Tales From the Crib | Riding the BC Roller Coaster

*****

” . . . I hated this trite platitude people shot out when they were uncomfortable with another person’s mourning. . . .”

I run into this a lot in the context of having cancer. People say stupid things trying to get Me to be positive because They are uncomfortable. Newsflash – My Cancer is Not about how you feel, and if I’m having a bad day with it (totally justifiable and permissible because having cancer sucks!) get over Yourself about me not being happy about having cancer.

” . . . Why was it impossible or people to accept that humans had room for completely conflicting emotions, and one did not detract from the other in the slightest?. . . .”

Now, I don’t know if this makes perfect sense to me because I’m a Gemini, or if all people feel that way sometimes, but um – duh!

” . . . I understand that when someone says, “Oh, don’t feel sad,” they really are trying to help. But telling me not to feel what I’m already feeling is not at all helpful.”

In fact, being told that one’s reality is not true is one of the truly crazy-making things someone can do to another.

” . . . I always hated when Aunt Rita completely negated my feelings by telling me how much worse off she was at my age. . . .”

Yeah, I think this one’s related to my first quote (and reaction thereto) from this book. It amazes me how often my experiences are discounted by people saying “someone else has it worse.” Well, yes, I’m absolutely sure someone does. But I wasn’t talking about them. I was talking about me. Really, what does someone else’s experiences have to do with my current one. I shouldn’t be less than perfectly-ecstatic at all times because someone else is going through something You decide to judge as worse? By that measure whoever you hold up to me doesn’t get to feel badly either because someone certainly has it worse than them. So does one person in the whole world have the right to be less than perfectly ecstatic? Who is that person? Who gets to decide who that is?

Oh, and by the same token, if someone else has it ‘worse’ than me, then certainly someone else also has it better. Hell, I can name a dozen off the top of my head. For christ’s sake, some days I could look at Anybody who doesn’t have cancer and say they have it better than me. So, by that token, please take Your discomfort out of my realm of being – compared to those who have it ‘better,’ I have a perfect right to be less than completely-ecstatic.

Yeah, this one instantly and pretty much completely pisses me off.

” . . . For the rest of the weekend, we quietly walked around Ann Arbor taking inventory of what was old and what was new. What had changed and what had stayed the same. Very few things were in just one column, least of all us. . . .”

There’s that simultaneous dichotomy again, which speaks to me so.