Laying Myself Bare

Sometimes I wonder if I really DO have thick skin. I mean, I can take constructive criticism. I can take street people thinking "Are you okay?" is a good pick-up line. But through this new experience of phone banking for a cause, I'm confronting the very real possibility that maybe I'm just a big softy:( And it only takes one odd experience to "mess me up", so that I'm nervous and off my game for the next caller, and then the next, and so on. Just now I let the organizers know I won't be doing phone banking anymore, and I do feel bad. But I've been spreading the word among my friends and people I meet in town, so I feel good about my contribution. We do what we can do, and that's all we can do. On the "pro" side for me actually having a skin that is thickening, if not THICK yet, I told off a few online haters earlier, in a very decisive, almost annoyed (to be fighting over something so trivial) way! So maybe there's hope for me yet:) Maybe the problem is Ableism. There's so much of it quietly going on, the Disabled are quietly being told we don't matter as much--SO much--that it's begun to sink in. I wish I could sit here and rant that this is a fallacy, that the world is so wrong for invalidating our very existence, like "how dare we ask to be counted"--I wish I could, but I'm feeling weaker today. All it takes is one "faith shaking" moment in your day to make the ground seem less solid, and everything you thought you believed in to seem less sure...so it's a good thing I've taken myself out of the equation for this constant onslaught of subtle jabs at my belief system! The Disabled are people too. Everything YOU feel, we also feel. Every value we're taught or that is inherently within us--empathy and compassion for example, and a sense of right and wrong--is always there. And we show it how we can. It might not look the same as everyone else's compassion and empathy; it shouldn't. But it's always shown, if you look for it. When I feel myself in a situation where I have to defend the presence of these basic human qualities, that's when I shut down. I take it and take it and take it from a society that doesn't bother to assume I (or others like me) have feelings too. It's less exhausting than trying to explain myself to myopic minds. Maybe you just saw a flash of the thick skin? I sure felt it:) And that's why I love laying myself bare in this blog; it's therapeutic.