When Will I Feel I'm Home

I'm an alien in a strange land. This is not where I belong. I'm on a journey to my home; every day I make a step closer to that rest, that promise.

My extended family on my mother's side has been here for seven or so generations. Yet I don't feel this country is truly our home. If I saw on the news that a bill had been passed and that our family had to pack up and go because of whatever loophole the government or whoever made up, I wouldn't be surprised.

I bet we'd go, too. And without a fight. This doesn't feel like our home. We're tolerated here. Allowed. Not welcomed, not accepted. How can this be our home? When can we go home?

Being Patient

Something's been bugging me about how I've been treated by doctors since I've become an adult (when I've noticed more how people interact with me). I feel as if I've been treated with an apathetic attitude, as if I don't matter all that much. I'll go to review sites and see that most of the other patients really like the doctor so that I feel that I've seen a completely different doctor.

I now have a doctor (actually a nurse practitioner) whom I trust and think would take steps to see that my problems or concerns are addressed. When I ask questions, I'm not dismissed or given monosyllabic answers. It's a refreshing change, and unfortunately, I'm quite unused to it.

The doctor I had before her 1. did not answer my questions 2. did not seem concerned that I felt ill 3. was overall kind of rude, as if I was keeping her from doing her job somehow, even though I was her job. Yet I see the reviews and no one else has a problem. There have been many occasions in which I have been misdiagnosed (ulcers, stomach infections, obesity!) because various doctors have not felt it necessary to give me simple tests that would have shown the cause. They treated me as if I'm lying about every symptom I have.

My son's doctor is getting better now that he's getting to know us, but why should how long he's known us affect how well he treats my son? The last doctor I took him to kind of held us at arm's length. He also did that annoying thing where he asked why we were there when he was the one who requested that we make the follow-up appointment. So while the current doctor needs to work on his bedside manner, he's an improvement. I hope he takes my concerns about my son's legs seriously on our next visit.

And my husband? His experiences are sickening. For instance, two years ago he had a simple problem, but when he went to see the clinic, the doctor stood at the door and wrote him a prescription after he gave her a short description of what was wrong. She also said something might be wrong with his liver and then left the room.

The ethnicity of the doctor doesn't matter, though gender does (my family and I have been treated horribly by female doctors). Black doctors (including an Nigerian one), white doctors, Asian doctors, etc. all have a record of poor service for me and my family.

I have no idea what this means.

Double Standards

I think about things a little differently than most. I used to believe that my perspective was common, but when I spout off my ideas, the people around me look at me as if I'm a one of those homeless people who are slowly leaking crazy all over the floor, and why won't they quit babbling?

When it comes to ideas about women's rights and feminism, I'm ambivalent. That's a weird thing coming from a woman, I know, but hear me out. Top tier for me are human rights. Is this woman being treated fairly and rightfully as a human being? Are there some human beings receiving rights and benefits that she is not? Why?

I don't care that the answer is because she is a woman. I only care that she is treated fairly. How she is treated should have nothing to do with her gender (or sex--but that's a whole 'nother can of bananas). Yet some people make women's rights not about equaling up the playing field, but about women getting what they deserve.

It ends up with this weird mixture of regression and spite. For example, people behaving as if women should be the ones deciding if what's happening to them is fair or not. However, how is that different from our current system in which mostly men (of a certain demographic) decide the rightness of a situation?

I despise double standards. When the implications of a societal norm are not thought out, it leaves everyone hurt. Take, for instance, the issue of physical threats. We're in a bar. It's night and the place is crowded and boisterous. A man laughs loudly with his friends, making large gestures with his arms as he tells a grand story. He steps back in his reenactment and bumps into a woman behind him and spills her drink onto her blouse. "Sorry," he says. In response, the woman dashes the contents of her glass in the man's face. The man shoves the woman lightly.

In most cases, the man will be bounced or have the cops called on him. What happens to the woman? Oh well, you see...physical disparities. Well, let's change the woman to a scrawny twenty-one year old dude. What happens in this scenario? Why is it different? Oh, still a strength discrepancy? Let's make the man who spills the drink a linebacker. Well, the young guy should know better than to throw a drink in man's face when he has no chance of defending himself.

And a woman shouldn't? But, someone will think, the man shouldn't be resorting to physical violence at all. And the woman should? Throwing her drink in his face is an assault, no doubt about it. Oh, it burns me. I've read too many stories in which a man is maimed by some woman and she isn't even called out on it, let alone punished. I seem to be the only reader who is disturbed. This is an ideal situation? Why is this acceptable?

Why are rights treated as if they were non-replenishable and scarce resources? Giving women more rights doesn't mean they have to be taken away from men. Just because some men oppress doesn't mean that they are all inferior.

It will take a lot of relearning on all sides for gender relationships to become truly equalized. If no one is superior to the other, then no one should be treated as superior. That's a roundabout statement and not an obvious one at that. We women can sometimes demand contrary things. We won't our dinners paid for and our doors held open, but we don't want to pay for a man's dinner or open his door. No, we'd rather just pay for our own meals and open our own doors if everyone's going to get touchy about it. Remember this anniversary, we demand. Yet the things that are important to the guy we deem unimportant and fail to remember.

This culture of treating men as if they were expendable oafs is toxic. No one will win this war.