Easy to Be Hard

While most of the time, what I write here is about health care and health reform and health insurance and all that stuff, I do also post personal entries to this blog, and so today, I want to talk about something that happened yesterday on Facebook.

A wonderful woman died, too young. I thought -- as I have several times when someone young and really special dies -- why them and not me? It's not that I want to die; it's that I don't feel it would be the same kind of loss. I don't have kids. I am not a hero. And so I wonder at the logic of it all -- why them and not me?

It started an interesting discussion on Facebook. After the first couple of responses -- people telling me I am special and all that -- I said I thought about taking the post down because that really wasn't the point. I really was wondering about the why of it all. And then I started a whole new discussion thread about more positive things. Still, people kept posting on that first thread all day. Some of it was interesting. Some of it was flattering. It just kept going until well into the evening.

And then a guy who's been an Advocacy for Patients client, who is VERY depressed and down, and who I've spent a lot of time trying to encourage and help, said he thought I posted the original post just to get people to tell me how wonderful I am. He said I have borderline personality disorder.

He could not possibly know how incredibly hurtful those particular words would be. He could not have known that borderline personality disorder has been in my immediate family, so that of all the psychiatric things he could have accused me of, this would be the one thing that would really upset me. But without knowing it, he upset me terribly. I blocked him. I will have nothing more to do with him. There is no question that the loss is his. He just lost one of the pillars of his support system. But I feel really rotten.

I don't wonder for a minute whether I posted what I did to manipulate people to say good things about me. I've been posting what I've hoped were provocative things for the past couple of weeks. And I remember when my friend Ruth died, I honestly felt "why not me?" It would have been so much less of a loss. She was a hero. She had two young children. My overriding emotion was "why her and not me?" It was a question to god or fate or whatever. So when I read Nancy's obituary yesterday morning, I had that same feeling, and I posted it on Facebook NOT to get attention, but as an honest expression of confusion of how the universe works in such screwed up illogical ways. I know what was in my heart. It was not about trying to manipulate people into saying I'm wonderful. I actually already get more of that than I'm comfortable with -- people think I'm this really special person when I feel so very normal, flawed. I don't really like it when people say I'm out of the norm. Maybe it's that I want to be normal. But I sure do have flaws, and the fact that people I try to help through my work don't see them doesn't mean they aren't there -- it just means I'm being professional.

So I don't wonder for even a minute if he was right. He could have been right about something at some point, but not about that, not yesterday.

What I don't understand is why -- why would he take aim at me? I have done all I could do to help him. He's very sad, very angry, very bitter. As best I could tell, he didn't have a whole lot of people on his side helping him out. So why come after one of the people who was trying to help? I don't get it?

And I am hurt. I offer myself to people with an open heart. I hold nothing back. So when a patient like him has a tough time emotionally, I share my emotional experience of being a patient with them. I open up and make myself vulnerable. I wouldn't have it any other way. But when one of those people takes aim at me -- especially in a totally unexpected way -- I am hurt and confused and I don't understand -- why would he bite the hand that feeds him?

It made me think of this song:

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard, easy to be cold

How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud, easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend, I need a friend

How can people be so heartless
You know I'm hung up on you
Easy to be proud, easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend, we all need a friend

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be proud, easy to say no
Easy to be cold, easy to say no
Come, on, easy to give in, easy to say no
Easy to be cold, easy to say no
Much too easy to say no



I get it, but I don't really get where it comes from. I mean, I get that there are just mean people. I just don't get why. Jennifer