parking lot. I guess this wasn’t going to be the day she left the guy.

The Man was still on his phone. He’d missed the whole thing.

I need to talk about what just happened, I said to The Man, and bless him, he listened. He listened to me talk about how hearing that guy yelling at that woman not only brought up memories of my ex doing the same to me but also triggered the feelings I had when he did it.

The Man didn’t try to tell me what I should do or how I should feel. He simply listened to what I had to say and witnessed me, just like I’d witnessed the woman left in the parking lot. The Man couldn’t change my past, and I couldn’t change the woman’s present, but he could be my witness like I had been hers. Sometimes showing someone they’re not invisible is the best we can do.

Photo courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-standing-on-parking-lot-163772/.

Apr1

Thank You , Dr. Jay

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Warning: If you don’t like needles, you may not want to read this post.

I’d had a tooth pulled a little over three years ago. The tooth wasn’t totally numb when the dentist started yanking on it, and it hurt. The dentist had to stop the procedure and numb the area further before continuing.

The way I remember it, there was a lot of tugging on the tooth, and I was fighting my body to keep it in the chair. My brain was telling me that what was happening in my mouth was UNNATURAL, and I should put a stop to it. Even once my mouth was adequately numb, my brain wouldn’t shut up about the unnaturalness of what the dentist was doing.

For the current extraction, I wanted my brain to be calm, so I took an Ativan. Actually, I took half an Ativan before I went to sleep the night before the procedure and the second half right before I went into dental exam room #2.

I’ll tell you what…I slept like a log the night before the extraction. The Ativan sent me off into the land of deepest sleep. I had to get up in the night for my usual trip to the toilet, but I barely felt awake. When I woke up the morning, I was in no hurry to get out of bed.

After breakfast, while I was brushing my teeth, the crown popped off my tooth for the last time. I put it back on my tooth, but didn’t use any adhesive. I figured I’d pop it off right before the extraction.

The Lady of the House drove me to the appointment because we all knew I shouldn’t be driving on Ativan. I didn’t feel much different than normal, just maybe a little slower and a little sleepier.

We arrived at Dr. Jay’s office about twenty minutes before my appointment. The doctor herself gave me a stack of paperwork to complete and accepted my payment. After filling in all of the blanks, I ducked into the restroom to pop off my crown and pop the remaining half of Ativan down my throat.

I sat down in the chair in exam room #2. I hadn’t been there long before the nurse led me into the hall for an x-ray. After the x-ray, she put a cotton swab with numbing gel against my gum. After a while, a male dentist (my dentist’s husband, I found out later, so his name is also Dr. Jay) came in to give me the numbing shots. Mr. Dr. Jay told me to open my mouth and close my eyes, and I did. He started giving me shots, and it hurt, but I kept my displays of discomfort to low moans.

They left me alone in the exam room for a while. A couple time I was asked if I was feeling numb. I said I was, but I was afraid I wasn’t numb enough. I wanted to be sure I’d feel no pain when the procedure started.

Mrs. Dr. Jay came into the room and said the procedure might be a little difficult because of my curved roots. She said an oral surgeon would have charged me $500 to remove that tooth. (Dr. Jay charged me $150.) She said not to worry though, because she is really good at extracting teeth. She told me that people have told her that she should write a book about extracting teeth.

Before she started to pull the tooth, Dr. Jay wanted to confirm that it was entirely numb. She started poking around in my mouth. I felt some pressure, but then I felt what would have quickly turned into pain had she poked harder. I raised my left hand. She stopped what she was doing and said she would give me more numbing medication.

My eyes were closed, and even if they had been open, I wouldn’t have been able to see where the dentist put the needle. From the way it felt, I imagined that Dr. Jay had jabbed the needle deep into my jaw. It hurt! It hurt! It Hurt! IT HURT! IT MOTHER FUCKING HURT! I screamed a wordless scream! Dr. Jay said (in her East Indian accent), Please do not scream. I quit screaming, but it hurt so bad.

After I’d quit yelling, Dr. Jay told me, We dentists have a saying. If you scream, we must charge you twice. Once for you and once for the patient that leaves.

I went from yelling to laughing. And I apologized for screaming.

While we were waiting to make sure that the medication had kicked in, Dr. Jay explained to me that the roots of the tooth were very infected. (Dr. Endo had told me the same thing, so I knew it was true.) She said that the infection is acidic, but the medication is a base. So the first round of the medication that hits the infection is neutralized. Although putting the medication right into the infection REALLY hurt, Dr. Jay made sure I wasn’t going to feel anything during the procedure. Thank you, Dr. Jay.

Dr. Jay had me open my mouth again. I made my own decision to close my eyes.

She told me I’d feel a lot of pressure because of the curved roots. I felt her working in my mouth, and I did feel a lot of pressure, but no pain. In just a few moments, she was no longer working in my mouth, and I said, Is that it? Are you done?

She was almost done. She’d pulled the tooth. The tooth was out. She still had to get some of the roots out of my jaw. She took care of them pretty quick. You are good, I told her, but she already knew it.

The nurse put a gauze pad over my tooth hole, and told me to bite down. Dr. Jay showed me the tooth, complete with curved roots, one of which was swollen with infection. Gross!

I was handed prescriptions for antibiotics (got to get rid of that infection) and painkillers (Tylenol with codeine, which I did not get filled) and instructions for aftercare.

I took a nap that afternoon, and ate mostly pudding and ice cream until the evening when The Lady made biscuits and I ate the very soft middles with honey. I took my medicine and let my body heal.