... regarding the events of the last couple of years. Many of those events have been most unfortunate, in that they never, ever seem to result in the most basic of personally needed outcomes. Processes, both complex and simple, that should be relatively easy for me to navigate, relying upon common understandings about The Way Things Work, which, having been negotiated fully once (or more?), never ever quite seem to eventuate in anything resembling the most basic consideration of what are fundamental human needs on my part. Access to paid employment. Social inclusion. Notification of a parent's death. An inheritance, or even the small act of passing along the deceased parent's personal objects, even if they have no monetary worth. Physical safety. Medical care. It will never be acceptable to provide an unsafe housing arrangement and then refuse to take responsibility for the (possibly permanent) damage that arises as a result of that absence of safety, that impedes my ability to walk around, to dance, to participate fully in society. And yet, it seems, some people consider this is an entirely reasonable response when it comes to *my* life. No matter how many times this occurs, no matter how many arguments are found for or against these responses, it is never ever acceptable to treat a person, any person, in this manner. It is the greatest act of callous negligence. It is the greatest of betrayals that this refusal comes from an organisation to which my life is bound by virtue of my husband's choices, a bond which has cost me in sacrifice again and again for years. When will this incessant cost to me cease? At what point am I so personally damaged that my undeniable claim to better treatment is finally recognised in a way that results in even a very basic outcome in my favour?
My knee now makes loud scraping noises that it didn't prior to my fall. One of my ankles has only a fraction of the pain-free movement of the other, despite weeks of diligent stretching exercises. I cannot walk around the block without crutches. My hip still hurts intermittently, and my gait is that of someone decades my senior. I have not danced since before I fell on those loose stones, and my cardiovascular fitness is deteriorating with each week that passes. I will be unable to drive until my legs are healed. I have been nearly entirely housebound for weeks. There is at least one chip on my front teeth that has resulted from the contact between my mouth and the corner of a paver, but I haven't yet had access to a dentist to check for further dental damage. With all of this going on, I am hardly able to wade back into the workforce, so my income earning potential has also been curtailed. How is any of THAT covered by contents insurance, which insures against the event that someone else tries to sue me for being injured by <*list of events, not including failure of landlord to provide a safe housing environment*> but doesn't articulate the specific compensatory pathways for a tenant who is injured by a hazard that the landlord failed to mitigate with appropriate, regular maintenance and exercise of careful hazard identification processes? This is going to take me a loooooong time to recover from. The stress of being subjected to this kind of treatment, on top of the fact of still having no resources to support my optimal healing, is an additional burden on top of all of the very many other slights, injuries and acts of utter disregard for my fundamental rights that have occurred in recent years. Am I conflating a number of separate life issues into one that is bigger and more personally overwhelming than the sum of its parts? Absolutely. Because that is what has happened, consistently. Things that individually might involve simple steps to resolve have been unresolvable. The sum of all these many things is a huge, impenetrable barrier, which keeps me locked in a place where no amount of fair, reasonable requests are ever responded to in fair, reasonable ways. I pay and I pay again, and that payment, it seems, is never met with appropriate, fair-minded provision in return.
Is there another forum to negotiate these challenges? Possibly. But if there is, it has been deliberately concealed from me. I am kept waiting for a sign of improvement, a sign that anyone, anywhere gives the slightest part of a damn about me, about my contributions, about my potential for even greater contributions. About the limitations that this relentless finding-against-me creates, artificially, in my life. I am kept waiting for improvements that are hinted, even overtly specified, but do they come? Do they ever come?
Do they come, or am I toyed with, obstructed, delayed and misdirected until I lose my focussed intent? Do they come, or do I eventually forget, yet again, the acts of careless disregard and unfair, unfounded dismissal of my needs, the constant troubled clambering from one unstable foothold to another, until finally, I fall, literally, and am injured, literally, and no-one steps up to help? Or rather, there is a grand theatre of persons appearing to help in ways that never, ever quite result in a permanent resolution that goes in my favour? For years I have fought, tooth and nail, to protect the rights of other people, many times over. My fairness and compassion have been a hallmark of my decision-making and actions as directed to those people I have had the privilege to be able to serve in this way. So where is the commensurate response towards me, when I am in need? Why is it always so bloody difficult, so frustrating, so personally disempowering when I am the person who is receiving the brunt of something that is unfair? Why am I the person who pays the cost, when the other party, had they paid up as they should, would not even incur a cost? And after several years, with thing after thing stacked on top of each other, it has become like a grand landscape made of nothing but loose pebbles, everywhere I tread, always threatening to upend me painfully when I least expect it.
I don't know how to resolve this situation. All I can do is keep trying, keep asking, keep exploring options until a way opens. There is only so much unfairness that a person can be expected to suck up, and I have had more than my share, many times over. So I won't suck it up anymore. I will spit it out. I will spit it out in words, sharpened into exquisite, effective points. And I will aim those words wherever they will find their mark. My days of being victimised while I quietly maintain an appearance of personal dignity are over. You can stick your quiet, victimised dignity in the same place that torrid injustice goes after you're done dumping it on someone like me. Real personal dignity is asking for help and being treated with respect while that help is given - even if that means people need to do better, be better, make better decisions and act in better ways than they did the last time they were challenged by something similar. But it never requires me to tolerate exploitation or silently accept the repeated abuse of my basic rights and needs, no matter how it's dressed up or what purpose it claims to serve.
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