Because I’m now in desperate need of further negativity in my life!?! I continue to encounter prejudice in abundance, within quite a few different cities, in 3 states: Washington, Oregon & now California (I’m devoted to the west coast, clearly!) which I have lived in post TBI. A prolific number of people continue to display prejudice (hence me writing of it, repeatedly- boring!). I feel it important for readers to know of this & writing this blog, is a means of therapy for me. This routine truth continues to surprise & resultantly, sadden me.
The reality that prejudice people exist in our society, is no surprise. Experiencing it, however, is entirely different than knowing of it, theoretically. The immensity of prejudice I’ve encountered & am still presently encountering is so very depressing & makes me angry! (As I’m sure any person of a minority, can similarly attest). Honestly, the aforementioned actions, in no way personally hurt me, as I did nothing to deserve any of them. Lifelong too, I have been a mighty tough cookie, cognitively.
Rather, the sadness I referred to previously, is for the state of our populous. Honestly, at this point (after a decade + of recovery) I feel bad for those inflicting the prejudice. After-all, they’re all strangers to me, so there’s no personal vendetta validating their actions. Don’t they have something, anything, else better to do?!
Frankly, since this abuse, clearly, has nothing to do with me, given to the reality that all of the abuse I’ve experienced, has been offered by strangers (I’d never befriend these assholes – pre or post TBI). These actions of theirs informs me rather, of their moral character or lack there of. The younger prejudice people, which are the overwhelming populous that do so, anger me, in a dismissive way of course. It’s certainly not worth expending any energy on these fools.
I’m mentally drawing from a present, personal experience with 1 man in particular, who is presently mentally & verbally abusing me, whenever we see each other. Given that I now reside in the petite city of Peteluma, this is all too often. He says something nonsensical which is intended to be personally offensive to me, and then before I can think it through (the elongated time of which, he clearly expects) & reply, he quickly & abruptly has vanished. I feel it’s safe to assume this is due to the the reality that he has become aware of -> that survivors need more time (just a few minutes now – way lesser than before ((this is proof of the symptoms always being in flux – again if a survivor uses their brain regularly, as I obviously do. I must say too, that everyone’s injury is different -> different part of the brain were impaled – different modes of recovery were employed + we all begin with distinctly different brains (which matters, in this respect, hugely)!
The abuse being inflicted on me, certainly does not have the negative personal effect that the abuser intended. The only person I consider mentally incompetent is the abuser themselves! They, obviously, enjoy attempting to make me feel foolish. This says very little of their self-esteem. If they were confident in & of themselves, they wouldn’t be called to make a disabled person (me) look inferior. Again – I don’t know these people – I’ve never done anything to them, they really ARE doing it just for fun! This boggles the mind.