Even Though It May Seem That Way.....

Beg pardon:  I am about to vent; if you don't care to read, just move along.


If you saw a person in a wheelchair, you wouldn't insist that they run up a flight of steps, would you?  If you saw a person wearing dark glasses and carrying a white cane, you wouldn't ask them to paint your portrait, would you?

It's understandable that if a person has a disability that you can see, you will automatically make an adjustment of your expectations.  Sometimes those adjustments may be a bit off the mark but still you'd mean it kindly, wouldn't you?  And you'd be trying to do the right thing.

But what if a person looks perfectly normal but has a disability that is not immediately apparent?   You might ask them to do something that they can't and you'd undoubtedly be told that it was impossible.  That's fine; the disabled person would be requesting respect.  And you'd give them that, wouldn't you?

See, you're being perfectly reasonable all down the line. 

Now, what if an able person who is fully aware of a disabled person's inabilities coerces (or even forces) that disabled person into doing something that will aggravate the disabling condition?  That is cruel.

That's the position I was in recently.  
And, for the record, I'm NOT the able person; I'm the other.

My family always taught me to step up and do what had to be done, no matter how hard it was.  I was expected to put forth more effort than anyone else.  It was, in fact, demanded of me.  I can hear my parents yet in the back of my mind, snapping their fingers and telling me tersely to "pony up!"  To this day, it is my knee jerk reaction to do what cannot be done, never to give up, never to give in, to destroy myself if necessary in getting the job done whenever someone else expresses a need.  I pony up until it kills me.

Yeah, life isn't fair.  I'm sick right now with a fever and suffering the nasty symptoms of MyalgicEncephalomyleitis.  And this is due, in part, to my inability to say no or to give into my own exhaustion (yes, I'm owning that).  And it is due in large part to someone else's failure to recall that I cannot merely find a lever to move the planet all by myself.  These are people who have known for years that the stability of my health wobbles on a very thin thread indeed.  But I don't think they've ever believed it because I look like I'm perfectly healthy when I'm really very much not.

Atypically, I am furious--absolutely incandescent at the unkindness, the thoughtlessness, the lack of respect that put me in a position that made me unable to say "no, I cannot help you."  I'm not a person who gets angry often (and almost never on my own behalf) but I am enraged.  To be fair, I am as angry at myself as I am at others.  So, I am venting here.

I'll get over it.  But I'll have to spend rather a lot of time resting until I do.  This is time I cannot afford to lose because I have much to do and the Christmas listing season is in full swing, plus I need to have another yard sale to make money to pay the bills.  Hopefully I can get past the pneumonia that is threatening to erupt.  In any case, I feel utterly helly.

It's hard, so hard, to do everything alone.  But it's much, much harder to be misunderstood.  I'm not lazy.  I'm ill.  I wish I were not.  I wish I could be like other folks.  I can't.   This condition is genetic.  I do what I can to keep things under control.  And I don't remind people all the time that I can't do things (although maybe sometimes I should).  I'm tired of being brave and toughing stuff out.

I'm just tired.
Life is still good.
.....but not so very nice right now.