Since I have little energy to spare, I choose to interact with very few people. Simple interaction with people that I do enjoy being around is tiring, but not draining. Still, I can only take a few hours of that, and not for days in a row. Something like a (positive) visit from a friend or a family get-together for a couple of hours wipes me out for a few days.
Other people, however, are so self-absorbed they can’t see how much energy they siphon from my soul. They dump their problems onto me, talk over me, and leave me hanging when I need someone to listen… those people’s days are through. Fuck them. I am too sick to have these types of people in my life… ever again. From now on, I’ll be having a bad phone connection, an appointment, or I’ll be in too much pain for home visits. My ears are now closed for energy vampires.
Having to leave the house when I don’t feel well, especially when I feel weak, is a huge task. It takes several hours in the morning to prepare and feel well and confident enough to drive my car without some weird medical thing happening. I plan my local stops, run in and out, and get home as quickly as possible.
A few weeks ago, I had an unpleasant interaction on a day when I was feeling pretty horrible. The experience sucked me dry of the little energy I had – so much that I could not finish running errands, went home, and did nothing the rest of the day.
My appetite is still limited, and my weight has dropped considerably. My granny panties are literally falling off of me. (Thankfully, I still have thongs I can hold up with my butt crack.)
While I am all about healthy living, holistic whatever, adding the right supplements to your diet, etc., not all answers can be found in health food stores. I’ve used several products with false claims over the years, and at some point in life, I like to think we wisen up. When you get old enough, you see the repeated patterns of health fads over the decades and realize how much we’ve been fooled by bullshit advertising.
Many times I purchased items at health food stores, because employees convinced me something was going to work for whatever issue I was having. Even though these people knew NOTHING about my body, they sold me things I didn’t need. Once, I was sold something that was supposed to increase my libido when I was in my late 30s, because the woman assumed I was hitting menopause. Far from it – I had fibroids!! (My libido increased when I got divorced, so that was the real solution!)
Some of my conditions prohibit me from eating even the healthiest ingredients, but most people don’t know that (and I didn’t know until recently), but they continue to push instead of listen. They are simply employees of a store without proper medical training and shouldn’t be giving medical advice for conditions based on product advertising. They also know when you’re desperate, they have a better chance of selling you something. Social psychology.
However, health food stores are great for specialty organic food items, which is why I ran into this particular store a few weeks ago. I intended on grabbing one item they advertised but didn’t have. Even though I was feeling really awful that day, I made an attempt to speak to the clerk, because I remembered her from another store. She didn’t remember me at all, even though we’d spoken many times, her always having made comments about my dress.
When she started pushing me to get certain products, I was ready to leave. I attempted to look around the store so I could ease my way out, but this woman would not allow me to browse on my own without breathing down my neck, following me, and yakking about what I should be taking. She insisted my bloodwork needed to be done from a particular place in a book she had.
“But you didn’t get your bloodwork from here. This woman knows what she’s talking about. She’s an expert. She will find out what’s wrong with you.”
Even though I’ve probably had every blood test known to man in the past year, she kept insisting they probably made a mistake. This book – the woman who wrote it – knows so much, has all of these credentials. (The author is not a doctor.) Had she allowed me to browse on my own, I might have considered looking into her suggestions, but I felt bullied. She repeated herself a few times, asking me the same question she’d asked three minutes earlier, so I won’t be taking her advice.
“I’m pretty sure they haven’t made a mistake in my bloodwork, considering I’ve had it done almost monthly for the past six months by different facilities, including three different hospitals.”
“They still could have made a mistake.” OMFG.
She was clearly not listening, speaking over me, overstepping my boundaries, and being a total suck-ass salesperson. (She didn’t act this way in past stores, so her behavior came as a surprise.) Like some others into holistic medicine, she also insisted my thyroid is probably the issue (it’s not).
If my issue was a simple solution, it would have been found by now. But autoimmune and/or neurological issues can be extremely complicated, and these vitamin salespeople have no business suggesting anything. So many of these over-the-counter products are counterproductive!
Even though this woman knew nothing about my conditions, she kept saying “You need this!!” while talking loudly and pointing at the book. Most everything she suggested causes more issues.
She insisted I needed to take probiotics on an empty stomach, which is a big vomiting nope. So she raised her voice, almost yelling, “Then you’re not taking the right ones! They shouldn’t make you feel sick! You need these probiotics,” madly pointing to something in the book that cost a fortune.
I was not prepared for this type of interaction, so I wasn’t sure how to react. Everything took me by surprise. Was she always like this, or is something wrong with her, also? Was she trying to be helpful or just sell something, because business is slow and she’s out of the product she advertised? Now a headache was adding to the rest of my daily issues.
When I started naming all of my diagnoses so far, her eyes widened. Then she flipped through the book, looking up conditions and matching what I “should be taking” for it, most of which are bullshit claims or I simply can’t take. About this time is when I realized this was a one-sided conversation.
She wasn’t listening to me at all, because she had the solutions to all of my problems she knew absolutely nothing about. When she repeated information I had just given her as her own knowledge, I assumed I was dealing with a complete lunatic.
Then she said…
“You keep saying no to everything! It’s you! It’s your mindset!”
Oh. Fuck. YOU. Pyscho. Bitch.
I barely had enough energy to walk back to my car.
I will never step foot in that store again!!
Free The Burden 
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