Reflection on Abortion & Euthanasia, Take 3, P3: Where my neighbor spits in my face mid-pandemic
Channel: Ari R pronouns she or they
Date: 30/06/2021

Expanding on the "if you care how I'm doing, don't ask": in therapy, I learned I am very much not alone in despising the question "how are you" and its infiltration into transactional interactions. Instead of "how are you" to someone who may be unwell OR when listening to a genuine response could be inappropriate for the setting, an expression of hope can be useful: "I hope you're as well as possible," "I hope you're getting by okay," "I hope things are going as well as they can" are a few that are less rage-inducing for me.


I respect and - to some extent - appreciate the neighbors across the street, and I get frustrated with myself when I feel like I cannot summon the discipline to act with kindness toward them. The neighbor who spit in my face lost what remaining shreds of respect I had for her in December 2016, and the only reason [redacted to avoid communicating a threat] is out of respect for my life partner. Until we can afford to move, we are stuck with that rancid husk of a woman as a neighbor, and apparently I cannot get a restraining order because I'm enraged on behalf of her children, her intimate partners, and her tenant(s) for the damage she is doing to their (and my) long-term mental health, not afraid for my life, which was the question the officer asked me when he said I would have to ride down to the magistrate and file a restraining order request there in person, which is basically my only recourse besides building a privacy fence. That's what the maskless, insensitive police officer suggested: "Oh, your neighbor spits in your face and violates your property line, and you only live here because you can't afford to move? Spend money you don't have on a privacy fence." Should've ordered the body camera footage.


And to be fair to that rancid husk of a woman, what she needs is a metric fuckton of therapy and better living conditions herself. I don't begrudge her that as long as she stops abusing people during the process.

I also want to note here a paradox that I don't explain until much later in the reflection for folks watching as I release the videos: Suicide prevention organizations may disgust me, and I may not want to interact with them personally, but I AM somewhat glad they exist for the people who WANT access to their services and NEED access to the data they collect and share. I may have wanted to opt out of membership in this sorry excuse for a species decades ago, but enough people value life that I can respect offering support to people who WANT the support.


The shout out to Crash Course in the video part of the reflection doesn't come until much later, but here seems like a reasonable place to note that I appreciate their videos, and the new Black American History series is the most recent place I was reminded that living and dying are both forms of resistance. I'm linking the most recent video I've watched in the series, not necessarily the one where I heard Clint reinforce that living is a form of resistance, too: https://youtu.be/XT8q6cYsVpc


If I hadn't abandoned religious views before learning that we did slavery and attempted genocide this side of the pond, too, I hope this would have been the straw. If you need some god to shame or coerce you into doing good, you probably just doing oppression.