As I said to Eric and others the other night after Eric started trying to reassure me that I do contribute things occasionally, that's missing the point both of some of the aspects of the advocacy and activist work I had been doing in the past two years and of the life lesson I am trying to learn for myself right now.
It's like when someone who is either fat or very skinny or has a facial scar or has a spinal deformity says to you “I'm working on learning body acceptance and overcoming my feelings of being [too heavy/too skinny/scarred/ugly]”, and your reaction is “but you're not [fat/very skinny/it's not that noticeable/etc.”.
By denying the *real experience* I am working on learning to accept and to overcome feelings of shame around, you are essentially enabling me at least — partially — not to learn the life lesson I need to learn, which is that it would be okay even if I never produced another thing in my life; it would be okay if my only contribution were that I *exist*.
When I say that I don't contribute, I'm talking about “contributing in a reliable and predictable way to offsetting what I take from society/the environment/etc.”. I'm not talking about things like my blogging, knitting the occasional baby blanket, etc., where no one is counting on me to produce something by a certain time or even at all. And that even if I never knitted another baby blanket, nor wrote another blog post, *that would be okay*.
no subject
It's like when someone who is either fat or very skinny or has a facial scar or has a spinal deformity says to you “I'm working on learning body acceptance and overcoming my feelings of being [too heavy/too skinny/scarred/ugly]”, and your reaction is “but you're not [fat/very skinny/it's not that noticeable/etc.”.
By denying the *real experience* I am working on learning to accept and to overcome feelings of shame around, you are essentially enabling me at least — partially — not to learn the life lesson I need to learn, which is that it would be okay even if I never produced another thing in my life; it would be okay if my only contribution were that I *exist*.
When I say that I don't contribute, I'm talking about “contributing in a reliable and predictable way to offsetting what I take from society/the environment/etc.”. I'm not talking about things like my blogging, knitting the occasional baby blanket, etc., where no one is counting on me to produce something by a certain time or even at all. And that even if I never knitted another baby blanket, nor wrote another blog post, *that would be okay*.