This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
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Dear Sara,

This letter is a bit redundant, since I need to have figured this out by tomorrow night, when I have an appointment with my psychologist.
By the time you and me have our call, it will already be done, and all the insights from our call and in particular your contributions to which I am already looking forward to hearing because you’re always so good at seeing things I miss;
Those things will need to be squeezed in, or added on, to a train already set in motion.

My psychologist and me are tackling a list of problem areas for which I need strategies, in order to navigate them the rest of my life.
One of them is my inability to deal with hospitals and medical staff.

There is something required of patients which I do not have, that in all probability goes way beyond being able to handle all the inaccuracies, flaws and contradictions in different departments and their opposing messages, and comes down to other patients having some kind of ability to emphatically connect with the professionals themselves, instead of only seeing a sea of red flags in an organization whose logistics would barely pass to move garbage bags around, let alone patients.

An even deeper thought on this, is that other patients may even find comfort that personnel in the hospital is trying so hard, and so emotionally involved with all the people going through;
That what I see as dysfunctional, disturbed and alarming, is experienced by other patients as a bonding experience between the hardworking staff and the worried patients.

Instead of as a sign you’re being thrown in front of a bus.

One of the many racing thoughts I had on the subject was how unbelievable I think it is that everybody, and in particular people with a background in medicine or psychology, find it remarkable that I used to “settle” for a man who was only a lover, who never chose me, and they deem it as something I apparently had some sort of special skill set for, in order to handle such an unsafe relationship.
That I had a secret way to handle holding myself up, in such a challenging environment of a non-monogamous affair.
Where your lover is doing the non-monogamous part, and you are just left to grit your teeth.

Which by the way is something I never did (grit my teeth).
I was delighted that he was so energetic and adventurous and I would submit myself in a heartbeat, to lifelong weekly hospital treatments including snappy receptionists, double booked appointments, broken agreements, ineffective exams and being informed on having life-threatening diseases, if it would bring him back. 

But it shows that during the 9 years of our affair I have been on the receiving side of sympathy, whereas going through this medical mill – and I’m technically speaking not even going through exactly because I took myself out of the loop and I am now in the purgatory of an unanswered thread of messages that was supposed to direct me to another department but that will no doubt be forgotten, unless I bring it back from the dead-I receive nothing.
Everybody seems to be under the impression going to a hospital is an entirely neutral experience, and that it can only be a disease, or an invasive treatment, that are worth mentioning en sympathizing with.

So having an affair is supposed to be challenging, but being in a David and Goliath type of conversation with an organization that seems unable to get even one appointment booked in without gaslighting you, is I don’t know… normal?

That is some fucked up shit, Sara.
And the only reassurance that gives me is that, apparently, I do possess an impressive set of acquired skills and special talents, because almost everybody has admitted to me that they could never have been so patient and so loving in such an insecure relationship style, and be able to deal with such a difficult man for so long. 

It’s just that my talents seem to be absolutely useless, in a hospital.

And what is needed there, in all likeliness, is the same thing that is required to start and maintain lifelong monogamous relationships.
Which by the way, are also skills I have proven to possess, for 17 years total.
I just very consciously chose not to engage in those anymore, because that is not how I want to live my life.

But just saying, Sara; I AM versatile!
How is it possible that I can both rock a longterm relationship, as well as a complex affair for almost a decade, yet I completely bottom out in the most simple phase of medical treatment?
We’re not even in the treatment.
I have not even made it to the exam, I didn’t even get that far.

It feels like everything in the hospital represents neglect, aforementioned gaslighting, and sadism in forms even Marquis de Sade had not thought of.
I think he would be particularly pleased with the added gaslighting effect, and acknowledge his sadists being so forward in their torture and their killing had left so much on the table in terms of psychological pain, where the victims would be told they were not actually tortured and that there was no pain, and that they were exaggerating.
And right before the victims were murdered, and some acknowledgement of pain had to come, he would have the sadists say that sometimes things just need to be done, and that it had been a joint decision. Where the decision of course would have been something like, do you want me to cut of your ear or your left labia; you know- something that really fucks you over.

Okay, enough with the illustrative de Sade spree, and back to the subject at hand;
How is it possible that throughout my life, I coach myself through having this festering evil of the medical world as the authority on our physical existence, and replace it with the generally held assumption that these are well-intentioned professionals who are deeply invested in our physical well-being;
Only to be proven wrong time and time again?

Or, well no, I’m making it too easy now, it’s not that inside the four walls of an examination room there is malice;
It’s everything in between.

The toxins are in the very fabric of the system, the communication, the organization. They’re in the in-between-ness. The evil is not present where one doctor or one nurse is responsible.
In fact, I totally agree that if you are dealing with ONE doctor or nurse, or a guard or a worker walking the hallway at that point, but not behind their computer;
Then you do meet that good side.
Then you do relate as humans, and it’s a beautiful experience.

But as soon as you blink your eyes, it’s gone and they’ve thrown you inside the system again, where no one is responsible.
You’re back in the dungeon of Sodom.

So tomorrow night, I need to have a setup ready for my psychologist, that includes how I want to tackle my complicated relationship to the medical world.
And as I’ve already briefly mentioned, as a psychologist she is one of those people who acknowledges my strength in certain areas, yet she seems to almost gloss over this problem.
She acknowledges its toxicity, or lets not put words in her mouth but she acknowledges that it is toxic for me, yet sports the attitude that since I need them, I need to find a way of dealing with them, implying that it is in some way doable. 
Or maybe I implied that as well, by placing this item on something as down to earth as a list of actionable items.

I made the list on one of those fake-it, pretend-this-is-easy, optimistic, coaching-myself-through-this, moments.
When I now know, this is something that if it is to be solved, needs to be centered as My Main Quest.
And that I should not have put it on a list, in such a downplayed way. That was out of integrity, and did not do justice to the suffering it has caused.
And even Andy Warhol knew he’d die if he was ever admitted to a hospital, or maybe “again” admitted to a hospital, after his shooting.
Either way, he was right.
Most likely he died of neglect, in a hospital bed.
Just to say, being afraid of the hospital is not something that has a history of being turned around that easily. Whereas the stories of people avoiding the hospital only to then die in them, in a sloppy and tarnished way, on wrong medication and preventable mistakes – let’s just sum it up as “in an unsatisfactory way” although death itself is indeed rarely satisfactory-
those examples are numerous.

So what I had just casually thrown on the list as one of the points I need to “figure out”, was actually a mammoth task, that usually does not get done.
Being afraid of the hospital is an indication of your lifespan, and the point  where your life will end.
It is not a movable target that you can push forward.

So without any positive examples, and facing a problem that is way too layered to tackle in one sitting, the most obvious solution then becomes;
“What do I need to do, now that I KNOW I can never go to a hospital without risking my life, just like Andy Warhol did?”

And indeed, that still may be the most effective solution to tackle it. It surely has a higher chance of success at becoming a useful guideline for my life, than learning how to accept or how to manage getting medical assistance.

But I saw something else as well.
Something far more interesting and compelling!
Something juicy, lurking in the shadows of this mundane, uninteresting problem of getting tantrums every time I even think of having to get medical help.

And this interesting thing can be divided into two;
1.This clash can only be caused by the hospital blocking something I really, deeply care about, or something I aspire to. The hospital is blocking something I WANT!
What is it? 
Explain with the aids phobia thing of the 80s.
And
2.This clash is about POWER!
It is about authority, and it is about who rules my body. It is about boundaries, and about being sloppy with them, and it is about not having stepped fully into my own physical power and authority, and therefor being angry when someone violates its boundaries, when the truth is, I am not protecting my body, as if my life is depending on it.
Which it is.
Explain with the medical world/ yoga world and even performance art, analogy.

Point 2 first!
Why is this a sign of a deeper lying boundary problem?
And what does performance art and the yoga world have to do with it?

This came to me in a yoga class, when I realized that the similarity between the profession of yoga teacher and the medical world, is that we are one of the very few who deal with the body.
We don’t just need a functioning body, in fact in theory we don’t;
But, the body is our area of expertise.
We know more about the body than others, we experiment with it. We are in an ongoing conversation and learning process with it. It never ceases to fascinate us, and we love to, very coarse way of saying;
We love to get our fingers in it!

Well, I never touch my yoga students, but you get the idea.

Maybe you could say a medical professional has a more literal relationship to the body, whereas a yoga teacher has a more spiritual relationship to it.
We only recognize one ailment; lack of awareness.
And we only have one medicine; awareness.

And a performer, any performer but in particular performance artist Marina Abramovic, also has this intimate relationship to their body.
Their body, their presence, IS their work.

So what I recognize now, is that I have not decided yet where the medical world fits in here. And if it does, which aspects of it.
Although judging from the rest of this post, it is coming to me now;
I can only deal with professionals who are not part of a system.
Who have their own secretary or receptionist, but who are not part of a system where no one is responsible anymore.

Okay, that was relatively easy 😉
Except of course in the Netherlands, that does limit my medical possibilities tremendously.
Where I live for example, we only have eye doctors in the hospitals.
So if I would exert this rule, I would not have eye care.

But I do think this underlying power struggle, and how it is caused by the way care is organized in The Netherlands, and not by the individuals, does take the sharpest edges off of it.

And that medical care is by definition different if your job too, is to know the body. Either because you are in health care yourself, or because you are a yoga teacher, or you are Marina Abramovic.
Your body is a lot more personal to you.

Now the first one:
What is The Want, the medical industry is blocking?
“Explain with the aids phobia thing of the 80s,” it says.

So in the 80s, I got an anxiety disorder from the aids education. I found there was no way to navigate my sex life, staying within the safe sex threshold. It took me absolute decades to unpack what went down there, and it is still a work in progress to be honest.
But it comes down to the fact that the unnuanced labeling of sex as either safe (you’re a good and responsible person) or unsafe (the label implying you’re taking a serious health risk, that could have easily been prevented) was masking an unwillingness or an inability to have a conversation about the innate risks, tied to ones natural sexual orientation.
For example if you are a homosexual person or someone who wants to have multiple partners, then your baseline risk is a lot higher.
The conversation should therefor always be worded as the safest sex for you, or the safer options for you, within the natural expression of who you are.

The word “safe sex” implies that we all have an option to be 100% safe, when the only real option to be safe, for anyone, is to not have sex at all.
In other words: the words safe and sex, simply do not belong together.
The act of sex itself, already implies a risk.
I know I’ve used the term gaslighting at least twice already, but I am using it again, because the word safe sex is the very definition of gaslighting:
It was suggested we could have sex and be safe at the same time.
An impossibility, and that’s just covering the physical risk of disease, and not even the risk of being harmed in other ways.

We were gaslighted, which in itself would have been enough to develop an anxiety disorder, but I discovered that in my case there was even more:
The safe sex campaign blocked something I really wanted.
My access to a free sex life.

I gave up, and I gave in!
No hero’s journey there.
I didn’t free myself from monogamous relationships until I was in my 30s.
The safe sex campaign effectively blocked my access to my own natural sexuality, and I had monogamous sex WITH a condom, because that was all the stress I could take.

And I can tell you that if you are wired for more free spirited sex, and you have known that since childhood, then sex in a monogamous relationship, after its first six months or so, becomes stale.
I may have many skills, but keeping sex fresh within monogamy, certainly isn’t one of them.

Of course it isn’t.
My skill set is designed to support my sexual nature of having sex with new men, and to have those men be exciting and adventurous!
For that, I have an infinite amount of dedication and enough talents to cover for the both of us.
You just bring us the meat of excitement, and the bones of pleasure, and I’ll get the table in order, consider it done.

So when the safe sex campaigns hit, I had more at stake.
Where monogamy, obviously, is where the majority of us seem to be ending up and choosing for again and again- even when people are well beyond their child bearing years they continu to come back to it – it was never my flavor.
I knew I was born not so much “for more”, but definitely born for something different.

And when I found the road blocked by the Safe Sex Brigade, I realized I was never going to reach my destination. That I didn’t have the strength to fight the enemy of government, and health care, and my parents, and everybody taking sides with this whole idea of safe sex (which was at the time: everybody!), all standing together.
I was just a 16 year old girl, facing an enemy she could not compete with because it was all around her. Evil, was in everybody, around her.

And I let the fear for the people around me consume me.
I have called it an aids phobia, but when I chose my own path, in my 30s I recognized it as social phobia.
I had not been afraid of the disease, I had been afraid of people.
And still am.

I did get a little bit further in, when I was in my 30s, and reclaimed my sexuality. I got the sex life that I had aspired to. But I didn’t do it by conquering those people from the 80s, nor did they change that dramatically.
Maybe they were a little less stubborn in their belief there was such a thing as safe sex, and maybe my age which was closer to 36 than to 16 at the time, had given me a little more wiggle room, than when I was in my teens and my parents worried sick about me.
But in the end, despite aids being treatable since the 90s, not that much had changed.

But I navigated.
Even then, I did not throw over, and I did not conquer. I wasn’t a sexually revolutionary in any way. I didn’t rock the boat even when after 20 years I did rise above the safe sex warnings and chose to honor who I was, sexually.
Maybe it was a hero’s journey, although it was a modest one.

So although I have not connected all the dots, I think my current clash with the medical world, can only be explained as originating in this conflict that started when I was 13, 14 years old, ready to start my sex life, and then aids arose and I saw the sexual ocean I had been looking forward to jump into, being blocked before my very eyes.
They claimed it was poisonous.

And what I have been doing as an adult was only swimming in the guarded area, and between the lines.

I don’t know why I associate being in the medical world both as a violation of my sexual identity, as well as a direct threat to restoring my sexuality after the breakup, and to making the transition into having a healthy sex life in midlife and beyond.
Don’t know why I feel as if letting “those people” back into my life, is not just a slippery slope to being cock blocked, or in my case pussy blocked, all over again, exactly as they did to me, in the 80s, but means risking my life.

That “safe hospital” does not exist anymore than “safe sex” does.
And that No Hospital is in my case the best choice, just like No Sex was that to some gay men in the 80s, who found they were at too high a risk of dying because of it.

Because the truest thing I have to say about this continuously growing crap pile of bad experiences in the medical world, is that I feel I will die if I let them in.

They will murder my sexuality and then they will kill me.
Just like they did with Andy.

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~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living