time to play "what's my damage?"!!!

ok i'm annoyed at some stupidity.

i was looking up trauma/neglect/abuse/recovery stuff last night in hopes of finding a lead.

i decided to find out if what happened to me, regarding my injuries & other medical issues for which i requested & was denied help, would fall under the legal definition of "neglect" under today's law, if not the law of my day. (not like i'm complaining, looking to point fingers... i long ago did the whole "forgiving" thing & i take responsibility for my own craziness. i just need to figure shit out, starting w/the least-scary stuff.)

it turns out that it easily would, but there are a couple things about the law which seem insane to me.

1) in some states, it doesn't count as "neglect" if it's due to the parents' inability to pay/provide.

although i agree with this i would take it farther - it's at this point the STATE'S inability to provide which is at fault, and to take it another step it shouldn't be the state who's in charge of these matters anyway, it should be the community. but we have been separated from one another by our culture and real community is rare.

when i was a child i longed to be rescued from my situation - but not by the "state". i don't think that ever occurred to me. but there were other adults everywhere - my parents' friends/colleagues at the colleges, my teachers, neighbors, my father's students at mt. holyoke who sometimes lived with us...

no one ever said anything so i assumed that everyone was in agreement that nothing was wrong. i don't really know how they saw our family. i'm sure no one knew about the major issues, but plenty of people bore witness to the general overtones & the way my father was rigid & controlling & how he belittled me. nobody said a word, ever. not till i was 16 and got drunk and kissed john grayson, whose sister shelley used to ride in a carpool w/me to macduffie. she wouldn't even look at me when my father was having at me, and the rest of the time she & her friends - at macduffie there were probably only 5 or 10 black girls and they all ganged up together - just teased me about stupid stuff.

john grayson told me that everyone thought my father was a lunatic.

which brings me to point #2.

2) many states make exceptions for the denial of medical care falling under the definitions of "abuse" or "neglect" if it's due to a parent's religious beliefs. christian science is given extra special exemption.

THIS PISSES ME OFF BECAUSE:

• why is RELIGION the only acceptable excuse fro raising your children according to what you believe to be true?

• how is RELIGION any better than INSANITY?

seems to me, RELIGION gets a free pass while INSANITY has entirely different repercussions.

and again: fuck the state. this is where COMMUNITIES should be close enough to act as an extended family and if a child is being harmed for whatever reason, people who know the family should step in. no sending kids away to some strangers in the very dangerous foster care system. NO FUCKING STATE. but people should not look the other way, not for anybody's sake. and yet because we are all controlled by mass-hypnosis if not simply the rules of the state, people pretty much have to.

what do these laws have to say about my particular situation? well, let us examine.

my dad was raised as a christian scientist. although he claimed to be an athiest and a communist, he led his life by a very bizarre belief system which I may never understand. he "ruled the house with an iron fist" as he would have put it, controlling all aspects of everybody's lives using the powers of physical force and psychological torture. he was also clinically insane. even his colleagues pretty much knew that, though he had tenure in the math department so it really didn't matter.

who's to say when a judgment call should be made and by whom? this is very murky territory.

for example, most people take for granted that all children should be taught to brush their teeth. my sister and i were forbidden from brushing our teeth, although i for one kept asking to. we were told that only adults developed plaque, and what children needed was a "milk rinse" every night before bed. my sister and i found this to be especially embarrassing when we had friends over.

one could debate the science of my dad's theory but who cares. the point is, he was different. where does one draw the line between right and wrong? religion vs. insanity?

ironically, when i was 8 years old someone DID step in - while we were living in a tiny village in holland andn my sister and i attended the village school. one day a dental van came to the school to give all the children free dental care. after examining me & my sister, somebody called our parents & had a meeting with them & my sister and I were given our first toothbrushes and from then on we were allowed to brush our teeth. I get the feeling my parents did not enjoy getting busted on whatever it was - in my recollection my father would push any matter until some "authority" such as a doctor drew the line & said flat-out "you can't do that".

what's the difference between RELIGION and a PERSONAL BELIEF system??? and who gets to judge what is insanity and what is not? why should a christian scientist be immune to charges of neglect or abuse when an insane person would have no rights at all?

so, my dad was raised in a christian science way but he said there was no god. he believed that the sun would heal all things. i'm with him on that on ly to a point. i believe it is not the STATE'S business to make laws about what vaccines are mandatory for babies, what education kids should have, etc. but then there is this pesky thing we call "common sense" which is closely related to something called "science".

how would one apply the law to this incident:

i was 7 or 8 years old, and i had an accident on my bike. our road had just been re-tarred & graveled, so there was still mucky tar & loose gravel everywhere.

i remember parts of this with perfect clarity, other parts with extreme vagueness or no memory at all.

i was making too tight a turn when i skidded and fell. i was alone on the street. i didn't feel any pain until i looked at my left foot & saw that the top of it had been shorn clear off and i could see everything in there, including the tar and gravel now embedded in the mess. at which point i began to scream at the top of my lungs.

adults came running - 5 or 6 people surrounded me to see if i was ok. i didn't recognize any of them. then my father, hearing the commotion, came out. he broke through the circle, scooped me up, and carried me into the house.

he brought me into the laundry room where we had a big sink, and dangled my foot under the tap for perhaps a minute.

from that point until the next part of the memory is a blank for me. my mother recently told me she will never forgive herself for not taking me to the doctor (i assured her it was the least of my traumas & that i held nothing against her.) she said i was not allowed to touch my foot or try to clean it in any way (neither of my parents were to touch it from then on either. it was never properly cleaned.) the sun was supposed to heal it. our house, by the way, was filthy. i got around the house by moving around like a crab, with my left foot held as high in the air as i could manage.

how much time went by i do not know, but my memory kicks back in when my mother finally did sneak me off to a doctor (we had insurance - it was never a matter of care not being available) when my foot was finally covered in a 1/2" layer of pus, tar and gravel of course still embedded.

what happened AT the doctor's office is another story for another time, or possibly not.

the QUESTION is:

what would the law say about my dad refusing to allow me medical care? he was raised as a christian scientist, after all. but perhaps an insanity plea would get him off?

my life is a tapestry of murky situations like this example, which i used because i have little to no emotion when i think or talk about it, and yet it has been on my mind a lot since learning so much new stuff about bodywork.

the stupid shit that is pissing me off is that i don't think it's right to make laws about what is or is not "abuse" regarding how people raise their children, and then give certain groups exemptions. excuse me but what the fuck happened to the separation of church & state? ok i KNOW what happened... it went *poof* but this kinda pisses me off. a kid is a kid and i don't see why religion gets a free pass. of course it doesn't help me sort out my own personal narrative in the slightest way.

[end rant]