(no subject)

[serene]

The person on the listserv wrote to me offlist, a very long email that I didn't read, but I skimmed it, and she was wounded and defensive, and didn't appreciate what I said to her. Her first sentence was something like "I didn't say I wanted to be sick to lose weight" and I just quoted that and replied:

I didn't say you did, and I'm sorry for upsetting you. It's a sensitive
subject for most people, and sometimes I forget myself. My apologies.

Serene

Comments

[cantkeepsilent.livejournal.com]

Well said. Personally, I will commiserate with anyone whose health condition causes an undesired weight shift in either direction. Your clothes don't fit properly, and the disease has robbed you of your ... hmm, I want to say "body integrity", but that might not be the proper term. You should have the right to weigh what you want, except that she's lost that for the time being.

I also liked what you had to say earlier, but she evidently isn't in a place to process it at the moment. Perhaps she will have occasion to reflect on it in the fullness of time.

[zeldajean.livejournal.com]

It robs you of comfort in your own body. Whether or not you're personally happy with how your body is, you're used it how it is. Changes to that familiar shape that are out of your control are traumatic.

(just trying to fill in the gap there. that's how it feels to me, anyway.)

[gible.livejournal.com]

Go you being the bigger person hehehe

[leback.livejournal.com]

I think that's a very gracious response. Her defensiveness sounds excessive to me (she did *ask* people's opinions of whether it was silly), but I guess it's a loaded subject, and one imagines she's under way the hell too much emotional strain in general right now, and not everybody copes with crises as gracefully as you seem to, certainly.

I still hope that maybe when she's in a position to be more comfortably reflective about things, the points that you made will have some positive value for her.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Her defensiveness sounds excessive to me (she did *ask* people's opinions of whether it was silly),

I never ask questions unless I want an honest answer--I kind of suspect that serenejournal might be the same--so it's often hard for me to remember that isn't the case with everyone. Sometimes people ask an open question, but they really want to hear only one answer. Not being a mind-reader, I can't necessarily know when that's the case, but I am no longer surprised when it turns out afterward that it indeed was the case.