Professional Follower

In the comments of the last post Novella asked if my sister could get professional help.

I need to explain more of the story.
In this post, Sister = S.

The root of the problem is not that my sister is too skinny, but rather that she is a Follower. We are all followers to some extent, but she is a Follower in the most extreme of ways. She Follows to the point of becoming brainwashed. She is 27, and so far I can count 3 wash cycles each of which last years.

The first wash started in High School. S was popular. The popular group was her group. You have to be somewhat brainwashed to be popular in high school. I guess I haven't read much about this topic because it is one of the more socially acceptable ways to not think. Someone once said that religion isn't the opium of the people, fashion is. In high school she told me that I shouldn't let my date drive me home if he was drunk. That was good of her to tell me, and one of the signs that her mind wasn't totally mush.

When popular high school girls go to college they do one thing: Join Sororities. And that is what S did. Until she quit a year later to join what I call "the sorority church."

The second wash setting is: Fundamentalist Non-denominational Christian. The Sorority Church was on the edge of our college campus, and provided for all of a Follower's needs. You aren't Saved unless you specifically ask Jesus into your heart. The only requirement for a good husband was that he has asked Jesus into his heart. You don't have to worry about discussing things like financial plans, children, or relationship needs before you get married because hell, whenever things that like arise you can pray about it, and Jesus will tell you what to do. You know that eating disorder you had in High School? Just "give it to god" and it will go away.

S married a Christian guy from the Sorority Church. They moved many miles away after college to a place where her Husband has a job and where she can go to graduate school to get her masters in counseling.

The third wash cycle is: Psyco Camp complete with Psyco Drugs. Away from the Sorority Church and the Harem of Followers she was "friends" with, S gets lonely. Lonely in the way that her husband is gone on trips for work 80% of the year, Lonely in the way that the Female Harem is gone, and Lonely in the way that everyone is when they move far away to a new city. But in Psyco Camp where she is being trained, she names her Loneliness: Manic Depression. She sees a doctor who gives her so much medicine (Psyco Drugs) that when she is taking it as prescribed she passes out and hits her head on the bath tub. She goes to the emergency room all the time now that she is in the new city far away. S is always having accidents. She starts smoking cigarettes. With five years now between the present and the Sorority Church she tells me that she maybe was brainwashed (at that time.) Praying looses its magic. She is taking tons of Psyco Drugs. My dad says to me: "I warned my kids about the illegal drugs, but didn't think to warn them about the legal ones." I have the feeling that her starvation is a result of her drowning her unhappiness in Psyco Drugs rather than an eating disorder. My dad says that her brain would work better if she wasn't so skinny.

I am not sure what the answer is.

Is there such a thing as professional help for a Serial Follower?

*Please note that I believe in Psyco Drugs when used properly. However sometimes they are used without really helping the patient. I judge this to be one of those times.*

All Hail Snail Mail!

Once every five years our department goes under the scrutiny of the External Review Committee. This is a group of professors from other universities, six to be exact, three of which were from schools in California. Anyway, they come to our school for 3 days and talk to everyone from undergrads to accounting for our department. Basically, they talk to everyone and write up a report of suggestions to make our department better. It seems like a good system to me.

Anyway, I was asked to be part of the graduate student group. So I talked to these professors for an hour on Wednesday... And on Friday I wrote each of them a thank-you note on cards depicting my school's seal or an artist's rendition of a landmark associated with my school. I mailed them on Friday, too. That is a fast turn-around time for me, and I am proud of it.


One of the things I learned in my Women's group is that people love getting hand-written thank you notes. Especially if they are a professor that you just met and talked to a little bit. They probably thought nothing of the encounter when it happened, and then magically they get this nice hand-written note in the mail! And suddenly you become their new favorite person. So I get a big check mark this week under the title: NETWORKING.

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Therapy ended. I knew this was coming, I just didn't know how abruptly it would happen. Actually my last visit was April 30th. She told me we had 3 more weeks. But during my session on April 30th, her husband was at work on a 20 foot ladder. And he fell off of the ladder. 20 feet down. He fucked up his back and now he is paralyzed from the waist down. She left work. I was her last client. She hasn't been back in over 2 weeks now. She was getting phone calls during our session about her husband, but at the time she silenced them. It is a little creepy thinking about that now.

I am not taking my "lack of therapy" very well. I feel like I am in mourning. Like I lost one of the best things in my life. I lost my connection with the world beyond grad school. I lost my fake mom. That is why I made my list of positive things, to counteract the negative things in my head. I don't have much motivation. I am beginning to get scared of people. I am making myself start my day with 30 minutes of Elliptical. If I do that I have a good day. If I don't, I have a bad day.

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On a lighter note. My sister's birthday is this month.
I just made my Amazon purchase to be shipped to her house.
Her gift is the following:
1) I like you, by Amy Sedaris
2) Girls of Riyadh, by Rajaa Alsanea

Baggage

As I was rushing out the door this morning to go to work, I picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder, locked the door to my apartment, and then began my decent down the flights of stairs leading to the ground level of my building. I'm hurrying down the stairs in my cowboy boots as fast as I can without falling and I become increasingly aware that my bag weighs approximately one million tons. I'm thinking to myself, "What in the WORLD is in this thing?" It feels like my bag gave birth to a litter of baby bags overnight and now I'm carrying the whole extended family on my shoulder. Obviously, my bag didn't accumulate all of this weight over the course of one night. It's been a gradual process that started when the handle of my knock-off Miu Miu bag broke and I switched to this tote bag that I got at a Sonic Youth concert in 2001. The bag's been well-used and it shows. It smells weird and has a few holes in the bottom that I like to think of as a handy filter for items too small to be of any significance anyway. Like pennies. We live in a disposable society, right? Anyway, when I get on the train, I open up my bag and started rifling through its contents. Here's a list of what I found:



1 wallet (contains driver's license & social security card (!))
1 copy of Kafka on the Shore
1 harmonica
4 pairs of glasses (1 prescrip, 2 sunglasses, 1 pair cat-eye faux lens)
1 passport
1 guitar slide
1 unopened copy of Xiu Xiu's "Women As Lovers" CD
1 ipod video (no headphones)
1 digital camera (batteries dead)
1 pair of gloves
1 checkbook
1 tube of lipstick + misc. lip glosses/chapsticks
2 tubes of concealer
1 letter from my mom
+ a veritable cornucopia of pharmaceuticals: 1 bottle of Pepto Bismol,
1 bottle Tylenol, 1 empty bottle of Aleve, anti-anxiety pills,
anti-nausea pills, and motion-sickness tablets.

Now, if you add all these variables up you're bound to come to some important conclusion, right? What do these items MEAN. Why do I have them? What do they say about me besides that I'm practically begging to be a victim of identity theft? What's with the harmonica and all the drugs? Let me tell ya, that harmonica comes in pretty handy when I'm waiting on the subway platform and need some spare change. Seriously though, let's focus on this pharmacy that I carry around with me on a daily basis.

I haven't needed half of that medication in FOREVER. Fortunately, I've come a long way in battling my neuroses. At this point, the prescription pill bottles themselves serve as a pretty effect form of anxiety prevention. Just knowing that they're there in case of an emergency freakout is comforting. The bottle of Pepto is the most recent acquisition, and I think it rounds out my collection pretty nicely.

As for the other items, I think that they reveal several things about me. Like that I'm a music lover but I don't have enough time to listen to the music I like. That I never want to be without a means to cover my flaws. That I enjoy silly eye wear, especially if it makes me looks super queer. That I like Murakami just like every other hip commuter. That my mom is awesome and still uses good old-fashioned snail mail as a means of communication. That I like to document my experiences but don't like to purchase batteries...


What's in your bag?