Pablo's Brand New Smoker.

Just so you know, this Note contains an outrage warning, as in I’d like you not to have any. Outrage, that is. As a sane human being, your outrage receptors must be on full blast at the current clusterfuck of atrocities going on in the world, so give yourself a wee rest. Instead, turn on your, “Well, I never!” receptors, as this tale is small, tiny in fact, but I think worth telling.

It’s been a rough old week, I'm not going to lie. There have been definite ups, as in going to see Earth Wind and Fire play at the Hollywood Bowl with my buddy of roughly 40 years, and in seeing out the lunacy of July 4th at a BBQ with good pals, Melissa, Amy, and Pablo - made even more delicious because Pablo bought a brand new smoker for his meat. (And no, that's not code.)

But it’s also kind of been the week when things came to a head. And I don't mean in big world politics - jeez if only we’d reached the end of this particular global shitshow. No, this ‘coming to a head’ was very small by comparison. Very small indeed.

As you’ll no doubt know - because I’ve certainly droned on and on about it enough - I broke my wrist in February after an altercation between one of my slippers and a Persian Rug while doing a spot of light dusting- in other words, THE most middle-class accident of all time. (Beware of housework people. It is dangerous.)

Getting the bones fixed was a journey in itself, culminating with a bone doctor (with the biggest hands in the world) finally giving me the all clear. Then, as a big fracture-free zone, I moved into the next stage of recovery, which is physical therapy to get my unbroken but frozen wrist to move again.

On the first visit, I met with the boss of the physical therapist’s office, who’s a wee woman with a gentle voice and dainty hands.

Our first meeting was uncomfortable because, well, because it's weird when someone you don’t really know holds on to your hand and tells you in a soft voice that you have to give yourself time to heal. I mean, if you think about what it feels like when you shake a person's hand and they hold on to it for too long, and then multiply that by about 20. It's frickin’ odd.

But you know, medical stuff is odd. Having given birth a couple of times, I can tell you I've had some conversations with medical professionals about the best stuff to buy at the Costco, or the most reliable place to get your car serviced while in very dodgy positions.

As I have to have physical therapy twice a week, I resolved to put down any awkwardness to the fact that medical stuff can be weird, and I am Scottish.

But even then, there were some moments that seemed to clang.

On our second or so meeting, when Dainty Hands asked how I was doing and I said I was ok, she told me I had to start being more honest. That was confusing, bordering on weird. But then I looked around the office, and other patients were casually sitting around being treated by other therapists, and I shrugged it off.

It's an odd setup, hand therapy - a bit like a coffee morning with hand stretchy machines. People sit around in open-plan spaces, with their hands on tables in front of them, in various stages of treatment. Some people have their hands in heat packs, others little tens machines to stimulate the muscles in the hands. It has a strange informality where therapists and patients chat openly.

So I guess that might have been another reason I didn't see boundaries, and why I chose to ignore the weirdness of Dainty Hands telling me I was “constantly making excuses,” whenever I said anything remotely close to that I was feeling ok.

I’d just smile or make a joke because when you have a gnarly hand, you just want it fixed, and I really couldn't understand what her angle was: I am feeling better, I am doing the exercises, I am getting more movement in my wrist. What else was I meant to say?

Clearly not what I was saying.

So Dainty Hands decided I would fare better if she made more public each one of my invariable faux pas.

“Lynn is always making excuses,” she announced loudly to a room of patients and therapists, “Listen to her sitting there just always making excuses!”

Weird, right? Like I know that's weird. Maybe even slightly deranged. But you know if you've got yourself a dodgy wrist and you want to get it better, you shrug off the weirdness.

But the train had left the station. From then on in, Dainty Hands clearly believed that there was something in me needing fixing that was beyond my right wrist.

Her treatment for me became much less quiet and much more public. Like the day she instructed me to place both arms in front of me on the table and, making sure she had the full attention of everyone in the room, demanded, “Look at these arms in front of you, Lynn. Do they look the same to you? You are always so full of excuses.”

On the next session, when I made the mistake of saying I was feeling a bit better, she scurried to a bookcase and pulled out some giant medical book, slammed it down in front of me, and said, “Look through this book and then tell me you're feeling better.”

And then there was the time when, disturbed by the lack of straightness in my fingers on both my hands, she demanded to know why my muscles were tense. I shrugged and said that sometimes I had quite a stressful job, and she snorted and announced, “And you think people who go to medical school aren't stressed, Lynn? You think people who go to medical school aren't stressed?” She shook her head, disgusted.

I observed my fingers like they were 10 little traitors.

“You are always so full of excuses. Lynn is always so full of excuses.”

Now, you might be reading this and thinking this is weird, and why didn't I do something? To be honest, as I’m writing it, I'm thinking the same thing. But I just want my wrist working, and as Dainty Hands would periodically inform me: Other practices will do the wrong things to me. They'll make my arm worse, and in the end, I’ll have to come back to her with my tail between my legs, and then she’ll have to work so much harder to undo those mistakes.

So I sucked it up. I am unsettled. Deeply unsettled. Furious at my frickin wrist for not getting better fast enough to get me out of there. I feel weak, and powerless, and mad at myself.

I don't tell Mark about what's going on because I can't work out what is going on. I just know I feel bad. Mark thinks that maybe I'm overworking and should take it easy. But I can't take it easy. I have to keep moving on.

This week, I arrive for my appointment at my regular time. An assistant puts a heated pad on my wrist to loosen it up, and after 10 minutes returns to start work on getting it to move. The therapist comes back and asks how it is. And while Dainty Hands hovers like a camp commandant in the background, I make the mistake of saying, “Pretty good.”

“Lynn, come here. Over here.” Dainty Hands instructs.

She beckons me over towards a patient I knew as ‘Potato Peeler Lady’ (on account of she’d sliced the top of her finger off with a potato peeler - like I'm saying, housework is dangerous.)

I say hi to the Potato Peeler Lady, but Dainty Hands is incensed.

“Stop talking. Stop talking!” she says, pointing her finger at me.

By now, Potato Peeler Lady is looking pretty uncomfortable. As are the rest of the assorted patients and therapists in the office. Everyone falls silent as clearly something was going down.

With a gentle voice, Dainty Hands asks Potato Peeler Lady how her finger is feeling.

“Uhm, it hurts,” Potato Peeler Lady says a little awkwardly.

“Exactly!” said Dainty Hands, “You see?”

I looked at her, not seeing.

“So you want me to tell you my wrist hurts?” I ask.

“Does it hurt?” Dainty Hands demands.

“Uhm, no. But I can tell you it does if that’s what you want me to say.” I answer

“I want you to tell the truth,” she says.

“I am telling the truth when I say it feels like it's getting better.”

“That. Is. Not. The. Truth,” she says.

“Ok, so why don't you just tell me what you want me to say, and I can say that, and we can just get on with fixing my wrist.” I reply.

“I. Want. You. To. Be. Honest,” she says.

“I am being honest,” I say.

Which was clearly not the right thing to say, because then she got on a roll.

“You might come in here, and people might like to hear you and look forward to you coming, but you always make excuses. You are not able to be honest.”

“What is it that I am doing that bothers you?” I ask, genuinely bewildered. “Tell me exactly what I’m doing that's troubling you.”

“You’ll leave here because you’ll decide you're fixed and you will not be fixed, and I don't need you as a client. I have plenty. Plenty of clients. And I…”

I wanted an answer.

“Is it my attitude? Is what bothers you my attitude?” I say.

And she stops mid-flow and looks at me and replies, “Yes. Your attitude.”

And there is a moment where the penny dropped for both of us. For me, I realize I've landed in Crazy Town. For her, maybe a moment of lucidity that yelling at a client for her positive attitude in front of a room of patients and therapists is maybe not the best move, or maybe it was just a moment of more crazy. Who knows? But the line had been crossed, and I walk away.

My name is called from another room as a different therapist has set up a station for my wrist to be worked on. I pause, wondering what to do. But I want my wrist fixed, so I comply.

And so another therapist calmly works away on my wrist and tries to help make peace with what just happened. “As weird as it sounds, her heart is in the right place,” she says.

Ridiculously, I feel I might cry, and she hands me a box of tissues with a quiet efficiency that suggests that she's dealt with this situation plenty of times before.

And I sit with my hand in a stretching device with silent tears falling. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t frightened. I couldn't work out what to feel. I wondered if it might be embarrassment, or maybe even rage, but the longer I sat there, I realized it was shame. I was ashamed that I had broken my wrist and that I needed help to fix it again.

Dainty Hands came to rub my back in a “let’s be friends again” way, and I turned my body away. That ship has sailed. We are more than done.

When Mark picked me up, I told him what had happened. He got mad (as I knew he would) because he wanted to fix the situation, and more furious when I explained it had been an ongoing thing. I've told a couple of friends, who equally were enraged, and so when I said to turn off your outrage receptors and turn on the “Well, I never!” ones instead when reading this note, that is why.

I am ok. Things will work out, but I thought this story was worth telling because the whole way through it, because I was vulnerable, I painted every single red flag green.

It's understandable. Because I do need someone to help me fix my wrist, I am susceptible. I can't do it alone and Dainty Hands frequently reminded me that other practices wouldn't be able to fix me. And then I'd get even more broken.

People overuse the term gaslighting, sometimes for stuff where someone has just been an asshole or a bit ignorant. But gaslighting is a very specific animal because the argument the aggressor uses is so plausible that it's easy to feel you're making things up, and that the person who is abusing you is actually really helping. Shame is a great controller. Even as I write this, I have this niggling fear that everyone reading it will say that she was right and I really am to blame for breaking my wrist, and maybe I'm really not capable of being honest. But another part of me, the part that reappeared when I talked to Mark and my friends, knows that the person incapable of being honest is Dainty Hands herself.

There will always be those who choose to claim dominance by placing blame on the vulnerable, to hide their own brokenness. Why do they do it? I can't tell you. And I've already given that woman way more attention than she deserves.

What I will say is that in order to escape being gaslit, we have to accept that there is absolutely no shame in being vulnerable. It is part of the human experience. And the ability to help or be helped by another human might be the greatest indicator that you're not a fucking moron.

Aside from that, I wanted to place this Note as a call out to all people who are currently feeling vulnerable, to say, embrace the vulnerable, and lose the fucking shame. We are all after all just one rogue Persian Rug away from a broken wrist, one manic potato peeler away from a fucked up finger, one ruthless warmongering dictator away from seeking asylum.

On a practical level, I’m not sure where things land as yet. One of the therapists rearranged my schedule so I won’t ever be in the office at the same time as Dainty Hands, so for the next week or so I'll do that, till my thoughts are clearer.

And so let me wrap up this story of the gaslighting therapist by telling you that in future, the only gaslighting I will be present at, will be when Pablo fires up his fabulous new meat smoker.

xo

PS: Every time you click on the wee heart emoji on this post to like it, somebody - as in me - knows that you agree with me. Yes, I really am that needy xo

P. P. S: If you enjoy talking/listening/stories/ random facts, come and join me and Mr Tweddle this Thursday at Fish and Bear. This Thursday we will be back a MacLeod’s in the Magical No-Kings-dom of Van Nuys. xo

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And because I am totally showing off - look, I have a book for sale. Written when I had two fully functioning arms - though no better grasp of punctuation.

Volume 2 is available now: US, UK, Can, Aus

Audiobook link https://amzn.to/3Dh0MVP

If you do buy a copy, please leave a review on the site as it helps people know that I write in proper sentences… erm sometimes xo

Pablo's Brand New Smoker - Audio