CJ the Curmudgeon

[cjsmith]

I'm beginning to lose patience with a certain category of people. Oh, I'm not proactively rude, but I no longer accept some pronouncements unquestioned.

"I can't swallow pills," someone said to me once. Well, I carefully didn't say, you better not live to be much older. (NB: This person had no dramatic anatomical weirdness. She could swallow food and drink.) Seriously, who lives to middle age without learning to cope with swallowing pills? Heck, who gets to COLLEGE age and hasn't learned to cope with that one? I felt like she was bragging that she was still five years old inside, and a spoiled five at that.

I remember a recent comment in a friend's journal about not dealing well with needles. I can relate. I used to faint -- no kidding here, FAINT -- at the sight of needles in use. I now inject myself daily. I don't LIKE it, don't get me wrong, but I DO it. There are certain special-snowflake attributes that I simply no longer have the luxury of keeping.

"Restrictive diets don't work for me," said a coworker of mine at lunch today, referring to what I don't eat on the Lyme/antibiotic/yeast-control diet. And this time, I spoke up.

"They don't?" I said. Like you're so special, I didn't say, that if you got this disease you would somehow be above managing it. "What if you knew that eating ice cream would make you pretty sick?" I asked instead. "What if you knew it would land you in the hospital, what then? Where's the line?"

He readily rephrased, saying he has no strong motivation to lose weight; I agreed that I could totally understand that, and we rambled off on side topics.

I think I'm beginning to see that in some cases, "special snowflake" translates to "I've been very lucky in certain ways and I take it for granted." I don't have nearly as much patience with that as I once had.

Bad me, for having little patience? Maybe, but y'know, I'm not at all sure of that.

Comments

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

Right there with you.

For bonus fun points, let me observe. Some of these people who "can't" get out of bed on time for work, stay on task through a workday, deliver work product, or whatever... will turn to me and say, but that's different for YOU. You're Strong. You've got Emotional Resources. You've got Education. You can do things.

And I have to resist the urge to call bullshit. Yes, I am strong. I got that way by working and working for years. I'm still working. I will be working till I die, that's just how life is. But the special princes and princesses... don't understand that just because I don't talk about it ad nauseum doesn't mean there aren't days I come home and cry I'm so tired and wrung out. It's part of doing the work, and until I get another gig, I gotta do the work I've got.

Some people use my strength as a way to validate their weakness. It's a tricky game, and I refuse to play anymore. You want to be all oh and ah about how strong I am? That's fine. And I will tell you how to Get Strong yourself. And that's it. I'm not going to let people use the oooh, it's different for you because you're Strong to con me into doing more than my share of the work. Not any more.

It's tangential to your post, but I am starting to relate this to people and self care. Perhaps we can discuss further if you have time and bandwith?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ooo, I'm short-triggered on "..."can't" get out of bed on time for work" myself. I did note that the person who said that the most to me had never missed an airline flight. You can't wheedle with an airplane, you see. There was a big benefit to that particular "can't": no need to take responsibility for basically being quite rude to social contacts and to coworkers.

Now I know there are people who really struggle with sleep issues. This guy was even one of them. But when you can every time if it benefits YOU, and you can't if it involves keeping your word to SOMEONE ELSE, perhaps it's time to admit the word isn't quite "can't".

[airporter.livejournal.com]

How about "can't get out of bed on the Tuesday after a long weekend?"

That one's got me by the short hairs (my payroll clerk) a couple of times recently.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I *can* get up on time for an airplane flight at 7am. I then feel like shit all day. I also *can* get up on time for a once in a while early work meeting. I *can't* sustain that schedule on an ongoing every-day basis - I need at least a couple of days a week to recover from it. Fortunately I have myself a job that has flexible hours so I'm not inconveniencing anyone. But I don't think comparing a once-in-a-while thing like a plane flight to an ongoing-everyday thing like a job is really a fair comparison. Now if that person were able to get up on time for a morning aerobics class (or something else they enjoyed) THEN there would be a fair comparison!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh, believe me, this guy was a piece of work. He'd be the one to set the time for (say) a group hike, and then he would be massively late for it. If the hike was at 2pm he'd claim he couldn't wake up in time. He could go without sleep for *anything* fun... as long as he hadn't told someone else he would be there. If he had, folks were lucky to see him two to three hours late. I interpreted it as one big power trip, and he got away with it for a surprisingly long time.