[Elspode]

I'm afraid, LJ, that this is a classic case of differing viewpoints. I don't really find Mari's posts to be offensive. Does she expect too much from Society? Maybe. But, people speak from their hearts. The contents of people's hearts differ. The levels of people's tolerance for varying degrees and forms of expression differ as well.

Mari suffered a life-changing misfortune, and she tells us how she feels about it. If she's out slogging through the snow delivering phone books, then I can scarcely feel that she's not doing what she can to make the best of it, so I tend to read what she has to say, and don't let it bother me if it is at times seems to me to be whiny or whatever. After all, I'm not brain-injured, delivering phone books, and if I was, who knows what I'd say about things?

Even so, perhaps I have a different view of such circumstances, since I am the parent of a disabled, brain-injured adult child. Maybe I see things differently because I know how difficult the System is, how much tap-dancing you have to do just to get the most meager of subsistence income and keep it. I have firsthand experience with the spirit-crushing rejection that a disabled person can face trying to retain the most meager of jobs, of being unable to afford much of anything, ever. I see daily the loneliness and ostracization suffered by my son because he talks funny, thinks poorly, and is embittered and angry much of the time.

You, on the other hand, may have a lower tolerance for this sort of thing. At least, you do here on The Cellar. I'm sure you are a generous and sympathetic person IRL. So - perhaps Mari's view of the world isn't as positive as that of others, and perhaps she, too, judges the world differently, more harshly, more bitterly. Maybe her expressions of her worldview offend you because you haven't walked a mile in her proverbial shoes?

Or maybe not. Maybe we're all just whiners in the end, spoiled American losers who would have been dead ten years ago in a less prosperous land. And maybe we should all just shut up and like it.

I've often thought about having my son join The Cellar, but honestly, I didn't want to see him beaten up here...and he would be, for much the same reasons as you dislike Mari's postings. The Cellar is too edgy a place, and has too definite a limit for personal strife and the expressions thereof.

Or maybe I'm just a wishy-washy pussy...who knows?