It's possible this was only a troll, because he or she has not responded. If so, not a very artful troll.
I don't hate OP's guts, but I do pity him or her. To limit yourself to only friendships that are easy, to only people who share your level of ability and a limited list of specific interests, to friends who are never a burden it's just so sad. Not for OP's friend, for OP.
At my most limited, I thrived on the friends who could share with me in the telling what I could not experience in reality. And I shared with them, things they'd never experienced. And I never felt they or I were "slumming" because our abilities didn't match up. Nor did I feel anyone was bored to tears in my presence, because we found a lot of things to do, even when I was almost bed-ridden. Yes my friends have had to make adjustments like dropping me off at the door and then parking, and not parking so close to another car that I couldn't get out. But if it was tough for them once a week, they realized how tough it must be for me every day. I don't see that compassion, or that willingness to make small accomodations for a friend. Being overweight, even morbidly so is a relatively small consession. I learned what true inconvenience was when I met my FIL who was confined to a motorized cart from MS (his weight was barely above average, and he'd been at a healthy weight before his disability).
It made me realize how "handicapped accessible" is a joke. We went to restaurants and couldn't stay, because while they had handicapped parking and handicapped bathrooms, there was no way for FIL to move in the restaurant and no way to get to the handicapped accessible bathroom. What good is a handicapped bathroom (or parking lot for that matter) when the whole restaurant is inaccessible. The aisles were too narrow for the chair to get through (and it was one of the most streamlined chairs) and the tables were all so high that even if FIL had reached a table his eyebrows would be at the table height. How stupid!
When my husband asked why? The manager said "we did what the law required us to do," so the law was satisfied, but not the spirit of the law. The purpose of the law, to make public places accessible, was completely ignored. Iit wouldn't have taken a genius or an engineer to place a few tables at a normal height on the main floor, and to have a wider pathway (even just one) to the restrooms.
Empathy is always a bit of a challenge, because we only see with the eyes we have - but if we only choose friends who are our intellectual, physical, and emotional equals, it becomes impossible, because we never have a chance to experience or exercise true empathy. There's no opportunity for growth.
The world is a very boring and bland place, when we surround ourselves only with people just like us, and that's what it seems OP is trying to do. At any rate a lack of imagination comes through, because there are so many things to do besides the few that were listed. Whenever a person has limitations, they AND their friends learn to work around them, and no one "suffers" for it, unless they choose to.
Last edited by kaplods; 07-05-2011 at 10:46 PM.
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