Oh, well, that's alright then ... you're excused from behaving like a reasonable human being for however long you see fit. Feel free to be as rude as you like, to whomever you wish, whenever the mood takes you, because … you’re special and nobody anywhere else in the World could possibly understand what it’s like to be going through what you are.
I mean, take me for instance: the first eighteen years of my life spent under the shadow of The Troubles, people being shot, kneecapped, blown to pieces every month, if not every week, somewhere in the UK … living in London, one of the biggest targets for IRA bombs ¹, every day potentially my last, if I was just unlucky and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, getting off suspended trains only to walk up the tracks past shot-up stations and bodies under blankets … and, even when I left the UK, still in danger every time I returned to see my family for the next fourteen years (Heathrow being an especially favourite target), hoping each time that if this were to be my last Christmas, please let it be after I’ve seen my family, not before … in Brixton for the riots in 1982, 1985 and, as luck would have it, 2011 (only not getting beaten by the mob because my black friends made the case I was their albino cousin)
… what would I know about living through stressful times?
Or my family in Ireland?
Or my friend who lived through Yom Kippur War as an exiled Russian child … what would he know?
My friend whose family had to flee Surinam during the coup d’état … what would he know about such things?
My friend, a child under Franco’s fascist regime, whose family were persecuted for being ‘seditious’, what would she know about living in fear?
My friends from Chile, who only narrowly avoided becoming members of the disappeared themselves … what would they know?
My friend who had to flee Rwanda during the genocide there?
What would any of us know about how hard you have it?
What would anyone know how difficult life can be for nice, middle class girl, living in the richest country on the face of the planet with democratic elections due in a couple of months?
I hesitate to say …
… because, you know, the situation in the US is looking a trifle unstable right now and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Plus I have friends there, about whom I care greatly and I’m concerned for their safety and well-being, so it isn’t something I’m dismissive of.
But, on the other hand … you might like to think about calling the Samaritans (or your local equivalent), because, whilst they, apparently, love sob stories, I have no sympathy for entitled snowflakes who … unlike either myself or any of my truly lovely friends and family, who lived through dangerous times, during which any of us could have been killed at random or as targets of oppressive government/military regimes … think their personal circumstances give them carte blanche to (unprovoked) behave badly towards others at all, never mind dismiss our subsequent objections to such unmerited treatment.
Jesus wept.
—
¹ So much so that … to this day … there are no trash/garbage/refuse bins/cans at any rail/bus/whatever station, so that bombs can’t be left there.
