Healing Trauma: Perspectives And Attitudes 34

Gentle Reader: My dear little laptop has tantrums from time to time, and this past Sunday, he had an absolute meltdown. I just got him back from the shop, he has a shiny new video card and no longer whines and grumbles and groans whenever I open him up. So, I am going to finish and edit Sunday's post and try to bring things up to date a little. Here is last Sunday: When I worked at Lookout fifteen years ago I first discovered how the already victimized and marginalized often end up victimizing and exploiting each other. It doesn`t appear to gel with conventional wisdom, but it occurs all too often. Lookout is an emergency shelter for homeless adults. Not a nice place to work and they have a tendency of hiring abusive jerks, so it isn't any wonder that I didn't last there much longer than a year. The clients were generally okay. Most of the staff were complete assholes. But here I'm writing about abuse that happens within exploited and victimized populations. I first became aware of this when a coworker told me about one client stealing money from another. They were sharing a room. This brings on another personal hobby horse of mine, which is the scandalous lack of privacy for adults in homeless shelters, as well as in hospitals, where they are expected to share a room with one or more complete strangers. Funding be damned! If they really cared enough about the dignity of clients and patients then they would find the funds to make sure that each person has privacy and a sense of safety and security while under care. I had to go through this when I was in hospital almost three years ago with a thyroid problem and Miller-Fisher Syndrome, which they failed to diagnose, and only today have I finally discovered this illness and I have no doubt at all that that is what put me in hospital. But I will save the details for a future post. While in hospital, I had to share a room with a twenty-three year old heroin addict who was abrasive, belligerent and foul-mouthed as well as nosy and inappropriate. Hospital staff did nothing even after I complained several times. So, here is another example of the kind of mistreatment that can and often does occur between people who are equally disenfranchised. There is something about the whole process of marginalization that can really bring out the worst in people. Feeling chronically belittled and marginalized, even dehumanized can really turn some people into monsters. Not all. We also find amazing displays of solidarity and empathy among the poor. I think that a lot depends on the individual, what kinds of issues they are dealing with, and dare I use this antiquated term, their level of moral development? Those of us on the left, especially on the extreme left where I tend to make my ontological habitation, are very big on demonizing the wealthy and privileged as selfish, psychopathic, and completely out of touch with the needs of ordinary people. This I believe to be largely true, except for this little caveat. Regardless of our relative privilege or social oppression, we are all equally human, and I think that some of us, regardless our demographic, too easily forget this. Today, very early this morning, I had an unpleasant encounter with a new tenant in my building. As you know, Gentle Reader, I occupy one of the oppressed human categories. I am poor, on a very low income (and yes, I do work for a living!), and I live in government-subsidized social housing. Many of my neighbours live with whole laundry lists of issues, and it really has taken me a few years to considerably reduce my own personal laundry list of issues, largely thanks to the secure and supportive, and affordable, housing I have enjoyed here for going on sixteen years. We were in the laundry room, and this fellow seemed a bit anxious and confused about how to navigate the washers and dryers. For this reason, I am wondering if he has spent some time living under institutionalized care, perhaps in a mental health boarding home, or similar. He is also, as the PC crowd likes to call it, a member of a visible minority. I did what I could to help this fellow find his way through the washers and dryers. When he asked me to change a one dollar coin for quarters I politely declined, and for two reasons: 1. I did tell him that I wanted to be assured that I have enough quarters for my own laundry needs. 2. I did not mention that I didn't want to foster his sense of dependency, but I did say that he could get change at the Seven-Eleven across the street. This is where the conversation began to turn a bit ugly. He insisted that he didn't want to go back there because of all the "bums" demanding money from him. I politely said that I do not like that word, I was myself homeless, I work with homeless people, and they are human beings who happen to be very vulnerable and unfortunate and should be regarded with compassion and respect. I didn't mention this, but also find it ironic that a person living off of government largess in social housing should be so free with calling other people bums. He started yelling at me and I was only too glad to get out of that elevator (some things you do not want to share an enclosed space with) Later in the day, after a walk in Stanley Park, I went to buy milk at the local Shoppers' then was cussed out by an aboriginal woman when I politely asked her not to block the front door of my building. I did tell her there was no need for that kind of language. The fact of the matter is, even though I'm white, that woman is aboriginal, and my belligerent neighbour is black, we are all poor, yet I suspect that my race became a kind of red flag for both those individuals. Somehow, picking out and picking on the differences we have with other outcasts can make us feel a little bit less like crap? I really get sick and tired of hearing about this White Privilege nonsense. Not all white people enjoy privilege, and I happen to be one of those white people and I for one am feeling extremely fed up with being treated like a scapegoat for the sins of our better off whiteys. But this is the problem with social marginalization. Like everything else, it is usually understood and interpreted by the intellectually lazy, who prefer neat categories and black and white thinking (pun not intended) instead of looking at and negotiating nuances. But categories aside, being flawed and very damaged humans, all of us, we really are all equally screwed though many of us tend to enjoy hiding within our own categories and fortresses of privilege, real and imagined, which of course helps us feel protected from having to face in ourselves some very hard and unflattering truths.