Interesting Times
You know.
It's always interesting when you have to make decisions for your own good. There are always people who are going to dislike you for it, or who are going to take the decisions you made for yourself as some kind of personal attack. Recently I had to make some. They didn't make all the other people involved happy and I don't blame them for being unhappy and even hurt about the results. Shit, as they say, happens. I let some people down. I wasn't able to keep commitments I wanted to keep. It's not as though I planned it that way and it's not as though I wanted it that way from the beginning. There was no, "omg, I hate you bizatch!!!!11!!!" going on.
I find it sad though that out of all the people involved (a number greater than ten) in very similar decisions in the last month, that only three had a negative and to my mind downright unpleasant reaction to it. It's not like I've made any big secret of my personal situation. In the last month, I've been online very infrequently if not at all, except with a very few individuals who are my "best" online friends if I can use that word for people I've never physically met.
For the record, I am ill. I am not going to get better, I am going to get worse. I am handicapped because of my illness and can expect to become more so as time passes. This is a jail sentence without parole.
As a result, I have had to make choices about how to spend what time and energy I have. From spending hours a day online, I am spending fewer and fewer. From having eight or nine instant messages or browser threads going at any one time, I'm lucky to keep up with three and that's on a good day.
I am prone to headaches, backaches, phantom pain, neuropathy related pain etc. I have muscle spasms and near convulsions which are growing more profound as time passes, requiring an anticonvulsant medication that makes me loopy if not knocking me out altogether. I have little energy. I could go on and on and on, but frankly the catalog of my physical ailments bores the crap out of me, so I'm sure it bores the crap out of other people. I hate spending time feeling sorry for myself.
In addition, I'm well aware I am not the only one with physical problems. I am well aware that I am not the only one with emotional problems. And I am most well aware that I am not the only one with financial problems. Whining about my particular ones ad nauseum seems ridiculous, because whining doesn't make anything better and I'm sure we're all capable of understanding that we all have problems.
Not talking about them doesn't mean some fairy godfather has come along and waved his wand and fixed everything up. It just means I'm choosing not to wail about them any longer, or at least trying not to as best I can.
I made a mistake in believing I would get better. I was hoping for something I have had to reluctantly conclude isn't going to happen. I think that's human. I think that's normal. If you feel misled, well, I'm sorry but if you were, I was misleading myself as well. Ask me who I think is hurt more? It won't be you.
I'm sorry you feel let down, if you do. I think that's human too, and I genuinely regret that.
However, in the choice between what is, after all, only a game and what is in fact what I have to call my life, my life is going to win hands down. You are not entitled to tell me how I should spend the diminishingly limited amount of time I still have at my disposal. If you think you are, well, there's nothing I can do about that except to tell you that you are dead flat wrong.
In the end, frankly, I have better things to do with what time and energy I have remaining to me than trying to please someone else, however much I may truly regret having to step down from a commitment I have made.
For example, today I received a letter saying that I have been turned down for social security and intimating that I am somehow lying or exaggerating my conditions. Lovely. I'd like to invite them to live in my shoes for a week and then say that. I've got to try to gather together letters and proofs and appeal the damned thing. I'd like you to try to live on someone else's charity and $500 a month. That's my real life.
Much love to cherryscott, lonely_streets, cruel_illusion, atanvarne_lj, iamari, dragon_lord, fiercy, and tjournal and thank you for showing me what friendship really is.
<3 to the flist also.
It's always interesting when you have to make decisions for your own good. There are always people who are going to dislike you for it, or who are going to take the decisions you made for yourself as some kind of personal attack. Recently I had to make some. They didn't make all the other people involved happy and I don't blame them for being unhappy and even hurt about the results. Shit, as they say, happens. I let some people down. I wasn't able to keep commitments I wanted to keep. It's not as though I planned it that way and it's not as though I wanted it that way from the beginning. There was no, "omg, I hate you bizatch!!!!11!!!" going on.
I find it sad though that out of all the people involved (a number greater than ten) in very similar decisions in the last month, that only three had a negative and to my mind downright unpleasant reaction to it. It's not like I've made any big secret of my personal situation. In the last month, I've been online very infrequently if not at all, except with a very few individuals who are my "best" online friends if I can use that word for people I've never physically met.
For the record, I am ill. I am not going to get better, I am going to get worse. I am handicapped because of my illness and can expect to become more so as time passes. This is a jail sentence without parole.
As a result, I have had to make choices about how to spend what time and energy I have. From spending hours a day online, I am spending fewer and fewer. From having eight or nine instant messages or browser threads going at any one time, I'm lucky to keep up with three and that's on a good day.
I am prone to headaches, backaches, phantom pain, neuropathy related pain etc. I have muscle spasms and near convulsions which are growing more profound as time passes, requiring an anticonvulsant medication that makes me loopy if not knocking me out altogether. I have little energy. I could go on and on and on, but frankly the catalog of my physical ailments bores the crap out of me, so I'm sure it bores the crap out of other people. I hate spending time feeling sorry for myself.
In addition, I'm well aware I am not the only one with physical problems. I am well aware that I am not the only one with emotional problems. And I am most well aware that I am not the only one with financial problems. Whining about my particular ones ad nauseum seems ridiculous, because whining doesn't make anything better and I'm sure we're all capable of understanding that we all have problems.
Not talking about them doesn't mean some fairy godfather has come along and waved his wand and fixed everything up. It just means I'm choosing not to wail about them any longer, or at least trying not to as best I can.
I made a mistake in believing I would get better. I was hoping for something I have had to reluctantly conclude isn't going to happen. I think that's human. I think that's normal. If you feel misled, well, I'm sorry but if you were, I was misleading myself as well. Ask me who I think is hurt more? It won't be you.
I'm sorry you feel let down, if you do. I think that's human too, and I genuinely regret that.
However, in the choice between what is, after all, only a game and what is in fact what I have to call my life, my life is going to win hands down. You are not entitled to tell me how I should spend the diminishingly limited amount of time I still have at my disposal. If you think you are, well, there's nothing I can do about that except to tell you that you are dead flat wrong.
In the end, frankly, I have better things to do with what time and energy I have remaining to me than trying to please someone else, however much I may truly regret having to step down from a commitment I have made.
For example, today I received a letter saying that I have been turned down for social security and intimating that I am somehow lying or exaggerating my conditions. Lovely. I'd like to invite them to live in my shoes for a week and then say that. I've got to try to gather together letters and proofs and appeal the damned thing. I'd like you to try to live on someone else's charity and $500 a month. That's my real life.
Much love to cherryscott, lonely_streets, cruel_illusion, atanvarne_lj, iamari, dragon_lord, fiercy, and tjournal and thank you for showing me what friendship really is.
<3 to the flist also.