Frustration

[cjsmith]

Do you ever hear someone pontificating -- preaching -- about something that's fairly new to him and old hat to you? Under what circumstances does it or does it not bug you?

I find I can mostly shrug it off when it's about some kind of technical subject. If I know the speaker is a total fool or severely misinformed, then that's just the way it is, with no need for irritation. But I find I can't shrug it off when it's about living with foot pain or staying fit with a disability. Usually the preacher is not permanently disabled, just temporarily injured in some way, and my GOD the things they think are Big News to someone who's dealt with this for years. Sometimes I think the speaker is trying to be helpful; other times it's pretty clear the speaker is trying to chide me for how I handle things. In the latter case I just want to SLAP the person. My kinder side hopes karma doesn't work, because the appropriate end story to that one is a permanent disability with chronic pain.

Clearly my buttons are getting pushed. I wonder when my foot problems will be so firmly an accepted part of me that I don't even have buttons to push any more. In the meantime, I hope I can mostly avoid that kind of person. I don't want to turn rude and bitter.

Comments

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the support! That comment is probably the unintentionally-cruelest thing anybody has ever said to me in my whole life. (Deliberate insults are a whole 'nother category.) I didn't just lose my husband, I lost my whole future ... all our plans and dreams .... I would have given anything to have a few decades of a good life with him before we had to say goodbye instead of having to lose him when we had just started to build a life together!

I was sixteen when my father died, too. I don't really recall any particular comments, but I do remember spending more and more time in my room when people came over instead of being out in the living room like I was supposed to be. So I suspect there were some annoying things said that I just didn't want to deal with any more.

When my mother died the only really horrible comment came from her late husband's daughter. But they strongly disliked each other, so I wasn't terribly surprised. She was probably being intentionally cruel, so that doesn't count as insensitivity, just willful bitchiness.