The Stripper Goes Psycho

In the post before this one, I wrote about a stripper an attorney was going to represent in a personal injury case. They sent me to see her and I wrote about that encounter.

She seemed nice enough to me at the time, fairly normal, albeit nervous about the whole legal process. She also had a crazy mother, though she, said stripper/client, still appeared 100% together to me.

I do not use the label "stripper" derogatorily. I think we "become" what we "do."
Like... I am an investigator, she is a teacher, he is a plumber, she is a doctor, he is engineer, she is a homemaker, a new mother, widower. We are students, teachers, writers, telephone operators, social workers, garbage men, gardeners, disables or unemployed. We are all labeled as something.
She just happened to be a stripper.

I wrote up her case the evening after we met, got it to the law firm the next day.
The firm immediately went to work on the case.
She seemed so pleasant and so desperate -- a single mom, now with no car, a neck and back injury, we moved faster than most attorneys take just to return a call.

Yet unknown to this normally astute investigator, the mask the stripper wore during our interview hid a certain level of insanity I did not experience until this afternoon.

I dropped something off at the law firm that represents her today. The lobby was full, with the receptionist, an attorney and two paralegals milling about. We all said hello, exchanged the usual investigator/attorney pleasantries and then I went on my way.

I got in my car and turned on the engine, headed down the street when my cell phone rang. I didn't recognize the number, and at first, didn't recognize the voice because it was filled with rage.

I finally figured it out it was the stripper who was screaming right out of the gate. She had loathing and contempt for everyone she had spoken to at the law firm she said. All the people she spoke with there, all the women, were bitches. She used worse words, I'll let you imagine those.

The thing was, the people she was describing were the people I had just spoken to in the law firm lobby when I just stopped by.

I let her vent, let he say everything she wanted, took her all the way to the point where she said she wanted to fire them. I figured once the firm heard about the call she made to me... then I got them to speak to her, they'd be better off firing her.

I calmed her down, convinced her she was losing it a bit, maybe it was the airbag to her head, i said. I persuaded her to let me have one of the principals of the firm call her back and talk to her.

So I called the law firm, described the conversation with their client and suggested the firm call her. I said I think the stripper has issues with women, so maybe a male attorney could call her back. The person at the firm I spoke with said the stripper clients she encountered usually have issues with women because there was so much competitiveness in the stripping industry.

I asked if there was a a male attorney in the office who could call the stripper back.
Turned out all the guys were in trial, the other on vacation. There were two female attorneys in the office. So one of the women, one of those saintly patient types who could talk a suicidal person off a bridge rail, called her back. A half hour later, that attorney called me back.

"We're resigning her case, " she said, "I tried and tried to talk to her. She was belligerent, rude contentious. And quite contemptuous. No matter what I said, she could or would not hear me."

"Good decision," I answered, "you don't need clients like that. I think she's either nuts or on drugs"

"Or both," the attorney said. "We'll send out a letter of resignation tonight. Meantime, if she calls you, feel free to tell her why we resigned her case. Suggest she get some help for that."

"Will do, " I said, surprised they even cared that much to suggest she get help.

I hung up the phone and pulled out of my parking spot. The phone rang again. It was the husband of a very dear friend in her forties who went nuts overnight.
I also blogged about her recently.
Bottom line, today was her second commitment hearing.
One minute she's there, the next she's insane. Poof!
One day she's the best friend you could want and the next... she hates her husband, she thinks her house is bugged, rats live everywhere, she is stalking people, says the birds are talking to her, the FBI wants her. She is destroying things and spending what is left of her inheritance like there is no tomorrow. Because.... for her, there really is... in her sick mind... no tomorrow.

I suspect its pharmaceuticals she is being given. Others think she is just mad. Bottom line, she is locked in a nuthouse again and her brother and her husband, my dear friend, are bereft.

And then there is the man who is cheating on his wife so evidently and compulsively, his wife told me today she is taking him in for brain scan to see if he has a tumor, than a neuro-psych evaluation for 10 hours to see if he has some kind of disease or something that had made him have these affairs.

Now... add all this... all the other people out there losing it... and you begin to think about that thin line between sanity and insanity and if there is any choice at all involved, in crossing it.

I think what tips the scale is drugs or alcohol.
If you are the least bit off and you add the fuel of intoxicants to the fire, then madness or death results. No other options. I write this drinking coffee, not wine. Hemingway was brilliant, but also a drunk who blew his head off. Sylvia Plath was a brilliant woman, yet she stuck her head in the oven. They all used.

Now, annual deaths by prescription drugs outnumber death by auto accidents.
And pharmaceutical TV spots have replaced the tobacco spots banned years ago.
The Meds are controlling our brain chemicals and body, the corporations are buying up our sports complexes, and the media is directing our actions to the delusional thinking -- that "things" cause happiness. Meanwhile, every 45 minutes, someone in American dies in an auto accident involving alcohol or drugs.

Think about the American dream which was hand-fed us... to the point of our own economic collapse.
Who really needs a 5,000 square foot house or a $60,000 car?
Why wear a body swathed in Bling?
Why does everything have to be the latest and greatest?
Why fill our bodies with silicone or poisons because we can't accept ourselves as we are?
Why spend thousands on stuffing our faces, and our houses with "things." toys, technology that fuel our quest for more of nothing?

That's why people drink or use drugs to be happy...
because intoxicants, too, are "things" sold on the open market.
And they are "things" that make you feel better when you don't get happiness from other "things."
It is a vicious, self-defeating cycle.

Perhaps my eyes are opening for the first time.
Or maybe its just my time to see it.
However, tonight I walked in the door and walked directly to this blog to say just what I am saying now.

I think the world is going mad.

And I think it's up to each and everyone of us to hold our ground and not give in the ease of escape through drinking, drugging, cheating, gambling, among many vices. It is never the answer and is almost always the problem.

My head is filled with stories. Hundreds of them. People who have gambled their lives away. Others who have snorted them away. Or rich people who have lost everything because they wanted to own everything. Nothing was ever enough.

Today, if you are reading these words, and you are safe and you are secure, you are rare.
I suggest you give yourself an "attaboy" or "attagirl" for getting this far... in one piece.

Meantime, if someone hurts you and a lawyer chooses to represent you... and pay the costs of the representation out of his pocket.... do not to slap him or her in the face like the stripper did or that attorney will walk away.

Seems in the strip clubs, they teach you "you get more bees with honey."
It works that way in real life too.
Too bad the stripper never learned that... because now its stripper vs. the insurance company.

And who do you think will win that war?