Lots of pain. Around three weeks ago I felt like I'd been hit by a truck and was pretty much confined to bed. After multiple visits to doctors, and nearly a dozen donations to Dracula, it transpires that I have extreme vitamin D deficiency (healthy range is 44-100, I'm at 17) and rheumatoid arthritis - acceptable rheumatoid factor is less than 20, and mine is 313. That explains the pain! I've been in a very dark mood because I was so excited and even happy just before it hit me; I'm getting better mental health-wise and was looking forward to starting to live life, then I get pulverized into the ground. I don't understand why it's necessary for me to experience more pain than I already have in the last seven years. There isn't a waking moment I'm not in some form of physical pain.
I totally get that a young white girl living in the US, with some health insurance, doesn't have the same life the rest of the world does. There are bands of rebels in Africa going from village to village, chopping off hands/ears/noses for no fucking reason; human rights conflicts and protests are sweeping the mid-East; little girls are forced into prostitution every single day in SE Asia. And so I recognize, in the grand scheme, my maladies aren't high on the injustice scale, but I have a voice and a right to be heard.
That empowering knowledge comes from living in America, and while I was always proud to be one; not so much nowadays. I'm proud of what America offers and is supposed to stand for, and that will Never change, but I've become more aware of how insulated and ungrateful the majority of this nation is. It pisses me off to no end; this isn't so much the land of the free as it is the land of the lazy. 98% of the Americans I interact with don't want to know about the problems of other countries. And I hung my head in shame when an international study found the United States to be the most entertained, least informed country. Americans are, as a nation, idiots - and yes, at least half the time I include myself in that generalization. We are clueless as to what actually goes on in the world around us which is pitiful, given our freedom to access any information we desire. If I want to know what's happening, I have to turn on BBC America.
