Hey Everybody! Let's have a Party!! I'm Marginalised!!

It has only just come to me, in a Damascene flash of light, that what has been wrong with me lately has been the gradual eroding away of my self-esteem. Well no, not the 'gradual eroding' but the almost sudden disappearance of any confidence I had left after the erosion.  Gone.  Zip. Taken the long-walk-on-a-short-pier option.

It's been happening, in increments, since I got caught up in that Kai'en incident in Shanghai. Just to recap for those at the back  (as an early Mike Skinner once said)  I mean this, which I couched in third person:- http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9950.

I think that was the first time in my life I'd come to see myself as a loser. I expect I'm lucky I held out so long: other people get born, and live a lifetime with this knowledge. But it comes as a complete shock to some of us to suddenly stumble upon this fact as if it were a stone on a pavement. Or is that just me?

Doing it live, in front of National Chinese television's millions upon millions of viewers, somewhat accelerated the process too, I tend to think.

Then it was The Flight out of China scenario, quickly followed by the I don't have a home period, and,  in quick succession,  the housemate from hell and the unChristian Christians periods. That last one, neatly and competently, managed to cap all that could be squeezed out at that stage.

But now, though I've even studied the fluff behind the door, I'm damned if  I could rustle up the slightest hint of confidence in any area of my life.

Which doesn't seem quite fair, all things considered.

This, I've found, is the full weight of poverty,

It causes one to re-think, yet again, what we think we know about the world at the best of times but, right now, (while still in the on-going culture shock phrase), comes the sudden thrusting up of not just a stone in the pavement, but a bloody great boulder:-
 I've moved on a Category.

Archaeological as well as cultural history acknowledges that humans seem, from the earliest finds, to have divided our lifetimes into stages for celebration.  We are born, become a child rather than a baby,then an adult, a parent: and then we traditionally wind it all up with the ceremony of  the 21st  birthday for our child which, definitively, casts one  into middle age.

After then most talk of celebration centres around the funeral arrangements, whether imminent or distant.

I think, therefore, we've been rather shortchanged here up at the shallow end. How on earth is one supposed to cope with these changes if no-one declares or celebrates them?

 I acknowledge that there are always birthdays to help keep a running total.  But there comes a certain time in one's life when people stop asking which of the plastic candle numbers they'll need to put on your cake. Surprise parties also get fewer as though people foresee a potential for danger if they gave one a sudden surprise.(I heartily dread the day when people will think that danger lies in the chance that someone has failed to undertake the need for all 'suprises' to be leaked so one has a chance to slip into a pair of Depends.)

But I think it would be rather wonderful if, one day. one was to come home to a housefull of the important people in one's life. trying to disguise themselves as potted plants before leaping out and shouting: -

"Surprise!!.  You're Old!"

I think that the current arrangement is really rather badly flawed, because it creeps up in fits and starts, or goes completely unnoticed, until one is brought up with a terrific jar.  Rather as though someone has yanked onto one of those huge, wood and iron brakes one spots on the trains in  Cowboy movies. It  prevents one from getting on: the importance of each indicator needs to be cogitated.

(It could be yet another revenue spinner for the retailers:- greeting cards to  herald  one's new estate...
 "So! You've found that first whisker!...lets dress up as tweezers and celebrate!" or a rueful "Ah-Hah. First time You've ever Laughed and A Drop of Wee Came Our, Huh?". Though this could attract criticism that Life was getting too commercial).

I think I need time to digest and assimilate all this new information now: imagine losing any faith in oneself - or in any area of one's self - right at the instant one got plonked from being part of the dominant group in society to being the disposable and the marginalised one. The one that all the fall-out shelters will be banned to.

Not only that but, many years after putting off child's estate, a sudden about face is needed. One has become part of the "The weak - including children and the elderly..."  The reality of which we all usually come to the first time someone gives up their seat for us in the bus.

No, I try not to be self-indulgent, but sometimes I really claim my right to have my voice heard: I want to shout to the world that enough is enough and it is just not fair. I don't even believe in the actual person of Job as anything other than a literary device. So why do I keep getting visited by plagues? I really am raising my right to put my foot down on all of this. Or I would do if I thought it would do any good.  But Eeyore and I know it won't.

 Especially since  I have come to realise that, as well as being unemployed,  I am now a Little Old Lady.

 lol.





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