I have, for a few years now, belonged to an online support group for people living with multiple sclerosis. For most of that time, I found it to be a vital and safe place to find support and camaraderie. Until today.
For the last month, I have been following a protocol that has made such a fast and positive change for me. I was so excited to share it with my fellow spoonies, hoping it would be helpful to even just one person there. If even just one person thought, “Hey, I’ll try it” and if it helped that one person, then that would have made me so happy. To think I could’ve passed on something that could’ve helped someone, wow! Wouldn’t it have been awesome if it had made their life just a little bit easier? Imagine being able to make someone feel better, to make just a tiny difference in their life for the positive. To help them take away just a little bit of their pain and suffering. That’s such an amazing feeling.
I hopped online and typed out my experience and hit the ‘send’ button with so much excitement and positivity. When I went online the next day to see if there had been any response, I saw that my post wasn’t there. So I tried it again. I retyped it and posted it. But a few days later, my post still wasn’t appearing. Was something wrong with what I had said? Why were the admins not allowing my good news to go out to the group? Out of frustration last night, and I confess, under the influence of my sleeping pill, I posted a comment stating that I had tried to share my news but it wasn’t getting accepted so c’est la vie. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to be accepted since it was really just a frustrated ramble. When I woke up this morning my post was there with a string of comments. Now how is it that this drug-induced ramble was approved but my genuine news about something helpful wasn’t? To add insult to injury, there were a number of people accusing me of being a spammer, a scammer, or simply trying to sell something.
I was horrified! My attempt at a good deed was backfiring. How did that happen? At first, I was depressed, I’d been walking around all day with this dark cloud hanging over my head. Then I got angry, pissed off. Not just for being accused of being a scammer, but also for being called “he” when my photo and name clearly are of the more feminine variety. “Chicks can also be scammers you know Brenda!” yelled the voice inside my head, furious at thinking that this person obviously felt that I must be a man in disguise because what, women can’t be scammers?
But then I started thinking about how utterly depressing it is that we now live in a world where you can’t do something nice without people thinking the worst. The truth is that there are a lot of scammers and scumbags out there who will use everything, even your ill health, and misfortune, to try and scam you out of a few bucks. There’s a reason that “Brenda” thinks I’m trying to scam her out of….well, I’m not sure what exactly, a ‘like’? It’s because there are assholes under every rock, behind every tree, squatting there, waiting to pounce. They are everywhere. Our planet is infested with them. Like a virus, or mosquitos. I want to whip off my flip-flop and smash, smash, smash them with it. Splat! You MF!
Think about it. How many times have you tried to do a good deed only to have it backfire? How many times have you tried to do something nice and it’s gone horribly wrong? It happens all the time. A supermarket tries to give away expired yet perfectly edible food and they get sued, you try to return a wallet you’ve picked up and get accused of stealing cash from it; you hear these stories all the time. We’ve all been there. It makes you afraid to help others. But how sad is that? How sad is it that to protect ourselves, we need to be careful about saying or doing something kind? The world has become so cynical that it is now teetering on the edge of imploding from the lack of trust we have for each other. That is a great tragedy.
I often think of the young, the inspiring, the sadly fictional young man, Trevor McKinney, who asked the very important question, “What did you ever do to change the world?” Well, my little comment on an online support group won’t change the world, but remember, you may not be able to change the whole world for everyone, but by helping one person, you can change the whole world for them.