Understanding...

 

Things in my life have been challenging for so long, I'm almost always just on the edge of losing it.  It's less about losing my temper & more about having a mini to massive meltdown.  I can maintain some level of facade if things are going OK, but I don't have much left to deal with anything going sideways.

In the past, when I've talked to people about my family they don't get it.  They don't understand how someone could fall so deeply into being drunk or addicted.  They can't fathom just leaving things behind.  They don't see how these people could just explode & leave chaos in their wake. 

The thing is, I do.  I do see how it happened.  I don't agree or accept it, but I understand it.  I can see very well how easy it would be to just let go & dive into oblivion.  To just go out the door & never return.   I can picture everything that my parents did & how they got there.  I've done my best, when I could to avoid their paths, it hasn't always worked.  Sometimes their ways would've been so much easier, at least for a while.

This is why I don't buy the sympathy & empathy bit.  Too many people can't wrap their heads around people like my family.  So much for their alleged empathy.  My parents were very broken people.  It doesn't excuse what they did, but it explains a lot.  They were broken by people before them, like their parents.   The cycle goes on, until sometime steps out.  Stepping out of a thing like isn't easy & often not successful.

You can't have empathy or sympathy for something you can't relate to.  To do either requires an understanding most people don't have.  In my case, I hope they never have.  I don't ask for your sympathy.  It'd be nice if you could be more understanding, compassionate & kind.  But I have no need for you sympathy or empathy.  Those things are nice, but being nice is cheap.  Being kind can be hard & costly.

Take care.

Cya...

Fixed & Feeling...

 

OK, the AC is fixed.  It was a little pricey, but that was expected.  That's less on our plates, especially since it's supposed to get hot this weekend.  Yay for good repairmen. 

Talking about feelings seems to be a rage & has been for a while.  I call BS on a lot of these conversations.  Everyone has feelings, emotions & issues.  It doesn't mean we all share those same experiences.  

People like to talk about empathy & sympathy.  I don't think most people actually get those concepts.   Sympathy is understanding what someone is going though due having undergone something similar.  Empathy is the act of feeling someone else's experience.

When I was younger, when life & myself were much more chaotic, there were times I'd get very uncomfortable.  I'm slightly claustrophobic.  It's not about small places, it's about feeling trapped or constrained.  Sometimes when if I was having an off day & would be at a packed mall or store, I'd get anxious, even fractious. 

I've had people tell me it was due to me picking up on other people & their energies.  They were endowing me with empathy.  It wasn't empathy, it was bad math.   It was my weird reaction to small places & feeling like a trapped pinball with limited options on where to bounce.  Of course, when I got to a less congested area I felt less apprehensive.  It was bad math flow issues & my reactions.  It wasn't my ability to feel the energies of other people.

My roomie is going through a significant loss & I can try to be supportive.  However, I can't empathize or really sympathize.  I've never gone through something like this & have no real experience.  I could sympathize with her frustration over the AC issue or the worry it wouldn't get fixed before the heat set in.  I had & was experiencing the same.  But due to my life, I'm ignorant of the matters she's going through at this time.   

There's nothing wrong with not being able to sympathize with something.  You can still try to be supportive.  When I was just starting out on HIV meds, I had a bad reaction to a med & it left me utterly exhausted & so weak I could barely walk into the doctor's office.  My roomie had a serious health issue a while back that put her in a similar condition.   Later, she told me that until that point, she had never truly understood what I was going through or what that level of exhaustion was truly like.  Before she was trying to be supportive, unfortunately later, she could sympathize.  

Being supportive takes your willingness to be there.   Sympathy requires experience.  Empathy is a fantasy, super power or some person's need to interject themselves in another's situation or trauma.  They aren't feeling the other's experience, they're trying to highjack it.  They're trying to be relevant.  Support is being caring.  Sympathy is having knowledge.  Empathy as it is defined now, is narcissistic, manipulative crap.

Cya

Conflicted...

We often have celebrities or at least semi-famous people announcing their whatevers.  They tell us they're gay, they're +, they're trans, they're this, they're that, etc...  Why am I conflicted?

When these shining star types announce something like this it acts like a lightning rod on these hot-button topics.   Oh, Mr/Miss Jenner is trans & transitioning.  Oh this singer is gay or that poet is +.  I get what's going on.  They've made themselves a poster child for their whatever.   But why?  Have they actually done it to help awareness?  Have they done it to boost they're image & ratings?  Is it both or something else?  Does it matter?

I think what matters more,  is why do everyday people even care?  I get it if you personally are part of this celebrity's whatever.  If you're gay, + or whatever, it might help having someone out there you know is going through the same thing as you.  I get that.  But those famous people aren't going through the same thing as you.  They really aren't.  

I follow a Facebook page dedicated to Lyme.   Its a very difficult disease to treat since most doctors don't want to recognize Chronic Lyme & insurers won't cover it.  Most people who develop Chronic Lyme have to go without treatment.  They can't travel the literal thousands of miles it may take to find a doctor willing to risk treating them.  They can't afford the tens of thousands of dollars treatment will cost.  So they suffer.  

That isn't the case for rich/famous folks.  The Lyme page showed a month's worth of meds for Avril Lavigne who suffers from the ailment.  It an amazing amount of drugs covering half a dining room table.  But she can afford to travel to these places & get those treatments.  Am I condemning her?  Not at all, she's got to do what she can for herself.  But, that proves when the rich & famous have a condition, its nothing like when a poor, unknown has it.

Most people really don't care about anything that isn't present in their lives.  Maybe they just don't have the motivation, information or the energy.  A lot of people act removed from everyday issues of other people until they come closer to home.  Oh, I got into Cancer runs because my mother had cancer.  I got active in crisis line after I knew someone who  _____.  I finally got tested for HIV after someone I met told me they were +.

It doesn't always take a direct exposure to motivate us.  Some people feel prompted to act when a celebrity they follow admits their whatever.  Brenner & Cox are pushing trans issues into the lime light.  At least annually some artist announces their HIV status.  We find out some tragic story behind an actor.  Then we're amped & ready to do something, for at least the next week or so.

Why is it we can feel this pseudo-empathy for people we don't even know, but can't feel anything about those suffering in our own backyards?  What of the homeless you see everyday?  What of the abandoned animals?  What of the elderly with no one to help?  Where's all that F'ing empathy then!?

I get that these people coming forward with their fame can promote awareness.  I do.  But all that does is tell the rest of us what you really think.   Maybe if we'd been rich or famous, we could've gotten better treatment.  Maybe someone would've gave a damn.  I know, nothing new there.   Time to face it people, you don't really care, you're just following whatever's trending.

None of this is ever going to change.  Not until people can care about a subject they have no direct interaction with in their lives.  It doesn't matter if its abuse, disease, addiction, discrimination or whatever.  Until we can find it in ourselves to care for those we can't directly relate to, then this lack of empathy will continue.  I don't have high hopes for us.

Not saying I'm any better.  But, this is why I'm conflicted about celebrities announcing their whatevers.   I wish these people well with their issues.  But what about everyone whose stories we'll never hear.  Are they less important, because they weren't known by more people?

Cya...