About a month after I came home from the hospital, my mother said I should write a script based on my life. I dismissed the idea for many reasons, not the least because no one would care about an Asian queer/genderqueer person. She got angry and said I would be an inspiration to people, as if that meant I was obliged to do it. Which, come to think of it is pretty much the case for her. Martyred service.
It’s interesting because in Ask A Manager today, there are two questions about serving others (in a way). One is the term ‘servant leader’, which is an AGILE term, apparently, but for me, it’s an Evangelical Christian one. In addition, I don’t think ‘servant’ anything should be on a resume. It just invokes old-timey British period pieces, which is probably not what people want it to say. At any rate, there was too much diversity in opinion for people to use the term without checking to see if it’s a valid one in their field.
Side Note: Someone in the discussion was saying she didn’t think it was a dog whistle because she had never heard of the evangelical Christian version before. I nearly had an apoplectic fit reading that comment because that’s what a fucking dog whistle is. Something that can pass for normal to the uninitiated, but that makes a point to those in the know. I mean, what the fuck do they think a dog whistle is?
I am getting angry about it all over again. I know it’s a case of someone is wrong on the internet, but this is the actual definition of the term! For fuck’s sake. I can’t even. It just makes me agog. AGOG, I tell you!
The other question was about making a comment to a student that you ‘know’ has an eating disorder. But you’ve only known them for three days. Sigh. This is something that seems very counter-intuitive for empathetic people, but here’s the brutal truth–many times, doing the empathetic thing is for the empathizer, not the other person. I’m saying this as someone who is a huge empathizer. Oftentimes, it’s the distress of feeling bad that is the motivator to push forward and help someone else.
Eating disorders are really hard to heal from. I’ve dealt with anorexia twice (with a side helping of bulimia once), and I went from that to compulsive overeating. And, at a certain point, I didn’t do any of that, but I still had body issues. As I’ve detailed several times here, it was me dying and coming back to life (twice!) that got me over my body issues.