Sometimes people just don’t get it no matter how much you try to explain.  And as frustrating as it is, there is absolutely nothing you can do to change them and how they think about you.  The thing you can change is how you deal with the situation.

I have a family member who was over for dinner the other night.  She is getting older and is no longer really able to grasp a lot of what is going on.  And no matter how many times someone explains my health situation to her she doesn’t seem to get it.  So the other night when she was over, she made some comments that really upset me.  One hangs in my mind even now, like an itch you just can’t scratch.

“So get up and walk.”

I’m currently in a wheelchair.  It’s a relatively recent thing.  My arthritis has gotten to the point where its just too painful to stand.  I’m hoping that this new medication I started will reverse the situation, but for now I’m stuck rolling along.  I’m not really okay with it yet.  It’s a sensitive subject anyway.  I already feel like the world is judging me, even though for the most part I think it is really just me passing unfair judgment on myself.

And then my family member comes over for dinner and makes several comments like that.  It took all my self control to not respond.  In the past, I would have tried to explain the situation to her again.  But I know that she’s just not capable of understanding.  It still hurts, but it would have been worse to get into it with her and still not get her to understand.  Again.

So this time I bit my tongue and said nothing.  It still hurt.  Made my eyes burn with tears I cannot cry.  (One of my autoimmune illnesses reduces my ability to make tears.)  But it was a small triumph to refrain from trying to justify myself to the world.  I intellectually know that I shouldn’t have to justify my situation to anyone.  Easier said than done.  But I started by not doing it even though I wanted to so badly it made my chest ache.  Maybe someday I will get used to not rationalizing my life to people who no matter what I do just won’t ever get it.  And hopefully that habit will translate to my emotional needs and I won’t feel the impulse to do it anymore at all.

After all some people just won’t ever get me and my situation and that is their problem, not mine.  I’m the one who has to learn to live with these obstacles, not them.  But that is a whole other story…