Better than this

It has been quite a week.  There has been some drama in the mast cell community and it upset some people I care a lot about.  I have spent several nights talking on the phone, laying upside down on the couch, seventh grade style.  It has that sort of feel.

People are mad, and when people are mad, they want to see consequences.  It is natural.  No one likes being played for a fool.  No one likes being taken advantage of.  I get it.  I’m mad, too. 

But the more I think about it, the more I feel that doing nothing is best.  I think that to do anything else lessens us.  I understand that due to the fact that we have to take people’s word for whether or not they have masto, that sometimes we are going to find out that they don’t.  It’s frustrating and upsetting.  But to do anything different would be invasive and exclusionary.  So many people with MCD don’t have “proof” or even a diagnosis that it would be insulting and harmful. 

I can’t speak for everyone else, but I’m just going to ignore people who do this.  That goes not only for people who just flat out fabricate their illness, but also for those who willfully misrepresent themselves and their disease for sympathy or whatever.  They obviously want attention and they won’t be getting it from me. 

Every time we accept someone into our community and support them based only on the veracity of their own claims, we show the very best parts of ourselves.  If that means that once in a while, we all get played, I’m okay with that.  I really am.  Every opportunity someone takes to lie about their health to us is still an opportunity for us to accept and help people.  And that’s worth more to me than the energy lost dealing with the stupid stuff when it unravels.

People pretending to suffer when we suffer for real is insulting and frustrating.  But it only serves to make them look foolish and unsympathetic.  Their lies do not take away from our realities.  Nothing any of these people could ever say or do could take away what we live through. 

This week has shown how badly it hurts when we are betrayed, but it also showed that we stick together and protect our own.  It ignited our protective sensibilities for sure.  A few nights ago, I said to one of my friends, “If she bothers [my dear friend], I swear, I will eat this woman alive.”  You know.  As you do. 

I trust everyone in my community until I have proof that I shouldn’t.  There’s always a risk of being wrong.  But the price of having to be right is too great.

We are better than this.  We are better than them.