#Blessed, #Cursed

My sister thinks she is “a lucky girl” because someone came in to pick up and give order to the mess in her house while she was on vacation.

She is, in the parlance of social media, #Blessed, living in the grace of the universe.

What does this mean for people who don’t get such services, such benefits, for the ones of us who are ignored, betrayed, and damaged by what we get?

Are we #Cursed?

God didn’t come and give structure & accessibility to the dump that was my sister’s house.

I did, even though she is still assuming that her balloon clown boyfriend did because being indebted to me means she has to again see where she has failed me,

It wasn’t a magic blessing.   It was an act of caring, of love, of service, of discipline, of sweat, of pushing past anger and frustration, of doing the right thing beyond pain.   It was an even an act of selfishness, hoping that if I made it easier for her to think and act, taking away the clutter in her house, if not her mind, she would have more resource to consider and act on the needs she committed to resolve for me and for an executors cut of my parent’s estate.

But to her, she is just #Lucky.

The fact that I don’t have such care, such consideration and service, means that I am just #Screwed.  God has favoured her while God has left me to suffer.   The results aren’t about work, they are divine justice.

When people decide that they deserve the #Blessings that they get, they also decide that people without #Blessings must just not deserve them.   They are #Lucky while other people are #Losers.   They are #Entitled and those without #Blessings are just #Godless.

As a queer person, I grew up knowing the deal.   My job was to make sure that normative people were never made uncomfortable by my own deviance.    If I was hurt by the expectations laid onto me, well, didn’t I bring that on to myself by being queer?   Didn’t I deserve what I was getting?

The entitled were entitled and the others were put there to serve them.   Sure, the marginalized didn’t have the #Blessings of the colonizers, but if God hadn’t made them inferior, they wouldn’t be slaves now, would they?

Every person in society pays some price for assimilating.   Transpeople know that because we are often victims of that price, of people acting out their anger and pain against us as they see us mocking the sacrifices they made to be normal.   The homophobic men are the ones who work hardest to deny their own homoerotic desire, a study has shown, internalized denial and rage turned outward at queers.

For people who have never had to do the work of walking queer in this world, this is easy to ignore.  Just assign your benefits to #Luck or #Blessings and you are off the hook for #Responsibility and #Justice.

If you write off your privilege to #Blessings or #Luck, you ignore the work of those who slave away to make things better for you.

If you write off your privilege to #Blessings or #Luck, you easily assume that those who don’t get what you have are just getting what they deserve, that God has forsaken them for a reason, rather than society failing them to maintain comfort and status quo.

My work has been a #Blessing to my family.  How #Lucky they were to get such gifts!

And isn’t it just too bad that I wasn’t as #Lucky or as #Blessed, too?

Post Traumatic Distress

I’m really, really good at fighting.   I keep calm, state my case well, give and take, don’t get snippy and hold my ground strongly.

I’m really, really bad at fighting.   It leaves me all jangled for a long time afterwards, distressed and very upset, taking a huge amount out of me.

I picked up my prescription yesterday after two weeks of not being able to get a fax to my doctor until I finally engaged support who found the number was misrouted in their network.   I had resisted engaging them because I just didn’t want to have to fight with them,

The young clerk at Wal-Mart brought out one box of a medicine that I know I the doctor writes for three boxes worth.

That’s a problem I had last time I got a refill, which ended up with me telling the doctor they were wrong, the doctor having to call the pharmacy and call me,then  a second box languishing under the shelf through two pickups, and a twenty minute drama to try and get it corrected and get issued with the other box.  It was a mess.

I didn’t want it to happen again this time, but the clerk was adamant: the doctor only wrote the script for a thirteen day supply, so that’s what I was getting.   Tough.

She was not happy that I was challenging her authority, because she had orders.   I would have to take it up with the doctor, have to just move on.   She knew.

She also decided that my prescriptions were new and I would have to have a pharmacist consultation.

The pharmacist finally came over and I again stated my case.   She offered to print the prescription for me, something I had asked the clerk to do.

She came back after going to it, and decided that, maybe the way the script was written I had a case.  Then there was a whole dance about returning it and reissuing.  The insuarane company only would allow a 26 day supply, two boxes, but that was 100% better than what the clerk wanted to give me in her wisdom, based on a smock and access to the computer.

I stood my ground and got what I needed, but it has been almost twelve hours now and I am still buzzing and upset about the confrontation, my nights sleep being destroyed.

I have the smarts to stand up gracefully for myself.

I don’t have the emotional resilience to do so without enormous cost, without distress and pain.   I have no support system to soothe and replenish me, to calm and affirm me, so I am left raw and ragged.

This is not a good thing in a world where everyday confrontation is just part of the deal.   It means I avoid conflict, which creates more and bigger problems that also nag at me, tear at me, making me even more tender before going into the next fight.

Avoiding conflict because of the emotional cost is a bad, bad thing.  It’s hard, though, to explain the cost to me when they see me challenged, because I appear calm and focused under fire, doing the work.

I fought for my parents all the time, especially during the last eighteen months of their life when they were always and intensely in the medical system.

I never discharged all the distress I saved up during that time, though, never discharged all the distress from a lifetime of taking care of dear, frustrating, Aspergers parents.

“You spoke for your mother.  You spoke for me.  Now you have to speak up for yourself,” my father repeated to me in the last two weeks of his life.

I know that I need to engage the everyday battles of life, standing up for myself with micro petty bureaucrats like those who think they have power because Walmart gave them a smock.

But the cost, the cost, the cost, the cost, the cost.

Avoiding battles just gives me more pain, more tension, more fatigue, more cost.

But I am really, really bad at fighting for myself.