I talked to my sister the other day. She's 8 months (already?) or perhaps 7 post surgery and she mentioned her growing intolerance of others. A interesting side effect but not unusual if you think about it. I think if you get to the point in your life where you take decisive action - from eye surgery, to working two jobs, financing new cars, maintaining your family, then undergoing a life changing surgery - well, you are entitled to feel as if you want the world to change around you.
All dressed up with no place to go.
Because I think too when you go through a life change, you.. want ..your.. life.. to.. change.
All of your life.
And I think you want people to change too.
Not concretely. Not tangibly. Not "I want A to suddenly become a wholly wildly different B" but for others, who purport to want change, to change.
What we came to, what I came to anyway, after the conversation was a sense of her feeling, fed up I guess, with the status quo. Because as days go by, as weeks go by, as you, yourself, gain strength and reemerge, I think you expect that change has happened around you. One day you say "I don't like the way xyz is going, so you start to change xy&z." And if you happen to be surrounded by other people who said THEY wanted change, well, I guess its natural to assume they'd be like you - and undergo the same process. Or any process.
You want a new car? You save.
You need your eyes fixed? You call for an appointment.
You want your daughter to have summer opportunities? You wait in line starting at 5am for the coveted town camp slots.
So I think it's frustrating to put in the work to change, then look around you and see a bunch of people - sitting exactly where you left them, unwilling to change.
Or worse, actively taking steps to so deeply root themselves in their own cycles that they can't change.
"Oh me? I was going to go to the gym but now that my son's wife is pregnant, I'll need to stay home."
"Me? I was going to consolidate my debt and get on track but since you left work, I needed to front money so now I can't get back on track."
"Me? I was going to retire but now, with the under $2000 worth of damage to the basement owing to flooding, I'll need to work another year and a half."
Whatever the reason, the excuse, the logic, the illogic - when you are going through change you get... tired... of hearing about how others simply can't POSSIBLY change. In fact, if you ask them, it's not possible at all. Sure YOU can change, it's easy for you. But them? Their situation is different. They are constrained by forces far too complicated for we mortals to comprehend. Their lot in life is so vastly different, so complicated, so necessary that change would be akin to ice melting polar caps. Change just isn't possible.
Alas.
So they suffer.
Martyrs yet not really because to be a martyr implies change could happen.
I don't think we are alike, I don't pretend to understand her situation but here is where we intersect. Where if parallels lay, you'd see them clearly.
Through a choice of her own, change came knocking. Because her surgery, her elective but necessary surgery, forces her to work differently in her life. She has to regulate things that heretofore hadn't needed regulating. She had to become a nutritionist, a chemist, an expert of food protein, a mathematician. She had to learn the skills to cope with doctors, with clinic visits, with time tables that force her to eat, or not eat, on a schedule foreign to her. She has to learn to shop differently, dress differently. Eventually, she will be perceived differently. She's had to be diplomatic in the face of remarks, well intentioned but thoughtless. Assessments about her weight, her health, her figure. Her privacy's are few - as throwing up in a trash barrel is about as public as one can get. And her success, or failure is evident for all the world to see. people who for years "supported" her "You are FINE, you look terrific" and suddenly coming forward with "Oh I'm SO happy for you. I'm so glad you have finally made this change." Hypocrisy. Lies. False comments then and false praise now while all the while snarkily remarking "Oh sure, I could lose 100 pounds too if I did it the easy way."
So change, change came one night and she opened the door. And ushered it in. More change then she expected. And yet, somehow less. Because those around her - those who implied things would be different - didn't change.
I feel ...empathy. Because I too have change around me. Yet others? No change at all.
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