Poverty Is Not an Accident

Poverty Is Not an Accident
Nelson Mandela

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Monkeys On Their Backs

June 19, 2003

Addiction is such a waste. I was watching the Ken Burns series on Jazz. Charlie Parker was, according to a friend, a true genius: interested in all manner of things besides music, multilingual. And completely eaten away by a heroin, and when he couldn't get that, alcohol addiction. Took off from a cross-country train at a stop in the desert, wandering away, looking to score! When his daughter died of pneumonia in NY, he telegrammed four times from Los Angeles. His messages to his wife became more and more about him, not her or their daughter. The last one simply said, "help me. Bird."


I imagined his wife, alone, devistated and heart-broken all the way across the country, facing all the decisions alone which a family death requires, the mother of a dead child, knowing her husband is 3,000 miles away falling completely apart. And helpless to change any of it. Just the moment when she needed help, comfort, compassion and some fierce protection, her spouse is using a 2 year old girl's death as just another excuse to get loaded! And doesn't give a DAMN about what that's adding to her grief! ...except that he can use his GUILT and self-hatred from that as anOTHER excuse to get loaded!


There is, in my experience, a distinctly addictive personality type. Not that all addicts exhibit this to the same degree, but the brain's need for the chemical takes over compassion and, often, even acknowledgement of others--except as vehicles by which to procure and use the drug of choice, or to shore up the damaged and self-loathing ego.


When I lived in the War Zone, I could pretty well avoid regular contact with addicts, except in their "drama queen" emergencies, when they were endangering others. Here, I'm exposed to addictive personalities EVERY DAY. It's very tedious and stressful.


My neighbors sized me up as soon as I moved in here. I am low income, so I won't contribute financially to their acquisition of chemicals. I'm not physically attractive (by superficial standards, anyway), and so cannot contribute dopamine to their ravaged pleasure centers. I don't even have a car to drive their impaired butts to and from the package liquor store or their dealers!


But I am all alone, disabled and vulnerable. I also state openly that I have a right to be treated with respect, a concept with which few addicts are familiar--at least, insofar as it pertains to OTHER PEOPLE besides themselves. So, I am the Straw Man. They project all their negative self-hatred onto me. They attribute their own motives onto me (eg: if THEY had a dog, THEIR yard would be full of dog poop, so, therefore, mine must be!). They think they'll feel better about their own self-hatreds and shattered self esteems if they can compare themselves to me.


Fact is, of course, none of them has a garden. None of them prepares gourmet meals. None of them surfs the net, participates in social justice, does anything more creative than trying to out think authorities such as cops and employers.


Since I won't allow them access to my home or facts about my life, none of them realizes exactly what fools they've made of themselves with their jail house mentality of trying to make me their "bitch," with which I simply refuse to cooperate.


Some fluff brain white girl in an alt.discuss group whined at me that my email signature took 67 seconds to load when she clicked my post. I thought it was strange that she just sat there, counting seconds, instead of moving on to another post. She called me a moron. I truly believe she thougt my use of the word, "oxymoron," in the post in question was an insult to her!


At any rate, I carefully wrote back about my MS, my vision and small motor challenges. I explained having a website of my most frequently visited links, as well as info that others with whom I correspond find valuable, is necessary for me.


I was thinking about her yesterday: how abusive, self-righteous and arrogant she had been, and I wondered if she might be chemically dependent. "Nah," I told myself, "you're just hypersensitive to chemical dependents, because of the neighbors in your building. Don't assume she's addicted!"


Within hours, she'd replied to a post by someone else re: what one loves and hates. She loves beer, and plenty of it. And "bud," of course. What a way to introduce one's self to a philosophy newsgroup! Such priorities! And preparing large meals for special occasions (ie: showing off and making people grateful to her). She hates "whiners."


Bingo!


She justifies her abusiveness because she was minorly inconvenienced by a "slow-loading" post. Normally, of course, as everybody in the dang group explained to her, my posts don't LOAD slowly, and when they do, it's a server-side glitch, not my fault! But she chose to IGNORE that fact, in order to justify her abusiveness!


She went so far as to say she not only doesn't owe me an apology, but that I owe HER one, for inconveniencing her with my blind, crippled self! LOLOL


A PERFECT example of the addictive personality: hostile, self absorbed, self righteous, ignorant (and proud of it, dammit!) and arrogant.


Then, I thought of George W. Bush.


Wow, we're in deeeeeeeeeep doo doo!


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