At some point, it became wildly obvious that my nursing career was one of the access points through which members of the previously mentioned group, MIMIC-OPPS, targeted me. (Btw, I am going to use the word targeted despite its affiliation with mental illness, specifically, persecutory delusions.) In fact, the very overtness of it should’ve been the biggest red flag. Although neither they nor I recognized my oppressors as an organized cult at the time, the EEOC didn’t disagree. And after they reviewed my case, I was issued a right to sue letter.
I can’t tell you anymore about that, though, because in the end, I took hush money.
In retrospect, it seems like NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) were a central theme within my nursing career. And that left me feeling like I had sold my voice, my birthright. Although, I didn’t want to tell patients’ secrets, in my self-righteousness and victimhood, I did want to tell industry secrets. I’m talking about ones like how psych wards, now called behavioral health units, and crisis hotlines really work.
I wanted to talk about how HIPPA benefits the industry by keeping the left hand from knowing what the right hand is doing. I wanted to talk about how whistleblowers are often just snitches who get stitches and how a non-retaliatory workplace is too often just an illusion. I wanted to talk about how complex the process really is when it comes to suing an employer. But of course, the first rule of fight club is we do not talk about fight club.
After I believed I bad traded away my destiny of power, my voice, I felt like I better understood the Bible story where Esau was conned out of his birthright by Jacob, his smooth twin brother.
Jacob was more of an indoors kind of guy while his brother was an outdoorsman. One day, Esau came home from a hunting excursion feeling faint and famished. Jacob, an opportunist, just so happened to be cooking lentil stew. When Esau asked for some, Jacob would only agree to let him eat if he promised to relinquish his birthright in exchange.
And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright -Genesis 25:32-34. Like Esau, I thought what good was my birthright, my voice, if the alternative was for me and my children to starve? So I signed every required NDA in exchange for my bowl of lentils, my paycheck.
Destiny swapping is a term I first heard when I began studying theories and concepts within the new age movement. I immediately thought of Jacob who swapped his destiny for Esau’s. When it came time for Esau to confirm his destiny by accepting his birthright through his father’s blessing, Jacob intercepted and received it for himself. The twins’ father, Isaac, was blind and couldn’t see whether it was Jacob or Esau who came to be blessed. It was the boys’ mother, Rebekah, who came up with a plan to ensure that her favorite son, Jacob, was the recipient.
Initially, Jacob hadn’t been too sure if they could pull off this stunt. And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man: My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing -Genesis 27:11-12. But his mother had a solution for that too. While Esau was outside hunting, she sat Jacob down and put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth of his neck -Genesis 27:16b.
Like in the video above, my pattern recognition noticed that aspiring swappers often practice mimicry.
They mirror the one whose destiny they wish to take. Jacob did this too. The Scripture reads, And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau’s hands: so he blessed him -Genesis 27:21-23.