Edit: As was rightly pointed out to me by a typically cooler-headed friend, this woman may have just been trying to make a joke and had it come out really awkward. I’m still pissed – but she’s got a good point.

So my next door neighbor just attacked me, baby boomer female social violence style. I was out harvesting oregano. Her roommate/partner/don’t know came out, introduced herself, asked my name. “Oh, like Princess Diana.”

I fucking hate being compared to a princess. Princesses get traded for real estate. I do NOT get traded for real estate, under any circumstances.

“Or like Wonder Woman.” I smile and go back to work. Besides, most people get confused by the goddess reference.

The driver – the one I’ve seen more – pulls up beside me.¹ “You better be careful because Princess Diana’s real name was Princess Diarrhea.”

Be careful of what, exactly? Is she threatening to call me Princess Diarrhea? What behavior have I exhibited to cause her to use such mean-spirited bullying on me out of nowhere? Getting rid of furniture in my house that didn’t belong to her?

This is, point for point, female social violence. By insulting me she was trying to establish herself as dominant. Because now I have reason to be afraid of her – and if I’m afraid of her, the typical reasoning follows that I’ll be more likely to cater to whatever demands she might make.

She has no idea the kind of crap people like her – or more skilled than her – have put me through.

All I said at the time was, “That’s unfortunate.” As my sweetie has rightly pointed out, confrontation might lead to escalation – especially if she’s narcissistic enough to make it all about winning and not about living peaceably.

It was a shit thing to say. There is no universe in which it would be considered harmless teasing. And now I know she’s absolutely NOT to be trusted.

1. Last week she gave me a lecture about how the rabbits in the yard “need to live to,” as though I hadn’t said at all, “I’m just trying to plan my garden so I can co-exist with the bunnies.” It was patronizing and bordered on insulting, but I dismissed it as self-righteous pseudo-spirituality I’ve seen often enough to recognize as harmless. [↩]

Chiropractors used to get a really bad rap. Now that rap goes almost wholly to naturopaths. Some of the bad rap for naturopaths is quite justified; just as allopathy (mainstream medicine) is much too segmented a system, naturopathy seems like a place where the good doctors all too often confuse their egos with their purpose.

This has to have taken the heat off of chiropractors. Still, childhood dinner table talk still rang in my head about how chiropractors were “the original quacks.”  Just as with every other practitioner I’ve seen, I marched (or in this case) limped on, right over top of my skepticism.

They sent me to the intern. I’m not sure why – for some reason practices like to hand me off to the person still learning. The man who greeted me messed up on my name. He probably played football or rugby at some point. His eyes were flat, brown – the dead look of either the dull-witted or the abuse survivor. I guessed dull-witted, prejudiced by the foul up with my name.

English: Sciatic nerve (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He was not dull witted, and he rapidly figured out from helping me move my body in new ways that I am much more than I appear as well. The years of isolation moves from bellydance built up. My hips were off  alignment- something a masseuse had commented on years before. The reason I suddenly went from sprain to shin splints with no recognizable injury was because multiple swollen muscles pinched on the sciatic nerve – leaving me in agony for the week prior to seeing him.

Andrew Weil would have a field day with this. For too many years, I ignored a literal pain in my ass – and then the pain incapacitated me. Given the number of times ignoring the metaphorical version has bitten me in the butt…

A pop and click of my hips adjusted me enough that I could walk several more steps before pain kicked in. After a few rides up and down the hydraulic chiropractic table (he said he’d only ever seen kids have as much fun with it as I did) he sent in a masseuse who worked on my posterior with her hands and an ultrasound machine to break up years of scar tissue, all for melting into my bloodstream.

My injury was explained, along with the reasoning behind the treatment. I had to reevaluate the man who got my name wrong. I also realized that he saw my body differently from every medical practitioner that had seen me prior. He didn’t see BMI. He saw muscles, skeleton, and a history of over-exercise that almost no one would guess from looking at me. Two friends mentioned that they saw chiropractors instead of GPs in early childhood. Now I’m thinking about it. Now I want to see where this course of treatment might go.

I have to go back- five more visits. But with no medicine, and very little pain beyond what I was already in, I was put in much, much better shape. I have to do stretches every hour, and ice my rear every hour. I’m able to walk for longer periods, although standing is still difficult.

I couldn’t stand for all of it, but I got through the setup of the Rose Cross this afternoon. I haven’t taken any painkillers, not even Tylenol, in 24 hours.

Mike is worried about the cost – justifiably. I can’t go back for the visits until we know what our insurance plans to cover. I’m pretty sure that 6 visits is their standard, what insurance is prepared to cover. No idea what the coverage is on an ultrasound massage.

So while I tell people I almost broke my ass, it’s more like I simply ignored too many pains in my butt.

Related articles

• The sciatic nerve
• Can We Please Stop Using the Term “Butthurt”?
• On ‘Butthurt’

Diana at some Parisian Cafe (Photo credit: magickalrealism)

Don’t call me Diane. It’s a sure way to piss me off. My name is not fucking Diane. It’s Diana. Diane- UH. I’m not sure what tweaks me more – calling me Diane, or pronouncing my last name, “Rajchel” like Rochelle, or Ra-chelle. A nurse tried that once. “But it sounds so much fancier,” she said. I gave her a death glare. She added five pounds to the weight she wrote on my chart, then told the doctor to call me Diane.

My last name is pronounced Rachel – Ray-chell, like the first name. Don’t change my fucking name. You do not get that privilege.

Over the course of my life I’ve been called “D.J” (my middle name is rather banal), “Di,” “Denny” and of course “Diana.” This list does not include various epithets, deserved and not. DJ dropped off early in elementary school. Di found its way to me later on in high school – with no invitation to do so, people simply began calling me “Di.”

In college, the same pattern continued. The introduction might be “Diana” but some subconscious pulse led people to calling me “Di” by the end of the first conversation.

When I converted to Wicca, the name Diana posed a new problem. Changing to a magical name is a common practice among Wiccans. While frowned on in most traditions, some people do assume the names of deities from various ancient Pagan pantheons. Diana is a name of particular significance in the practice. Not only does the Roman Diana have considerable influence as a moon goddess, her later incarnation in Italian witchcraft tradition as the mother Goddess that issues the witch’s savior Aradia makes the name especially loaded.

Artemis with a hind, better known as “Diana of Versailles”. Marble, Roman artwork, Imperial Era (1st-2nd centuries CE). Found in Italy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Even so, I find the practice of name changing silly, especially since I do not feel the pressures that lead to nom de plumes. The idea of taking on a Craft name makes me feel as ridiculous and out of place as wearing robes at a ritual. I see myself as plenty magical without having to shift personas, thank you.

I have a strategy to handle this. I introduce myself at rituals with my name, and add, “Diana is a given name – not an affectation.”

Adulthood makes us much more conscious of names. For some, it’s one of the responsibilities, nay, dangers of parenthood. Give a child a weak name and there are consequences unfair and undeniable to follow. But we also become more conscious of our own names, how that situates us and what power that gives us. Our own names, names we assume or choose, give us social position, strength, a means to send subtle pulses aligning us with domination or submission.

A man I once knew gave considerable thought to my name. Sometimes to him I was Di. Sometimes I was Diana. At times I got the impression he thought of me as two distinct women. Years later, when a Myers-Briggs test readministered three times revealed me as so precisely between introvert and extrovert that no framework existed for me, I thought of him. I wondered how the results might support his thesis.

He never fully expressed what he thought the differences were, but he would comment to me about them from his pool of impressions. If I did something that I later shared with him – drag raced a total stranger, or maybe licked a window after losing a bet, performed a silhouette dance for a peeping neighbor – he would turn to me and say, “That’s what makes you a Di.”

I even had two sets of metaphorical parents. Di is the love child of Miss Piggy and Animal. Diana is the product of Emily Gilmore and Stanley Kowalski.

Lately, it seems like more people are giving thought to what makes me a Diana. It seems strange to me, to consider another person’s name. When I meet someone I never think about the name or examine how it fits the frame of the being before me. It is a name, no more impressing me than a shirt or a pair of shoes. But the people I meet do think about the name and the person before them. Several times over the past year, when I have introduced myself, the person I just met responds with a half-dazzled, “Diana? That name really suits you.”

I never ask why. I am Miss Piggy and Animal, Emily Gilmore and Stanley Kowalski. I am a spectrum – organization with explosions of silliness, fluxxus art and full knowledge of traditional table settings. I will always be a journalist and a priestess, well-mannered and foul-mouthed, and for some reason, both Di and Diana.

Related articles

• The Tale of Aradia, Daughter of Diana and Lucifer
• Deity of the Day for November 21 – Diana