Studies Show That 96.2% of People Suffering From Long Term Illnesses...

"Imagine some 25-year old kid who just had their first lung transplant"

This is a Part Two… A continuation of Tuesday’s work.

(So if it doesn’t make sense or have a good flow… Be sure to read in congruence with yesterday, pretty please!)

Maybe it stands alone without the connective threads?

Writing can definitely be a choose your own adventure that way.

Thank you for a beautiful week together.

Hey, guess what?

If you’re reading this: We are both still alive right now on planet earth.

Thanks for being alive with me… and most of all, alive and reading.

Yours,

B

If we have labeled Sickness Sympathy Fatigue when we are feeling it (and can thus have dialogues about bad days and how to help):

What else can a villager* do to lessen the sympathy fatigue, and increase the benefit for everyone?

(Can someone please sing “Y.M.C.A” in their head right now?)

(*Also, I know you all are smart enough to get this but just incase it got muddied in the waters since this is a Part Two and not being read linear, I’m just referring to how it supposedly “takes a village” to get through many things in this life.)

You can have compassion.

Yes… it’s really as simple as that sentence.

“Studies show that 96.2% of people suffering from long term, progressive or terminal illnesses just need someone to kvetch to, which is the medical term associated with such actions as ‘to complain about your situation without solution or judgement’ or ‘to be able to have open discourse about what is plaguing you, even if the secondary party is only pretending to be listening’.”

Did I make that study up?

Absolutely.

Anyways: Sometimes, we really just need to b*tch at anything with a pulse, so we can feel like someone- ANYONE- in the world cares that our pain exists.

By recognizing that pain exists, it somehow feels slightly easier to deal with, because it’s like it’s been recorded in some orator ostraca or something.

We just need history to know that it happened.

If more of us understood the depths of difficulty that await those working 10-hour unpaid shifts of sickness every single day, than more people with sickness would feel like society is ringing their pots and pans in appreciation for what we do every day.

If more of us knew to offer up a ride to the doctor if you can spare the gas that day or throw the gift cards you got around the holidays at the person you know who’s chronically chained to bills that will never end if you don’t need them, or even just dropping off a meal now and again: It helps.

The small things do help, because they aren’t actually all that small compared to what most of us are used to (which is feeling the need to live double lives, hide what we’re experiencing while knowing that history doesn’t care, and then die).

It is not always about what I’ve been writing about recently (the fiscal side or “fighting The System”), even though resources are constantly in short supply if you’re constantly having your supply diminished.

I know this is not some dystopian YA novel, and we aren’t in District 12 or anything, but The System many of us mention so frequently in conversation or online with that sort of implied capitalization really does exist in an amorphous sense. And… it requires far more Katniss retaliation energy than many of us can give.

In a way, The System is just another way of saying “systemic”.

Systemic medical poverty (or something like that?)

There is so much judgement in the world towards government programs that help with food or housing. The stereotype that it’s only people who “don’t want to work” using these programs persists on and on. And even though that’s tragic in of itself, I really do wish that more of us could try to imagine someone with Cystic Fibrosis without savings or support, as well, when we say those type of sentences without blinking.

Imagine some 25-year old kid who just had their first lung transplant.

But again, that’s just a part of the pizza. Here (on the sub-a-stack), we enjoy the crust and dip it in that addictive and perfectly disgusting garlic sauce and talk amongst ourselves.

Here, we can look at S.S.F and realize that it has no cure.

Because the sick person has no cure.

This is a Part Two…

Tomorrow is the last and final part!

See you then

xo