Not everyone is the same, and sharing information with a group of people isn’t something everyone can do, I get it. Along with that I also understand that some information can leave a person grappling for words. I’ve been on both ends of the situation and it isn’t easy. However, there are some instances that don’t warrant certain phrases, and I recently had an incident that inspired me to write this article after so long.
(Disclaimer: I’m not complaining and I’m not offended. Please don’t take this as whining and carrying on, this is just my way of suggesting a less awkward situation after the person opens up.)
Okay, so I take an abnormal psychology class for fun and for the out of major credit. We recently started talking about substance abuse, someone posed the question of which substance was worse for a child; crack or alcohol. It was a valid question and there weren’t many people who wanted to answer (we had been in class for a little over an hour so I’m sure people were exhausted; I know I was). I raised my hand, deciding to give my two cents on the matter, the best that I could.
Now, I don’t personally know someone who has fetal alcohol syndrome, nor do I have it myself, but I did study it when I went to my old school. It was a part of my childhood development class, so I could at least give a proven point on the matter between the two. The reason I say between the two is because I was born with a serious crack addiction, that caused my now mom a lot of hardship taking care of me after the state put me in her care. When I say scary, seeing an infant suffer from crack withdrawal is terrifying.
Depending on the level of severity, a child will experience trembling, and be in constant pain. Now, I wouldn’t know if it’s the same thing for adults going through withdrawal, but an infant can’t communicate what it is that’s causing them distress. My mom was clueless for months until she decided to take me to her doctor instead of the agency’s doctor and she was told what was wrong.
Anyway, I put my past out there to offer some sort of base of comparison between the two illnesses. Instead of getting an informative and active conversation about it, I got a lot of “thank you’” and “I’m so proud of you”. My question is….What are you proud of?
“Oh my gosh she’s complaining because someone told her they’re proud of her! Get over yourself!”
Okay, so that’s not why I’m complaining. I’m not even complaining, I’m legit asking a question. Why is my sharing something that is nothing to be ashamed of worth the phrase: I’m proud of you? Being born “dirty” is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not like you did the drugs, you suffered during development. It just led to a lot of awkward silence from me for the rest of the class, and then one of my classmates came up to me after class was over and told me she was proud of me. Like….Why are you so proud of me? Because I shared an honest experience? It’s not like I developed the addiction by choice and kicked it, I was born with it and my mom nursed me to health.
My advice for people in this situation is, take the news, thank them for sharing the information, and move on.
