You just don't know....

[tpsbmam]

Oh, crap. Another post about the nastiness on DU. Geez, give it a rest, get a life, develop a thicker skin, it's only a message board why the hell do people go on and on about this crap and feel the need to post constantly about this bullshit?

Here's why. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you don't know what is going on with the person on the receiving end of your barbs. I've seen a few posts here lately where people have indicated they've felt stupid based on the responses they get here. They've probably felt stupid because they've been told they're stupid.

You have no fucking idea what is going on with the person you're putting down!

I'll use me as an example since it has, indeed, affected me recently. I have multiple sclerosis. I can no longer work due to the MS. It has nothing to do with my physical limits, which have me in a wheelchair or a walker for short distances. It has everything to do with (a) the overwhelming fatigue I experience everyday and, more importantly, (b) the cognitive challenges MS has inflicted on me.

I have a Ph.D. In college, I graduated 4th in a class of about 750. I had academic awards out the wazoo -- Phi Beta Kappa, honor societies in my specialty, honors within the college, student of the year by the professional association in my state, blah blah blah. I returned to grad school later in life and was immediately diagnosed with MS about 3 months after starting. I persisted and thrived -- I was, again, a leading student throughout grad school and I worked half-time in my profession through all of those years. I struggled with the MS, but I persisted. I went to work in my field and then.....

MS totally kicked my ass.

The really devastating process for me has been the cognitive changes. A once flexible, sharp, sponge-like mind has become blunted in ways that cut me to the quick. My memory is impaired, very basic attention & concentration are impaired, organizational abilities are impaired....very basic and higher level cognitive functions have all been affected. I do my best here but I know that I'm nowhere near as sharp as I used to be or as I want to be.

My emotions are also now guided in part by my psychological makeup and in part by my disease. I'm emotionally labile and prone to depression. I was prone to depression prior to the MS -- it's now more situational than it is constitutional and the lability is almost all due to MS. I do my best to keep a positive attitude & not let everything get to me. Sometimes it works, other times not so much. On top of the MS, my kidneys are now failing. That's added to the pressures I feel.

The past 3 months have been horrible for me. Nothing spectacular happened -- it was a thousand little cuts. I don't usually feel "disabled." I did in the last 3 months. These were some of the little cuts. I went to renew my license (using my walker so I didn't look quite as impaired) and had to take a road test due to my disability. I have a spotless driving record -- been driving for 37 years, never had an accident & had one speeding ticket about 20 years ago. I was suddenly faced with the possibility that this asshole (he was) next to me could deny me driving privileges! I live in a rural area -- it would have been a devastating loss. I passed & my neurologist then had to give me medical clearance, a first for me.

I volunteered at my Democratic headquarters before the election. I had difficulty doing even a simple task: data entry. I was fine once I got the hang of it but had to go back to the guy who instructed us a couple of times for reminders about how to do this very simple task and finally got him to write everything down for me. I was entering data next to someone else -- it took me twice as long to enter the same amount of data. I left there with a fresh and fierce awakening about the degree of my cognitive slippage. I was pretty sorrowful after that -- it really hit me hard. I missed two appointments because I hadn't gotten reminder calls and I was so disorganized I hadn't recorded them when I got them and set up reminders for myself. I now set up reminders for most things -- not doing so usually means I'll forget. If I forget to put the appointments in my computer calendar and set reminders immediately when I get appointments, I'm doomed if I don't get a reminder call. There were other incidents like these all of which pointed to the cognitive problems I now have.

It was during this time that I came to DU and a DUer got snarky with me. The DUer called me all kinds of things that boiled down to me being stupid & clueless.

I didn't have a hard shell right then. My shell had not only been cracked, it was starting to shatter during that period of time. And this DUer took a hammer to what was left of my shell and whacked at it, making sure to shatter it more.

I've had quite a few crying spells over this period of time. Not weepy spells -- sobbing, gut-wrenching, existential cries. One of them happened after that encounter on DU. I know the person was just being an asshole and it says more about the individual than it does about me. At the time, it didn't matter -- I had just one more confirmation that my once fabulous brain was failing. And, frankly, I still maintain the individual's argument was dead wrong. That didn't matter either at the time. My world was coming crashing down again and it didn't take much to push me over my temporarily very limited limits.

I stopped posting that day and retreated to playing games on the computer, the ones I play daily to exercise my brain. It was what I could find at the time to distract me and keep me from obsessing over the comments made to me and my perception that it was just further confirmation of my deficits.

I'm better this week. This week. God only knows what will happen down the road, but right now I'm good to go. And I want those of you who sling your nasty cracks at people know that you may, indeed, be doing damage. You have no fucking idea what the person you're responding to is going through, has gone through or will be going through.

You have no idea if the person you've just hit with a spelling or grammar snark has struggled with a learning disability all his or her life. The same is true of a reading comprehension snark. You have no clue if the person you're calling stupid had some shit of a parent who made the individual believe that about him/herself and you've just dug another few divots out of the person's soul and fragile self-esteem. What if the person on the receiving end of your nastiness is, like me, feeling incredibly fragile but, unlike me, is suicidal and it won't take much to push that person over that edge (yes, sometimes it can be that one little thing that adds to all of the others that pushes someone that far)? How superior would you feel if a family member posted and you realized that the person you treated like shit at 9 p.m. had killed him/herself at 1 a.m.? Did you "cause" the suicide? No. Might it have been possible that engaging the the individual in a different way might have made it possible for that person to get through one more night? It might.

God, think about what the hell you're doing when you treat other people the way that some DUers treat others here. One of the reasons I love progressives is that we care about people and want our country to care about them. We strive to get our country to care enough to provide medical care, mental health care, food and shelter, support for people with cognitive & physical disabilities, and so much more.

But for too many, that doesn't translate into how we treat individuals, often here or in "real" life (I call it 3-D life). Know that you are posting to people who have the whole huge spectrum of human strengths, frailties, disabilities, living situations, lifestyles and lives. Do you want to be part of chipping away at people's souls? If you do, keep doing what you're doing. If not, think before you type and say what you have to say without the snark & personal attacks.

If you've read this far, thanks. This is too long but I had to get it off my chest!