• I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

~ writing my way through motherhood, doctorhood, post-PTSDhood and autism. sleeping very little.

Category Archives: Catholicism

christofascism

04 Wednesday May 2022

Posted by elizabethspaardo in addiction, Catholicism, christianity, Evil, kids, love, outrage, parenting, Politics, PTSD, Rape, Sin

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abuse, addiction, death, dying, empathy, Evil, fallen world, family, feminism, forgiveness, good, innocence, joy, Justice, love, meaning, medicine, mental illness, morality, original sin, Parenting, patriarchy, privelege, PTSD, rape, religion, sexual assault, silence, Sin eater, trauma, truth, viktor frankl

Nowhere in the Bible does it say life begins at conception. Nowhere in the Bible does it say 10 year old girls ought to carry and birth their father’s baby if he chooses to rape her which fathers sometimes do. To think this is what God would want says an awful lot about a person. And it isn’t good.

Howard Zinn says you can’t be neutral on a moving train and so I want to hear from my Christian sisters today. I want to hear them screaming for the women who will die, the girls who will die, for the dreams that will die. They asked Jesus the most important commandments and he said love God and love one another. Why is that so fucking hard for so many ChRiStIaNs?

Contraception is next. Do you know I didn’t use contraception for years and I’ve never been a fan and it’s failed me on occasion and I still will give my all to defend our right to it. Do you know the horrors I have seen come of lack of access to effective contraception? Where are you my fellow Christians? With your youth groups and your worship songs and your testimony? Jesus hung with the prostitutes and the lepers. She had two beautiful kids and a hole inside of her so wide and so deep because she’d never been loved and only ever been hurt and that third baby done did her in and now all three of the babies are with someone else and she is in jail detoxing meth psychosis and I miss her so damn much. She chopped wood at 8 months pregnant to try to make enough money to keep the water on. And where were you? At yOuTh GrOuP

I sat in my car and cried for the world we’ve given our kids. I tried. I believed. But here we are. Poor lost children of Eve banished from Eden. But Eden wasn’t enough. Or maybe it was too much. We wanted that apple and who could blame us? How boring a perfect life must be. So huddle together in this Whale with me and let us tell each other tales until the light goes out.

addicted

12 Tuesday Apr 2022

Posted by elizabethspaardo in addiction, autism, Catholicism, christianity, empathy, kids, residency, Sin

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addiction, autism, beauty, children, death, empathy, fallen world, joy, laughter, love, medicine, original sin, Possibility, religion, residency, silence, trauma, true love, truth, viktor frankl

all of my patients are physically dependent on opioids. ICD 10 F11.20. some of them are addicted to opioids. a lot of them aren’t.

maybe you’re physically dependent on something. for which there is no ICD 10 code. caffeine, zoloft, dopamine, adrenaline. maybe you’re addicted. coffee, zoloft, social media, shopping, toxic relationships, speeding, gossip, little debbie Christmas tree cakes, work, success, sex, HGTV.

maybe you think I’m being cute. or metaphorical. just making a point. no one goes to rehab for gossip addiction (maybe they should). no one goes to jail for possession of little debbie Christmas tree cakes (maybe no one should go to jail for possession of anything. maybe the jails are a crime)

addiction is an escape from the pain of being human. being human is more painful for some than others. but it is painful for all of us. and if someone tells you it isn’t, that is because they are so deep in their addiction, they have lost touch entirely.

eve and adam ate that apple and it all went to shit, you see. our eyes were opened and sickness and pain and toil entered the stage. we all fell down, down, down. and ever since, we have very logically sought to numb the pain of it. because there is no way up, up, up. not in this life anyway.

we are afraid. to hope, to love, to ask for love, to speak our truth, to share our pain, to need or be needed, to want or be wanted. we are afraid to take up space and that we might disappear, to be silenced and to be heard, to be alone and that we might make a genuine connection. we are afraid we are unlovable and that to be loved would be the most unbearable pain imaginable. or perhaps, worse than that, ecstasy.

in addiction we connect with other people. no we don’t. we are with people and we are less lonely and so we think we are connecting. logical. understandable. but let me tell you a story about the time my friends let G die when he overdosed because they were high too and didn’t want to get in trouble and i knew they loved drugs more than they loved me or each other. and the time i went back to my dopamine adrenaline filled emotional intimacy free relationship because right at that moment i loved it more than my kids and i do not want to tell you that but how else can we do better?

and they told me my son played next to other children but not with other children and that he was too old for parallel play. but tell me how much time adults spend engaging with other people and not engaging next to other people? are we connecting spiritually or are we churching next to one another? and those residents we work 90 hours a week with that we save and lose lives with, do we know them at all? and so pass the pipe and hand me that spoon and we will share a hit of Netflix and yoga and pumpkin spice latte next to one another in this Fallen World.

there is no ICD 10 code for the unbearable lightness of being but maybe there should be

Fuck Ted Bundy

31 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by elizabethspaardo in Catholicism, christianity, empathy, Evil, kids, love, marriage, my awesome husband, narcissism, outrage, parenting, PTSD, romance, Sin

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be my valentine, betrayal, children, divorce, empowerment, Evil, fallen world, family, good, Justice, love, meaning, narc, narcissism, original sin, Parenting, religion, silence, sock monkey, stars, trauma, true love, truth, vampire, viktor frankl

Flesh of my flesh

Bone of my bone

Leave your parents cleave to me 

I am your new home

Home forever

Til death do us part

And if I make you yearn for that end 

Why that’s hardness in your heart

For if you love God

You love marriage, you love me 

And you know when God joins together

You’ll never be free

Free to be who you really are

To follow the fate signed in your stars

No you are mine and I am yours 

Don’t lock your phone 

Don’t lock your doors

We are one in heart and soul 

We are both driven by the hole 

left behind by the barren wombs that birthed us underneath the moon

Mother moon has cried for us while Brigid’s fire inspired us 

To reach for something better than us 

Wait Did I say us? 

I meant me. 

You conjure planks in all our eyes 

But yours are fine 

(It’s a disguise) 

A pleasant reflection outside of you 

Rot and decay is what is true

What god has joined together I will put asunder 

For how can we be one when your trunk is putrid and diseased at its core?

Swoop up the fruit before it hits the floor 

If you can tell a tree by the fruit it bears you’ve done a damn good job of fooling God 

For our children are precious fruit indeed 

Owing little to your bitter seed 

They grow and bloom in spite of you 

Soaring so far past the height of you 

Knowing there is something not right with you

People look at the women that fell in love with Ted Bundy

Stood by Ted Bundy

Accepted a proposal in a courtroom from Ted Bundy

And they think these women are naive or dumb or victims themselves

But has it ever occurred to you that they were there because being in love with Ted Bundy worked for them?

Instead of looking at him as this charming manipulative sociopath fooling these women

Has it occurred to you that she was manipulating him too?

Judas and Ted Bundy and Jeremy Noyes 

Sinners that God so loved he gave his only son 

God and Abraham would sacrifice their sons for the sins of the world

And so do you think yourself holy when you hurt your kids to hurt their mother? To punish her for leaving? For putting asunder what You joined together?

Because it was never about God 

And always about you 

And you, are a jealous and vengeful little demigod 

So easily beat by Brigid and Mother Moon

40 Days and 40 Nights (or, what doesn’t kill you also makes you more grateful (if you let it).

03 Sunday May 2020

Posted by elizabethspaardo in Catholicism, christianity, doctors, empathy, kids, love, medicine, parenting, PTSD, Rape, residency, Uncategorized

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beauty, children, death, dying, empowerment, fallen world, family, friendship, love, medical school, medicine, mental illness, Parent, play, PTSD, religion, trauma, truth

We have now had a fever for 42 days. Off and on. Mine had gone away yesterday and I thought, maybe this is it. Maybe this was a fever that lasted 40 days and 40 nights, that started two days before I stopped being 40 years old. And maybe if that’s true, there is a deeper spiritual meaning to it. So, I researched the number 40.

They say 40 in the Bible essentially means, a really long time. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights when Noah was out on the ark. The Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years. Moses’s life is divided into three 40 year phases. Jesus was tempted by Satan for 40 days. He stayed with the disciples 40 days before ascending to Heaven where he is seated at the right hand of the Father.

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They also say 40 represents a new beginning. It has to do with it being a factor of 5 and 8, and 4 and 10. I will skip over those details. After 40 days, the flood receded and it was a new world. After 40 years the Hebrews were considered to have paid the price for their disobedience and given a new life in the promised land. After 40 days, the Holy Spirit anointed the disciples and they were reborn. In Judaism, the embryo is considered to be formed at 40 days gestation. And a pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.

It also represents water, baptism, mikvah. There is the great flood. In traditional Judaism a woman goes to the mikvah ritual bath for purification 40 days after having a son, 80 days after a daughter. The mikvah is filled with 40 seah of water.

According to the Jewish Talmud, at 40 years old you gain the gift of understanding. You come to begin to fully understand all you’ve been taught.

I have been feeling exhausted lately, burdened. And feeling like I will forever be wandering in the wilderness, the promised land always just slightly out of reach. Time and again telling myself, you just need to get through this phase and then things will get easier. At what point do I admit to myself it’s a lie, that this is as good as it gets? In other words, I have been hopeless and have lost that sense of possibility I’d been so grateful to regain back in 2015 when my PTSD was healed.

My life is better than a lot of people’s and I know this in my head and I know this in my heart. But their suffering did not seem to alleviate mine. I kept telling myself to get over it, but I just couldn’t.

Perhaps it’s the nature of this fever. You feel good for a day or two or three. Really good. And you’re so grateful. You have energy and joy and you can run and get things done and enjoy life. And you think this is it, I’m better. I can get on with my life. And then it comes back.

Perhaps it’s this quarantine grinding us all down. Or the fact I had three people close to me in my life a year ago and now I have none. And I’m in isolation and can’t replace them. I cannot picture my future because none of us can. We do not know what will happen with the economy, with the pandemic, with the election, with the way things are done and the way we relate to one another. And so, how do we have a sense of possibility? There are infinite possibilities and none at all.

And so I looked to the number 40 for hope. If my fever lasted 40 days then maybe there was a divine reason God had allowed it to go on so long. Maybe God had a plan for me. Maybe beyond 40 years and 40 days and nights I would emerge from the wilderness and finally enter the promised land. Purified and born again.

But here I sit on day 42. Maybe sometimes a fever of unknown origin is just a fever of unknown origin.

I had the energy to play with my daughter today. She couldn’t believe it. We ran shuttle runs and played charades and had a jumping competition. I felt great. For now, I’ll take that and be grateful. We’re not promised a damn thing in this life. If I ever return to good physical health and energy I will be grateful in a way I couldn’t have been before. When we emerge from this quarantine and I can be with my patients in my office again, I will be grateful in a way I couldn’t have been before. And when the second forty years of my life are easier than the first (and they will be. I know this much is true), I will be grateful in a way I couldn’t have before.

I hate the saying what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, even though it’s true. I mean, what a crappy gift: the knowledge now you can make it through something even more awful. But this truth has saved my butt more than once and I put faith in it that my children’s difficulties have done that for them. Because life is hard and the best thing we can do for our kids is prepare them to face whatever it throws at them without falling apart. But what doesn’t kill you also makes you more grateful (if you let it).

I’m grateful for my kids’ fever because at one time their immune systems were so dysregulated, their bodies couldn’t mount a fever response to invading pathogens. I’m grateful every time my 14 year old acts like a jerky teenager because he gets to a live a relatively normal teenage life now instead of being in PANDAS hell. I’m grateful every time I eat a meal without an abusive husband there criticizing what I’m eating or not eating because that was not always the case. I’m grateful to be a doctor, the good and the bad, because it was almost taken from me and I gave literal blood, tears and a piece of my soul (and my cervix) to get through my training. I’m grateful for the sense of possibility because for so many years in PTSD, it wasn’t there as I dwelled in that place between life and death.

So maybe that’s what the promised land really is: gratitude. If we never wandered through the desert for forty years, how could we even know we were in the promised land? Maybe it is not a static place, this promised land. Maybe it can’t be. Maybe it’s an oasis where we replenish ourselves and get a rest before heading out again. We never know how far into the wilderness we will go and for how long, but we know the promised land is always there. Until we reach the end of this life and enter the world without end and find that possibility we have been been seeking once and for all.

No Fear in (I) Love (New York)–or, Our Lady of Perpetual Selfies

12 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by elizabethspaardo in Catholicism, love, New York City, romance

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love, truth

I got to go to New York this week. I love New York. Well, to visit anyway. Wasn’t so crazy about living there in grad school, but glad I did it. I feel very comfortable getting around the city when I visit now. And it stirs up a lot of happy memories.

I planned my trip carefully. There wasn’t much free time outside the conference I was there for, but I made the most of it. I went straight to Chinatown from Penn Station when my train got in. wonton garden. Go there the next time you’re in New York. Damn good Chinese comfort food.

I bought some Asian pears from a fruit stand on the sidewalk on my way there like I used to when I lived there. I took in the energy of the city. Whether you love New York or hate it, you have to admit it has a life to it that you feel in your cells.

I went to the top of Rockefeller Center before I left. I was the first one in line actually so I stood on top of New York by myself for a moment. I’m not one for views to be honest with you. it drives my poor husband crazy sometimes. He’s big on views. We used to go on hikes and get to the top of a big hill or a small mountain and he’d say, “Look at that view!” He couldn’t believe how underwhelmed I was. Guess I’m not a visual person.

I looked at the city below me and took pictures. Got some panoramic shots for my son Max. He’s a big fan of panoramic pictures. Guess he is a visual person.

I was hoping, quite cliché-ly, that going up there would help give me some perspective on my life.

I’ve been exhausted and overwhelmed lately, Taking in the suffering of addiction and PANDAS patients is draining sometimes. A lot of my patients have been having especially bad weeks lately.

And so has Max.

Sometimes it feels impossible. Like I’m living the Book of Job. I’m sure we all feel that way sometimes. Most of us anyway. Just one difficulty on top of another. Enough already.

It helped to get away from Verona, to spend time with a group of entirely new people, to spend some time alone too. Some calm and stillness.

Standing on top of New York wasn’t especially helpful though. Not my thing. Mountains, buildings, planes. Views don’t do it for me.

I stopped at a French bakery to get my sweetie some sweets and then on to my last stop before catching the train home. Back to reality.

I went to St. Patrick’s. St. Patrick’s is where I found God 15 years ago when I was 23. It wasn’t intentional. I went as a tourist, but from the moment I entered, it hit me. And I’ve never been the same.

I walked in now, 15 years and what feels like a few lifetimes later. I decided to pray by the statue dedicated to the Holy Family. Our family has not had peace for so long. We need peace so desperately in our house. I put my candle offering in and went to light my candle, to carry my prayers up to Heaven long after I’d left the Cathedral and headed home. But a tourist using a selfie stick and her phone to take pictures pushed me out of the way so she could extend her selfie stick over the candle and get a good shot of the statue. Really? Do you get at least a few minutes in Purgatory for that? I of course instantly forgave her and moved over to the candles on the other side and said my prayers and left my offering. I prayed for peace.

I then went to my favorite place in St. Patrick’s, the painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe. An area generally occupied by immigrants from various parts of Latin America. And me. She’s the only vision of Mary ever to appear where Mary is pregnant. So very… motherly.

Mary’s a mom so I know she gets me. So I let it all out. Told her everything while tears streamed down my cheeks and tourists walked by. I asked her for some rather specific answers, not expecting an immediate reply, but Mary’s an awesome mom and got right down to it.

Insight into who I am and how to treat my children and my patients. And insight into what is really at the heart of these things that trouble us all.

I feel renewed. Centered. In terms of my family and my medical practice. I have been living fearfully but there is no fear in love. I have not wanted to take care of myself, to be happy, because it seems selfish to take care of myself when my baby can’t, when so many of my patients and their families can’t.

It’s not a sustainable way to live. And it’s not good for my patients or my kids. I have known this intellectually for a long time. But it was always in my head, an idea unrealized, without form.

In the Catholic Church we are sensual. Protestants have formless ideas, a weekly service with a sermon that nourishes the mind. But Christ was both fully Man and fully God. We are physical creatures in this world. And so we have sacraments and incense and statues. Monks chanting and and holy water and the body and blood of Christ physically within us.

It is this smelling, hearing, tasting, touching, seeing that evokes the presence of God in us. Physical creatures seeking to know something so hard to grasp. I got up from the kneeler and looked at Our Lady one last time. I looked up at the great stone arches high above me. Took in the stained glass images of Christ and the Saints. And I felt so… protected, content, loved. Like I was home. The way a perfect home would be. What home should be. Peaceful and warm. A place you can be completely vulnerable and know you will be safe.

I realize something now. It is not that I’m not a visual person or I don’t like views. It’s that I like to look up instead of looking down. Not to see myself high above the small world below but to see the vastness of it all above and feel how small I really am. Part of something much bigger. Something very good.

No fear in love.

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