Auntie Jillian, please don't rest in peace yet.
I've reached the conclusion that very few people care about anything or anyone outside their immediate circle of family and friends. Sure, once in awhile something like the Connecticut school shooting happens, and we can all appease our senses of self-righteouness by sitting in front of the TV for a few hours pretending that it's a small world, and what hurts the families in Connecticut hurts us as well, because we're all part of some circle of humanity. We may even go so far as to toss a few dollars in the general directionyof the traged. It's little more than empty words and token contributions to ease our own consciences, though.
I epitomize this mindset as well as does as the next person. I don't have any deep feelings about good and bad things that happen to anyone outside my own cluster of real-life and online friends and family. When something bad happens to a small child, I'm bothered by it, but I don't think I'd be human if I didn't. Any sensationalized situation in the news hits home when I can identify with the victim through some commonality in our respective lives.. On the other hand, all the events the media doesn't sensationalize -- the average person who can't pay his rent, the person who falls off his roof taking down Christmas lights and incurs hospital bills he has no way of paying and a job he can't do for three months, along with an employer who won't give him a desk job until his leg heals and possibly won't even hold his more physically-oriented job until he is able to manage it again, the person who needs a kidney and whose relatives who might be matches couldn't care any less and who is not very high on the the organ recipient list, the person who has both a kidney infection and a horribly infected ingrown toenail and doesn't have enough time off to do anything about it until mid-June, because she also has thyroid eye disease, irritable bowel symdrome, and chronic kidney stones, and those conditions take precedence on her missing work, so she hobbles to her pre-school teaching job each day and tries to smile at the children through her pain, all the while praying that none of the children steps on her toe. I'm not altogether uncaring concerning the plights of these people, but I don't lie awake at night worrying about them.
So why should I think anyone else should care that my twenty-five year-old not-exactly aunt but who functions as such is once more fighting for her life, for about the sixth time in four years? The answer is that I don't expect anyone else to give a rat's rectum about it. We're all in our own insulated worlds, and only my aunta friends and relatives acre, and , truthfully, i don't think some of them care all that much because they're tired of her illnesses. She has cystic fibrosis, so it's one caseof pneumpnia after another, some more serious than others, with an occasional colon or ileum perforation that almost casues her to bleed to death. Some of her own relatives even think they have better things to do than sit around hospitals waiting for my aunt to either get better or die. I will say, because I think my aunt would say it if she could right now, Don't it around the hospital on Jillian's behalf out of obligation, waiting for her to get better, or to finally get it over with and just die. If you have better things to do, go do them. The natire of her illness is that she is going to get sick, sometimes near-fatally, and this is going to continue until she finally succumbs. those of us who care about her hope it won't happen for a long, long time. The rest of you should probably get out of her life and go away.
Some people fall into the immediate circle of concern of many people. It's funny how some people, Internet beings especially, engender sympathy in the part of others. An example in point is "Aunt -----" of the "Mommy Wants ---==" blog. Aunt ----- complains of feeling sad and of having PTSD because her daughter was born with a serious bith defect, beat it, and is now thriving. Aunt ----- also has a mildly autistic son. i believe he's in the Aspergr category, lthough such diagnosis no longer exists in the most recent Never having given birth to a child, healthy or normal, I am not in a position of being as critical as I am going to be, but it won't stop me. The real PTSD comes after losing one baby after another, or even after actually losing one child. The real PTSD comes after having one too many cases of tsukamurella or candida or whatever ravage your body and almost kill you. The real PTSD comes after a big, strong, high school offensive linesman uses two girls to hold you down and beat you up, then tries to rape and/or orally orally sodomize you (which intent wasn't entirely clear, as his assistants undressed me from the waist down, but it appeared to me that he was going for my mouth) but is unable to maintain the state of rigidity required for either, so he kicks your ribs and private parts instead. The real PTSD is what lingers when you don't know if the next person who coughs on you is going to give you your verylast case of pneumonia.
I'm sorry Aunt -----'s child was born with a rare and often fatal birth defect, and I'm happy for her and for the child that the child beat the odds and appears to be thriving. I suppose the child is not out of the woods yet in terms of learning disabilities that may present themselves at a later date, but how many parents and children deal with the effects of learning disabilities every day without others placing metaphorical hands on their brows to detect the presence of illness -- physical or mental -- or coming to their blog daily to inquire as to their well-being. It's time for Aunt ----- to realize that her glass is more than half full, There may be more difficult times for her in the future, but she'll be better qquipped to face them if she buries her own PTSD diagnosis and rejoins the real world. I admit I'm saying this in part because I used to think she was one of the few who cared, but I've since decided that she cares too much for herself to care very much about anyone else. I also realize that if any Aunt -----'sminions find their way here, which is unlikely, I'll probably receive death threats. C'est la vie. No one's going to live forever, anyway, and I might even receive media sensationalism and post-mortem compassion -- not that I would be around to enjoy it.
I'm really just rambling and not saying anything that makes sense, so I probably should shut up before I say more things that incite death threats.
No comments:
Post a Comment