Without even really trying to, I looked down on those who were disturbed, an example being when Phil in Groundhog Day is on the shrink’s couch banging the pillow on his head… I thought I would never end up like that. I snickered with my friends at that scene and didn’t think twice about how people who were disturbed are people too… Then I became seriously disturbed around 15-17yrs old. Today I’m not the same person who snickered at that scene.
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this is the scene
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this reminds me of the week before I finally became fully psychotic. I said to God…“thank you for making sure I never was a schizophrenic.” and the next week I was in a ward…
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I have more empathy and compassion now.
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There was an asylum in the town where I grew up and everybody knew about it. I was always concerned that I could end up there even as a really small kid.
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I remember talking to my sister and she laughed over her friend that was in a mwntal hospidal and i went along with my sister. I said yeah yeah…they are this and this. Im so embarrased over myself now.
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I remember as a kid 45 years ago there was a house on my friends street where an older couple lived with one daughter who was in my sixth grade class. They had another daughter who nowadays would be called something like “developmentally disabled”. Back then in 1974 she was called retarded.
The family kept her in the house instead of having her institutionalized. Me and a few friends were out on that street playing football or Frisbee or just hanging out off and on for years and we never saw the second girl outside playing in the yard or getting some fresh air or even peeking out a window. I don’t even remember even seeing her once get in a car with the family though obviously they must have taken her to a doctor or a dentist or to get her hair cut.
All us kids on the street knew each other and hung out day after day and night after night but the girl who was in my class who lived there never once tried to join us. I don’t believe she had any friends. We only knew the disabled girl barely by rumors and we never gave her a second thought. One night the father came out while were outside playing. He had never talked to us before but he approached us and asked if we would give him a hand moving a heavy piece of furniture inside his house. Being fairly nice kids we went to help him.
There was me and two friends and in the midst of helping him the disabled girl came out of her room. She looked obviously developmentally disabled and was smiling and drooling. But she walked right up to us with a smile and tried to speak but it came out as gibberish. But the worst part of my story is that all three of us were scared of her. We thought she would attack us because she didn’t seem to know what she was doing. We weren’t mean or cruel and we didn’t want to offend the father or be mean or rude but we all got nervous. The girl didn’t pick up on the fact that we were scared (or maybe she did) and kept trying to say something. To be honest I was 13 and that was the closest I had ever come to a person who had those problems before.
We finished helping and left. We got outside and we weren’t overly cruel but we made a few comments about the girl that were mean. But we were just kids. We didn’t know better. But I was thinking of that girl just about two or three years ago. Like lots of us schizophrenics say, “Having this disease makes a lot of us more compassionate and empathetic towards people who have problems”.
Now looking back with 38 years of perspective at the incident I can see something. That poor disabled girl was just trying to be friendly. She was smiling and happy. I know a 100% that she didn’t get many visitors or get to see many other people besides her family. Being more human in certain ways for being disabled myself now, I see that she had to have been lonely and she was just happy to see other people and all she was doing was trying to be friendly and be near us. But blame it on stigma at the time and ignorance but we just dissed her and got scared that she would attack us. Sound familiar anyone?
I felt bad when I thought of this two years ago, when now I have the perspective of being an adult. I wish we could have been friendly and nice but we were 13 year old boys. Heck, we hated each other some of the time and hated ourselves too some of the time. We were just inadvertently insensitive a lot of the time. I kind of wish I could go back and do that incident all over again but this time be friendly and smiling. I guess in the cosmic great scheme of things I have made it up my being kind to people in the present.
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My illness has gotten me to face the fact that life isn’t easy for anyone and if we are to have any hope as a species we need to have compassion for each other.
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I used to joke with my friends. I’d say “I don’t hear voices in my head. Shut up Steve!”
Karma’s a bitch
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I dont think karma will come back around to my harassrrs
There was this guy in the same school as me when I was growing up. He was the ultimate milk toast. He was looked down on by the other kids, and a few of those kids gave him a hard time. I never gave him a hard time, but I always looked at him like, “Sheesh, I hope things get better for you.” Now the guy is a respected accountant, and a lot of the kids who gave him a hard time are derelicts. I was homeless one time, and I walked past a doughnut shop, and that guy was standing there looking at me exactly the same way I used to look at him. Bravo for life’s little ironies.
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I know one time I was very cruel talking about the “disabled” bus. I deeply regret it every time I think about this incident.
I don’t have any issues with mentally disabled or physically disabled people, other than they scare me and make me nervous (in the past), because back in 2000s no one talks about it. If you look too long or ask a question you’d have been shut down and told not to speak about that again. So I never learned how to deal with that.
Anyways I was maybe 13-14 and my neighbors were waiting for the bus with me, and I was so eager to make them laugh. The small bus came up, we got it often in my old neighborhood because of our neighbor who had autism and was blind. I said some rude things I’m not proud to have said. I never got them to laugh so I immediately felt so guilty and horrible.
I try my best to be very helpful and kind to those who are disabled. A kid in my theatre class has down syndrome and he’s very nice and is a smart kid. He came up to me to be partners when no one else was, which I found warming, and we talked about our papers and it was a light chat but he enjoyed talking about football and sports so I asked him about it. He told me about a kid in my grade who does football. He really was excited about it, I can tell he loves sports a lot.
It made me think. Last night I was thinking about why we think people with down syndrome/disabilities are “less” of a human than us. I know how much people deny that but deep down you know. So I was thinking about it, and I thought about how I have learning disabilities and I struggle to do most things, and then I realized that they’re exactly like us. They have a harder time doing tasks, but that doesn’t make them “less” than us. I struggle, too. Everyone struggles. But there’s a person behind all of that who feels emotions like everyone else and thinks the same things, whether inhibited or not. Because that kid is very smart. He has a hard time speaking, but I can tell there’s a lot more than what he looks like.
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