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Why can't people just be nice?

DuckBread

I'm sorry for posting this here... I'm just really upset and want to get it off my chest.

I was just walking home and some guy rolled his car window down to yell at me. I didn't even hear the first part of what he said, but it ended with, "You fat b***ch". This isn't even the first time this has happened to me.

I don't care what this scumbag thinks of my appearance - he probably has no life and is clearly a tragic person if the only way he can feel good about himself is to put other people down. What upsets me the most is the principle of it. He doesn't know all the things I'm going through. He doesn't know that my walk home is exhausting because I've spent the entire day trying to 'blend in'. He doesn't know that I have depression and anxiety. Even if he did know all these things, he probably wouldn't care. I'm also annoyed at myself for telling him to "f*** off" - he probably wanted that reaction. I just got caught in the moment.

It worries me that these things happen to other people too - I can't bear the thought that people who are already insecure have to listen to things like this.

It's not just this man though... people can be so volatile towards each other. I'm seeing all these insults directed at Greta Thunberg (not about climate change - personal insults), and I just can't understand why people think it's okay to verbally attack a young girl.

I know that there are lots of amazing people in the world (lots in this forum too), and the majority of people are kind and have good intentions. I just need some help remembering that sometimes.

Can anyone share some positivity? I'd like to hear some nice stories.

Parents

  • I've been there many times myself, so I feel for you. If there's a group of cheeky schoolkids loitering on a street corner, I brace myself for it; my apparently rather Monty Python way of walking is always irresistible to them. So here's something very heartwarming that happened to me earlier this year (it's making me well up just thinking of it).

    I got invited out to a friend's birthday at a bar in a town a few miles from home. This is not exactly my favourite kind of socialising, and I was feeling a bit delicate already. But he's a very good friend, and we don't have much opportunity to see each other, so I pushed myself to go. I arrived there extremely flustered, after a stressful walk there because the roads had been unusually busy, which messed my senses up well and good. Going into the pub, which was packed, just made this worse. I pretty much went straight out to de-stress in the smokers area, and even when I came back was very self-conscious that my masking was rather wobbly. I've been trying to lower my mask much more lately, and can do so with some of the people who were there, but I would never dare it somewhere as public as a pub.

    A while later, by which time I'd managed to settle myself a little bit, a couple of regulars came in. They came and sat in our group, as they were well known to one of our group who works at the pub. They were father and son, the son autistic. I wasn't told this, nor did I ask. I didn't need to, because his autism is of a kind which makes masking impossible for him. But he's just one of the regulars; there wasn't a person there who wasn't patient with his communication difficulties, not one of them was ever condescending, there were no bulging eyes or secret whispers; his stimming was taken for the expression of enjoyment that it was.

    My excuse is that I'd had a couple of pints too many; but I kind of "outed" myself a bit that night, because after a while, I realised that, seeing him so comfortable there, I was having a bit of a rock, too. So I thought; in for penny, in for a pound, and we had a bit of a flap as well!

    (Dammit - I should have fetched a hankie before I started writing.)

  • in reply to Trogluddite

    Thanks, Trogluddite - that is heartwarming Slight smile It's really nice to know that it's safe to drop the mask sometimes. Did you watch 'Richard and Jaco take on the world'? They did a public stimming session to raise awareness of autism. It was a lovely programme in general actually.

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