05Oct07 - Are we hypocrites?

I spend so much time thinking and talking about this different life, explaining how rewarding it is and chastising those normal people who stare because they don't understand or are simply curious. I feel different and I feel like at times that I am treated differently by the normal people because of my different circumstances. I feel more comfortable in the company of people that share similar lives to ours because it is like we are all part of some big gang. You get initiated by birth trauma, accidents, misadventure, operations going wrong, disease, genetics and rare conditions with names nobody can pronounce. By the time you have finished your initiation you have already adapted to your new life and accepted that the world you have just come from is not for you anymore. In some twisted way it sets you apart from the normal people because you have been given a job that few would accept voluntarily and it is a job for life with no option for early retirement. It is the hardest, most challenging thing that you could have been asked to do and you weren't given a choice. So because of the environment you find yourself in or by purposely distancing yourself from normal life, you change. You have to change to be able to cope. It is not just your way of life or your quality of life, it is the way you think, the way you feel, the way you see the world and the way you protect yourself by numbing your instincts and emotions. Every so often I get a glimpse of how I used to be. Sometimes what I see makes me envious because of the easy freedom and sometimes it makes me realise that I used to be just like all those insensitive normal people who never give two thoughts to the different lives of others. It is so easy for me to take the moral high ground now and I regularly do. I get so angry with people who really are just the same as I was. Soceity as a whole does not educate itself to cope with disability, abnormality or deformity. People laugh and scorn at the people who have had the worst hands dealt to them. We all know the words used to describe these people, spaz, joey, window licker, monger, mental are just a few and we all know those facial expressions that people make so often. Can anybody put there hand up and say that they have never said, thought or acted out any of these things? I know I can't, but whenever I hear and see these things now, I feel physically sick and you would be surprised how often it happens. It makes me so angry but I stop myself from reacting because I know that I used to be like that. I guess it is unfair and unreasonable to expect people outside our different gang to understand life from our point of view. Maybe recognising the hypocrisy in some of the things I do and think stops me becoming too bitter and making a fool of myself. I have learnt the hard way how hurtful words and actions can be. I wonder if I hurt or offended someone in the past with my actions and never realised it.