Do you ever feel invisible? I do.
There are days that I feel like no one notices my presence, or if they do, they disregard it almost immediately. I will be in the middle of a sentence and the person I am talking to will get up and leave the room. Or I will be talking and someone will interrupt me and when I try to continue speaking (after they have finished) no one seems to hear me or someone else interrupts me.
This morning I was trying to talk with my husband about something that had slightly angered me. He was scrolling through posts on Google+ and only half listening and whenever I stopped talking to get his feedback on what I had said, he commented about one or other of the posts that he was looking at, and I am fairly certain that by the time I finished talking, he had not been listening at all for a couple of minutes.
He is not the only person who treats me as though I am invisible. Most other people do too. My husband and I were sitting side by side at a party a couple of weeks ago and someone approached us and invited my husband to their party. Not both of us, just him. While I was sitting right there.
Anyway, that is not what I intended to write about this morning, I just needed to vent a bit I guess.
What I wanted to write about is the attitude I have encountered toward people on food stamps. Many of the people I have dealt with have been very nice about it, but there have been a few people that copped an attitude with me. I was paying for my groceries with my food stamp card and the guy behind me in line said "It must be nice to not have to pay for your food." I just looked at him and didn't say anything, but I was thinking "Oh yes, it's great. It's great to know that my water and sewer service are going to be shut off in a couple of days because I can't pay those bills. It's amazing to know that my phone service is going to be shut off because I can't pay it. It's nice to know that my mortgage payment hasn't been made in five months and that if it's not all paid up by next month the bank will take my house away and my family will be homeless. It's great to be humiliated and judged every time I pull out the card and tell the cashier 'It's EBT please.' Yes, sir, it's very nice."
Prejudice against poor people is rampant in the United States, and I don't completely understand why. Yes, some people are poor because of their own choices and actions (or lack of action), but not every poor person is to blame for their circumstances. We should try to have a bit more compassion for other people. We never know their trials and situation. We can't know what circumstances have brought them to the point they are at in their journey. Instead of judging, we should accept and respect other people (until the give us reason not to, as some of them will. But we shouldn't go into every situation expecting that we will be disappointed.)
Sorry if this is disjointed, I'm dizzy and tired this morning and having some thinking issues. :)
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