Dear Ms. Anon Advice,I have a very sad life and I’m being plunging into a severe depression. In fact, I have always been in depression but it’s increasing as I’m growing up. I don’t know if this is a universal phenomenon, or just in our part of the world, but people are so cruel as if they’re perfect and Gods. As if they’re the authority on everything in another person’s life. As if their judgment is something everyone should bow down to!
I don’t know why the world just won’t accept people with a slight difference. Most of the time, it is not even our fault but people punish us for something beyond our control, as if it was our choice, as if we like being targeted for bullying and maltreatment, as if we chose to seem less than perfect, as if we chose to be someone who might need some extra assistance from others.
Doesn’t everyone need others’ support? Not everyone needs it physically like a hired nurse or a wheelchair or eyeglasses or braces. Some need emotional support, some need spiritual support. So what. We’re all humans, we all should and we all do support each other. Why must one make others’ life miserable just because they are seemingly less fortunate than you? Who gives them this right to bully or even pity someone because of apparent disability?
Ironically, they’re none the wiser about the situation and its associated risks, difficulties, and ease and blessing, they don’t even understand and they don’t even try to understand. But they find it very convenient and as if it’s their god given right, to go around dishing out pity, bullying, judgment, rejection and what not from the comfort of their own bubble.
A little background:
I was very young, around two to three years old, when I was kidnapped. My kidnappers tortured me, kept me hungry and thirsty, and broke my foot. They were planning to further damage me physically, break my limbs and give me disabilities, but I was rescued before their plans could be materialised. My family was badly shaken. My mother had lost consciousness for four days, while everyone else was either searching for me like crazy, or was arranging and participating in gatherings for prayers at home.
When I was brought back, everyone was angry and hurt beyond expression seeing my condition. Everyone was enraged at the heartless people who subjected me to such cruelty, I was merely a child. I hadn’t even started conversing in full sentences yet, I wasn’t even going to school yet. Everyone cursed them from the depths of their hearts, while they wept for and with my family. I was rushed to the hospital, and my broken foot was restored for the most part, but of course, it couldn’t be brought back to its original flawless condition, due to being neglected for over four days.
Is it my fault that such a traumatic experience was part of my fate? How does a broken foot make me an unfit match for any prospective proposal? What does my foot have to do with the notion and responsibilities of marriage? I’m not any less able to fulfill the duties of marriage. My loyalty, love, companionship does not depend on me limping across my drawing room to be presented like damaged goods!
I’m a human, I have feelings too. I’m not a broken piece of furniture that makes you get annoyed at the shopkeeper for trying to sell.
My foot is crooked, and makes me limp. So what? It doesn’t make me any less able to perform my daily tasks, nor does it take away from me my intelligence, my humor, my compassion, my ability to work and support myself and others, my success! I live the same life as any other person. I struggle to say my prayers, I struggle to eat healthy, I struggle to groom myself, I struggle to have a smooth relationship with my parents, my siblings and I fight and love like any other normal set of siblings, we have the same family issues that most are familiar with…. I go shopping to the same places as everyone else does. I eat out just like anyone else does. Emotional movies make me cry sometimes, just like they would anyone else. Action and mystery movies bring out the creative side to me and excite me just like they would anyone else. I love the smells and temperatures of springs and winters the same as anyone else. Every one of us is the same, all us humans are the same, everyone has struggles and successes as per their own life journey.
Then why would anyone feel the right and authority to judge me about everything in my life based on something completely irrelevant – the foot! It feels like I don’t exist, but only my foot does. It feels like I am nothing and no one, there’s only the foot.
Sometimes I feel like just chopping the damn thing off! Maybe then people will leave me alone, and look at me for who I am, not for my body parts which they can’t come to terms with. Maybe then people will stop looking at me with pity which I don’t need nor deserve.
I see everyone pitying people who are short, dark, not rich, not getting married at 16, and I feel sorry for them, I feel disgusted by their mentality. I pity them.
Frustrated Footless Feline.
Dear Frustrated Footless Feline,
I’m extremely sorry you had to go through this tragedy. I am also saddened to hear that the trauma didn’t end for you with your rescue, but has continued to haunt you in the worst of ways all your life.
However, there are always at least two roads one can take about any given situation. The current road you have chosen is that of wallowing in sorrow over other people’s mentality. Yes, it has been your own choice, and you know it very well.
Do you see how much you have allowed yourself to be affected by what others say and feel? It shouldn’t even matter to you because it doesn’t define you, but see where your choices have led you: you yourself call yourself things like footless and frustrated. You say you believe it is not fair or even called for, of other people to judge, bully or pity you, but is it then fair of you on yourself to treat yourself exactly like they treat you? You are pitying yourself the most, you are bullying yourself the most.
You know the whole situation, you know what is right and wrong, and you know all the answers to your own questions. I’d highly recommend you to go see a therapist if you haven’t already. I’m sure you would agree that there is no shame in getting some professional help when needed. I’m also sure that you know deep in your heart that this is not meant as a judgment call on you, but an honest review of things. You need to get rid of this negativity, and an unbiased professional is the best avenue to help sift out all the negativity from your system.
Be as strong as your thoughts. Stand up for yourself. Love yourself. Demonstrate to others what you need and how to provide it to you. And those who still can’t or won’t do it, are the ones who you need to distance from yourself because life is too short to waste after toxic people.
I promise you when you stop resenting others for who they are and start loving yourself for who you are, a lot of these thoughts will slip away from your focus, and you’ll realize how much you have wasted after lost causes, and what all you could have achieved instead in all this time, with all your effort.
Wishing you lots of happiness and success in life.
Ms. Anon Advice.
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