Bless your heart......what does sick look like?

In the south when we say bless your heart, chances are you are not being blessed. Although we do say this when consoling someone, generally speaking it most often accompanies an implied insult of some kind. This has become my standard response when someone tells me " BUT YOU DON'T LOOK SICK".

Now any chronically ill person will tell you this is one of  the most insensitive and infuriating things they hear. And we hear it a lot. And perhaps after a while some of us become a wee bit sensitive, but what we hear is " You look fine to me, so I think you ...just want attention...are lazy....like to be a victim...figured out how to work the system....blah blah blah."
Add these comments to the glares we get when we use a handicapped parking space and get out of the car bearing neither a cane, walker or wheelchair and it makes me mad as a wet hen.

The biggest surprise is how much all this bothers me. I was always the black sheep, and for so many years what others thought of me, especially people I didn't even know, never entered my mind. In fact I was baffled by friends who fretted so much over " what will people think"? So why does this bug me so much?

For me I think it comes down to pride. When we become ill, we lose so many things. Some of us lose our jobs, our homes, our dignity. We lose our way of life, and can no longer do things we have always done. We lose our sense of self, because so much of our identity is wrapped up in our picture of ourselves as the athlete, the overachiever, the reliable one, and so on. So who do we become when we can no longer be that person?

 I had always taken pride in raising three girls with no financial support. Having said that, I had no 401k or retirement, no savings account to cushion me because we lived paycheck to paycheck. So although I was able to provide for myself and my girls, when they were grown I was broke. I thought these were the years I would work hard and save money. So I now find myself in my mid forties, educated and dependent on the social security disability check I get every month, and I'm darn lucky to get that! It took two years and two attorneys to get the disability I had paid into since starting work at the age of fifteen, but don't even get me started on that, it's another post for another day.

And since I am now raising a baby, I am eligible for a small amount ( and I DO mean small, less than $50 per month) of food stamps. I cannot tell you the glares I get if I happen to have on a piece of jewelry ( which was a gift from my daughter and is not even a real diamond ) when I scan that food stamp card. I have taken the stupid ring off and put it away. But the worse part is the way it stings my dignity to use that card.

So when people look at me and say " You don't look sick" or " But you look good" I just smile and say Bless your heart......because its nicer than saying " And you don't look like a moron".