Do we really get it?

The other day I went to lunch with a colleague of mine and we go to talking about my past, of how I came to be, what I went through etc, etc.

So she got a really condensed version of the whole meal deal. She got the loneliness of an adolescent who wanted escape, she got the young woman who was homeless, the girl and woman who was on welfare, the single mother who left with her baby to leave for another province, the single mom who finally wanted a better life and scraped by to get into college (I'm still paying off the student loan)... everything.

As she was shocked and in awe over my story, not having expected me to come from a back ground like that. She said how strong I was, and look at me now you got your shit together. All those things and yes, this past of mine, has played a part in the woman I am today.

Today towards the end of the day, I hear her speaking on the phone. She is talking about someone she knows and being very judgemental about being on welfare, disability or whatever the case may be. And I tried to ignore the conversation and go about my business, but everything she was saying with a disgusted, better than thou, voice... was me. All of it.

I left work early today. I didn't want to listen to those words any longer as I allowed myself to think less of myself because of opinions like those for too long.

One day I education someone on something they may not have known about me, and they appear to be taken by my story. The next they forget I am right here, that all of those things I am/was, and they don't realize... that might have been the background history of the person they were talking to on the phone and they didn't even realize it.

It saddens me a great deal. Not so much for myself, but for the realization that although people can be made aware of things... they may choose not to make a connection. To consider that those of us who are not the same (different race, culture, class, gender, background, sex preference) are somehow inferior to you... less then the rest.

Wake up People!!!!

We all have our own personal "hells" in our lives which we have survived or will survive in our future. I hope to god that no one is sitting there looking down their nose at you when you are in the midst of it!

When I got home from the gym tonight I noticed my colleagues phone number on my phone. Perhaps she realized when she got home how much her words in her conversation to another had cut through me.

Do we really "get it"?

Will we ever "get it"?

Do you want to "get it"? That is what it boils down to. If you are happy with they way you live... in your words, judgements and actions... I guess there is nothing to "get".