Illusions

[cjsmith]

Me: My feet hurt.
Somebody Else: It might go away. Any day now it could vanish just the way it came.

That still makes me angry, but y'know what? I can also see the flip side to it, a little bit.

Yes, it would still be mindbogglingly stupid for me to plan my life around the hope that my feet will suddenly heal. Therein lies a recipe for putting myself "on hold" until my grave, waiting until I win the (medical) lottery instead of living now.

Yes, it's still mindbogglingly insensitive of Somebody Else to pretend that this is a temporary problem and thus hugely, quantitatively and qualitatively, easier to deal with than what I am actually facing.

Yes, I still feel like I'm not heard.

Yes, I still feel like I'm being called a liar, and yes, I still hate being called a liar.

But y'know what? Somebody Else might really kinda need their illusions. Denial can be a gift. I can choose to give the gift of not trying to burst their bubble.

The day will come when I'm sufficiently less angry that I can give that gift.

Comments

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Somebody Else: It might go away. Any day now it could vanish just the way it came.

Oy. Yeah, I understand being angry at that. My first reaction upon reading it was to wonder if this person was aware of your history of dealing with it or just learning of it.

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

*nod*

I get that way when someone thinks that asthma is no big deal for me.

Um, yeah.

I'll be right behind you with the Bat 'O Clue.

[zpdiduda.livejournal.com]

I would abandon the Clue Bat here -- too subtle -- in favor of smacking Someone upside the head with a dead trout.

[sharya.livejournal.com]

I think you probably hit the nail right on the head there. Not knowing to whom you are referring, Somebody Else really might need the illusions. When I worked in the rehab centre, there were an amazing number of people that lived in this world of "but maybe" and "what if". Any normal person could tell that "maybe" and "what if" were a long shot akin to winning the lottery, but these people had so little in the way of coping skills, that this faint hope was what got them through the day.

It seriously complicated their rehab, let me tell you!

But yes, you said it right. It's more a statement of their ability to handle things than it's a statement about their opinion of you.

[redgrrl.livejournal.com]

Sort of related, but hopefully not offensive to you -- have you seen the documentary "Murderball"? The attitude of the main character about the injury that put him in a wheelchair was "Fuck it -- I'm going to find a way to do what I want to do." It was kind of a cool antidote to the usual saintly attitudes some seem to expect from someone who has suffered a physical limitation -- especially when one of his buddies says on camera that the guy was an asshole before the accident, and hasn't changed since. :)

Anyway, thought the movie might be useful in at least vicariously living through that attitude or escaping the feelings of helplessness or hopelessness.