The Blog Of Dysfunction

Warning: The following post contains general bitching about my life, so if you are looking for philosophy, humor or enlightenment, come back later or just go away. Not all lessons in life come by introspection and epiphanies, there’s a time for bitching and this is it.

I knew the moment she walked in that she had AIDS. Her chart said she was 21 but she looked a very emaciated and doleful 50. She and the skinny baby she was clutching protectively to her bosom had multiple opportunistic infections. Mother and child had been sick for months now, but her husband was sicker and she she was tending to him till he died last week. Finally she had found time now, after his last rites and being kicked out of her in-laws house, to see the nearest doc.

When I confirmed the diagnosis after the blood test, it was like I broke her last hope, and she cried like her baby. All I could do was hold her bony shoulder when she sobbed “why do good people suffer?”

I am tempted to blame her husband, who was a truck driver and had married her knowing he was ill. Or should I blame the society, which elevates the male to a status that allows him to do any vile act and get away with it? The media? which vilifies women in every possible ways from making them objects that enhance the appeal of cars and bikes to dumbing them down in soaps with all sorts of demeaning stereotypes. Should I blame the porn industry which objectifies women as less-than-human instruments-of-pleasure and preys on women with low self esteem to make their movies?  Or is it the governments fault for not having been able to provide education, employment and reliable health care? Should I blame the “loose” men and women, the unfaithfulness culture that has lead to the greatest massacre ever?

In my last seven years of being exposed almost continually to people in sorrow and pain and having had to come to terms with the gross injustice of it all, I have learnt one lesson well, that if you play the blame game, everyone loses. I cannot comprehend how there could be a beautiful cosmic plan behind all this, frankly it’s a lot more comforting to blame random chance, but I know that I too contribute to pain and suffering. I do so by indifference, by looking away and by holding on tight to my security blanket.  I dream of the day when I will stop just talking and actually become part of the solution, cliché  as that sounds, some day I am going to lose this blanket, and I hope that day comes sooner than later

I will sleep tonight, I have ranted and raved, vented and I have distractions and I will get up tomorrow and go back to being the smiley funny doc I am, and sadly it wont be just a mask. If there ever was a profession that requires you to sell your soul, it surely is mine.

ciao

schizo