Category: Safe Haven
I have recently gotten involved with alumni from my former school for the blind which I attended through the 8th grade before transferring to public high school. I am finding myself having difficulty remembering why these people used to be my friends. Many of them are so bitter and can't let go of things that happened in the past. When we discuss our school days, many of them have only negative memories, i.e. teachers and housemothers they hated, other kids who they felt were mean to them, etc.
I'm just wondering if blind and disabled people have more difficulty than the non-disabled getting over bad things that happened to them in the past. I have good memories about my days at the school and have trouble dealing with these very negative people.
Interesting question, Becky. I don't know that blindness in itself necessarilly has anything to do with it. I'm involved with my alumni association at the Maryland School for the Blind, and my experiences have been wonderful. so much so that I volunteer there.
A couple of thoughts for you: Maybe these individuals of whom you speak don't have much in their lives. As a result, they have all this negative energy. Its easier to blame someone else than it is to take responsibility for your own life choices. Maybe this is where your contemporaries of the day are at right now. Maybe they're stuck there. I avoided my own alumni and school for years after I graduated. I had a really, really bad attitude about blind people. I guess I've matured/mellowed over the years, and don't have those negative feelings any longer. This doesn't make me better than anyone, but I'm a happier person, because I've put all that negativity behind me. I think that's one of the benfits of on-line communities lie The Zone. Sorry for rambling off topic. Maybe you can figure out what's eating at your contemporaries, and maybe remind them things weren't all that bad if you met each other, and value some of those relationships.
Lou
Hey Becky. I agree with you there. I have the same issue. I don't think it matters if you're disabled or not, or does it, good question. Interested to hear your thoughts on this.
Troy
I don't think that the disability has anything to do with it, I just think some people have more time to ruminate and dramatise aboutthe past, whereas others, such as yourself, find it easy to move on and have full lives so don't feel the need, or have the time, to stress and obsess over the past.
Well, I think Gypsy has a point here... but here's another angle.
I think we sometimes want to "get over the past" so much so that we deny it happened. Maybe these peope did have bad times, and that's okay... to ruminate in that isn't healthy, but neither is entirely denying it.
Take for example: mymother dated a jerk for five years from the time I was nine until I was fourteen. I could just go on and on about what a jerk he was, how I was treated in his home, etc., etc. These days, I realize that, yes, he was a jerk, and yeah, he hurt me emotionally. I won't pretend it didn't happen, and I do talkabout it sometimes, but it helped make me the person I am today. There's no such thing as "getting over" something, but there is such a thing as constructively letting it shape you into a healthy person.
Gypsy_Girl and CrazyMusician have some good points. I don't think you can totally get over the past, but I think you can just learn to not let it eat you up I suppose. In my case, I only went to a school for the blind for three years, but I was not necessarily a happy person just because I was kind of lonely and desperate as a teenager and did not have good self-esteem. I was contacted a few years ago by two people I used to hang out with, and I found I just didn't have anything in common with them as I used to and I was a different person when they seemed to not have changed.
I think it depends on what bad things. It takes a lot of time for me still to get over being abused sexually for six years in my first school, for example. There are still consequences I have to live with. But for me it is not hard to get over things like mean teachers or house mothers.
That's what we're saying, Ines. You're trying to move forward from the sexual abuse. It's horible that it happened... I frankly wouldn't mind shooting the person(s) who did it... but the fact that you're not ruminating in it is good. I had no idea that you'd been abused.. it's not like on the boards you're always like, "I was abused!" The fact that you don't proclaim it from the rooftops every time you comment on something is a healthy thing.
Kudos!
kate
Wow Ines, I'm so sorry about what happened to you. The people I'm talking about don't have anything this serious to get over. They just seem to be whiners who don't get over anything. I admire you for being able to move on,, but no one would expect you to be able to just forget something this terrible.
Let me say first, I'm talking about Becky's type of people, not sexual harassers etc. They have their own kind of hell waiting for them, and Ines gets to swing the whip.
People tend to put their own personalities into their memories of things.
I once had a friend in school whom I really looked up to, thinking she was the most intelligent, most well-rounded person I had ever met. I ran into her later in life, and, God she was so biggoted, uneducated and down-right stupid.
So, maybe the people you are talking about Becky have shallow personalities, and they impose them on everyone in their memories. So, from their perspective: why not complain. They don't even realize it's themselves they are really complaining about.
I think I'm saying the same thing that Godzilla-On-Toast said in his post, just not as well.
Thanks,
Bob
Bob, both you and Godzilla put it very well. I'm getting a lot out of reading everyone's comments. I know it's not just blind people who have a hard time getting over certain things in the past, but it just seems to be that the blind people I've come in contact with lately are mor prone to do this than most other people I know.
I know some blind people who thinkit's their entitlement to whine about this, that, and the other thing... what crap! Ther eARE worse things in the world.
Becky and Kate, I'm going to make one of those sweeping generalizations I hate, but here in the States, and I suspect elsewhere, there are a lot of blind people unemployed. They have fe obligations in the sense that they don't have to make a living. There money is provided by the government/taxpayers. Many have little or no dirrection in life. The point of all this rambling is they have no reason to have to be positive. I read recently, and I might have written it in my previous post that it takes work to be positive. It also takes a great deal of energy to maintaina positive outlook. to put it another way, its easier being negative. Its kinda painful as was said in an earlier post to see those people you looked up to as a child, and how they never ealized their full potential.
Lou
I have also come in contact with my fair share of these blind people you're referring to. They're very frustrating and annoying, and while I don't think it's just blindness, I will agree that the people who do this seem to be predominately those who are blind or visually impaired. I attended a school for the blind for nine years, and while I'd definitely go back and change that if it were at all possible, I don't think it had any real negative impact on me. I like to think I turned out okay. It's all in your perspective and what you choose to do with what you're given, however little it may be. I also agree with the above post in that it's easier to be negative, and although he made a "sweeping generalization", I'd say it's a fairly accurate one.
I agree. To be hoenst, I could easily go and apply for income assistance, because I have little money and, until today, no job. I could bitch and whine about itbut that gets nothing accomplished. I can understand that if you're in school and are unable to work, itmakes sense to be on some form of supprt, but expecting a government handout because you're too lazy to find a job? Oh, please!