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

[ame-chan.livejournal.com]

Y'know... it's funny. I was just talking to Sorcha (my daughter) about that. I'm considering going back to school and entering a nursing program and you know, I am kind of squicky about blood and guts and needles and "squishy stuff" in general. And she asked about that. My answer to her was, "Well, I think probably everyone is to start - and you learn to deal with it. I don't think anyone really starts out well equipped to deal with needles or poop or bleeding or vomit or squishiness. I think you either deal because it's what you have to deal with to do what you want to do, or you don't, and you don't do that thing."

Sometimes you have to sit down and actually *decide* you aren't going to be a special snowflake about something, even if you really don't like it.

Restrictive diets are really easy to say you won't eat, until you need to eat a restrictive diet. It's easy to be casual about things until eating the WRONG thing will kill you/make you sick/cause you pain, etc. And then? You just have to suck it up. Sure I miss peanut butter toast. Sure I miss sugared pecans in my salad. Guess what? I'd miss breathing more!!

I am with you on the little patience.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you have to sit down and actually *decide* you aren't going to be a special snowflake about something, even if you really don't like it.

Yes.

This.

I know someone who carries on about having a weak stomach and being easily sickened by smells. I used to be that way. And then I wanted to pass college biology. And I got over it.

It's a matter of sucking it up and dealing, which is for me one of the first measures of whether someone is a Grown Up or not.

[ame-chan.livejournal.com]

Sometimes part of that decision not to be a Special Snowflake is really in accepting that, "Yes. This makes me nauseated and gaggy. And I'm going to get past that and deal with it anyway." and not sugarcoat that you don't like it. But not make it a huge drama either. There's a sort of zen mind to it. You say hi to it, acknowledge that it's there, and STFU and deal. I don't much like strong "body" smells. But after 2 kids and several dogs and 4 cats, I just hold my nose and deal. Doesn't mean I don't get gaggy? But I deal.

One thing I discovered about noxious messes - latex gloves help when there is a mess I'm particularly squicky about cleaning up. For some reason, that provides this weird sense of security that really lessens my squick factor, even if there is stench. It won't get "on" me, if that makes sense.