If you don’t like my interpersonal behavior, then you have a problem, not I.
Please tell me what group of people I am misjudging. For almost a decade, I have been rejected and abandoned by the people I love and by the society for which I sacrificed a life of luxury specifically so I could devote my life to improving the lives of everyone in my society.
I can’t live in my own country because it’s too expensive, and when I asked my country for help, it offered a maximum of six weeks of food assistance. In my own country, police refused to protect me when I was attacked. A police officer threatened to arrest me on bogus charges if I slept in my car in “his” neighborhood a second time.
Almost every person who makes a promise to me breaks their promise: from small promises to life changing promises. I’ve been robbed by police, hostel employees, homeless people, and unknowns.
I was intentionally hit by a car—while I was trying to help people. People have tried to kill me, people broke my arm, a man stomped my head into the pavement multiple times and only stopped because his friend asked him to stopped. A coked-up hostel owner spit on me, hit me, and repeatedly stomped on me—in the presence of the police. And then the police made me pay the hostel owner so I could leave.
I was sexually assaulted while camping. I was sexually assaulted while very sick and sleeping on the streets of a large city. Someone kindly offered to let me do laundry, take a shower, and sleep on their floor: they sexually assaulted me during the night.
A church said it would not help me because I wouldn’t do group prayer twice a day, go to a sermon twice a week, and participate in a Bible study once a week. Three days after six people attacked me and broke my right arm, I asked a wealthy church a few kilometers from where the attack happened to let me sleep in a small area so I could escape the rain and not be afraid of being attacked again. The guy laughed a little and said, “no.” A church offered to let me sleep, indefinitely, in a storage room. They said I could stay as long as I needed to heal. A man in the church aggressively confronted me after two weeks because he was angry that I hadn’t started teaching English classes to the congregation. But the church hasn’t expected me to do anything, including teach English, as “payment.” Originally, their offer was based on the Christian ideals of feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and giving shelter.
There are dozens more events that I have not summarized here. I can count on one hand all of the people on whom I can rely. Every other personal relationship has wounded me. And every category of person (for example, police, Christians, random citizens) has hurt me.
If you think my interpersonal skills are unacceptable, then you have a seriously flawed understanding of the world. It is absurd to be offended by my words when the actions and inactions of hundreds of millions of people destroy my health and threaten my life.
There is a heartless, classist maxim, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” If you allow your wealthy society to be so cruel, gluttonous, greedy, and self-absorbed that you have an entire class of beggars, however, then the corollary to “beggars can’t be choosers” is “society can’t choose its beggars.”
I hate my life. I hate who I am. But I will not apologize for surviving. I will not apologize for being poor and sick.
