I am typing this on my laptop because the tablet has decided to take a vacation today. Hopefully, this is not the next thing to go wrong.
Yesterday. To follow the Beatles theme, let’s just call this post “Yesterday”. But yesterday was not a day to look back on wistfully. It was pretty frustrating.
Like I said, I have great support. My Saturday morning ride to Zumba took me to class – Thank you! – and I noticed one of the ‘girls’ hadn’t been there in a few weeks, still not there. I knew she has been having health problems and sure enough, that was the reason my driver gave me for this girl’s continued absence.
It made me sad. Not just because she is having problems but also because the last time I saw her and asked how she was, this girl had refused to tell me. She said I had enough problems of my own and would not lean on me for hers.
I cannot speak for everyone who has AMD, but for me, AMD has not taken me out of the human race. I do care when friends and acquaintances are having problems and I do want to lend any sort of hand that I can. Sympathy is one thing but when it goes across the line to pity, I have a problem with it. I know that this girl was only trying to lessen my burden but sometimes we lessen our burdens by taking some of the burdens from someone else. I feel I need to be given the opportunity to CARE. How about you?
Sympathy is one thing but when it goes across the line to pity, I have a problem with it.
Being the educator I am at heart, I’m just going to add a little DBT here and finish the rest of my miserable, awful, no-good day venting in the next post. If you are struggling with your vision as I do without the reader, you prefer short posts and articles to read. Too much is too much, yes?
Back on track, DBT concepts here. I think that this situation may highlight the ACCEPTS skills. I see contributing (the first ‘c’ in ACCEPTS). We sometimes have to weather a crisis by getting out of our own problems and helping someone else. It gets the focus off of us. It gets us back into the human race and allows us to flex our compassion muscles instead of our self-pity ones.
We sometimes have to weather a crisis by getting out of our own problems and helping someone else.
The other ACCEPTS skill I see here is comparison (the second ‘c’). It really is true that misery loves company and people like to see someone who is worse off than they are (OK, so I am not always Little Miss Compassion). This girl is not able to take Zumba. I can! She is in physical pain. I am not. It could be worse.
It really is true that misery loves company and people like to see someone who is worse off than they are.
That is probably not the best note to end my plea for others to allow me to be compassionate towards them, but I suspect you get the point.
Kid glove handling not required here. Let me do the caregiving and support I can and was used to doing before my vision loss. Enough said.
Written March 2016. Updated September 2018.