Final Draft
Here's what I'm sending today (much thanks to mscate for her assistance):
I am writing to complain specifically about being demeaned and made to feel I had shoplifted, when my behaviour was the result of my disability. This letter refers to an an incident that occurred on the afternoon of Friday the 14th at the Glendale branch of Woolworths. A copy is ( Read more... )
As for "freezing" while trying to improve it, there may be two factors operating.
First, it's "kinda perfect." When I get to certain stage in writing things, there are really no "improvements" to be made except with relatively large structural changes.
And when I find myself at that stage, which I think of as "gilding the lily", I do a few final scans for spelling, punctuation, and missing and extra words, and off it goes.
More effort going into improvements would have relatively little benefit. So there was perhaps some sort of body response that "kicked in" to say: "no. No more energy to be expended doing this, for the moment." Every "writer" should be so lucky as to have such clear editorial "direction", if so!
Second, writing and revising the letter was a bit like reliving it, I imagine? Words desire to come, and they're resisted, until finally they're not. And when they're written, somehow, "things are better"? At least a bit. But at the time (reliving it writing or talking about it), it may not seem very comfortable (at least for other people, who may be startled, for instance, by sudden unexpected crying).
In my own simple, "childishly" immediate way, "I would have been ALL in the manager's face." Yes... yes... it would have been "something to see." And it would have passed, and made things better in that store for some time, and not only for me. (At least, until my trade passed elsewhere, and even then an effect would have remained.)
But letters like this need to be written, and you did.
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Second, writing and revising the letter was a bit like reliving it, I imagine? Words desire to come, and they're resisted, until finally they're not.
I think that's precisely the case.
In my own simple, "childishly" immediate way, "I would have been ALL in the manager's face." Yes... yes... it would have been "something to see." And it would have passed, and made things better in that store for some time, and not only for me. (At least, until my trade passed elsewhere, and even then an effect would have remained.)
I don't think I could do that. Not sure why, but I couldn't.
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To be perfectly honest, I can plainly recognize that I in fact have in me not only the ability but also the desire to be a bully. At times, that desire is quite strong. And I think that's why I feel "comfortable" thinking about pretty suddenly getting "as loud as I want to be", and not hesitating about the conseqences of shifting and enlarging the ground under a "confrontation." And someone in addition to me may start to feel uncertain and anxious? Our owners' concept of "fairness", which is also nebulous and shifting, somehow seems relevent.
Actually, though, I think I meant to write "ALL in the face of Mister We've-Had-This-Conversation-Before"... and convenient to a place for the PIC or store manager to take the initiative to intervene.
But I really never thought of my "strategy" in this way before, as in fact depending upon more or less, yes, "bullying people."
(And this is important, to me, because as you can appreciate, "reliving" an anxiety-provoking event can have both desirable and undesirable effects. And my "strategy" in a way is "unreflectively" reliving past bullying that I've undergone--without positively and firmly embracing it and reflecting about it as much as can be done...)
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