snix in sendai

Whenever I go home, I feel like I’m being presented as some sort of trophy. Not like the Asian parents who pit their children against each other in some sort of upper-class pissing contest, either. It’s more like “I gave birth to this daughter who does things that are probably pretty cool that I don’t understand, and the fact that I’m related to her means that I get some sort of bragging rights somehow, even though I didn’t actually do anything, but I’m going to make everything good that she’s done and make it sound like something undesirable.”

For example, today, my mom was introducing me to someone-or-another (“hey, this is my *other* daughter…”), and this person said, “oh, you mean the infamous one who’s off in Japan and traveling around the world and stuff. oh, I have one of those brainiac kids too.” And first, I wanted to say, “oh, hi, do you actually know what the word ‘infamous’ means?” And second, her tone was all “oh, one of *those* kids, you know, that type who feels the need to go out in the world and have their own life.”

Maybe I’m just oversensitive.

But, really, my mom has a way of making all these qualities – qualities that I feel like any reasonable person would think are good to have – and make them sound undesirable. Like, “yeah, she’s been independent since she was born. she’d never let us do anything for her – it was always ‘no, mother, I can do it myself.’ (*standoffish pose*)” And who would say that being independent is a bad thing? But it always seems like she’s really saying “oh, well, it’s nice that she’s independent and all, but I really just want another daughter who is closer to home and depends on me and isn’t off doing things that I don’t understand all the time.”

And, really, it just seems like typical “I’m threatened by the outsider, so I’m going to shun the outsider to strengthen the bonds within my in-group.” You know, middle school behavior.

And the more I try to succeed, the more I separate myself from the herd. This is why I can’t stay here.

I also meant to write about how they suck off my experiences in life into soundbites about <whatever, wherever i happen to be>, which they can spread on to their friends to make them look smart, but not threateningly so. I feel like this is the only place in which people take pride in not being too smart/educated. It drives me nuts.

I was going to end this post a couple of paragraphs ago, but then I remembered something else that bothered me. Since this is apparently my ranting post and all.

So many people have talked crap about doctors while I’ve been here. The past week, I’ve heard so many stories, _so_ many stories about people who went to the doctor, and the doctor said X, but the person just _knew_ that Y was wrong, and the doctor didn’t listen to them, and it turned out that Y was the correct diagnosis. And I just want to chew these people out.

Do you know what happens when doctors make mistakes? Do you know what happens when doctors don’t make mistakes but bad things still happen? Do you know that one mistake can cost a doctor tens, hundreds of thousands – millions – of dollars? And you want this doctor to treat you based on your guess? (it’s nothing more than a guess, after all. though you never hear these people say, ‘oh, well, i thought X was wrong, but it turned out the doctor was right.’) Where are your tests, your proof? Where is your medical training? Do you have any idea what people go through to become doctors? How many years of training they go through, the sheer volume of information they have to process and memorize? I don’t either. But I know just enough to know that you are insulting the profession of millions of skilled people by pretending that you know a thing or two about medicine from watching too many late night medical scare programs on TV.

But no, maybe you’re right and the average American is able to diagnose themselves better than trained professionals. Would you like to inform the current generation of med students, “hey, go find another profession; we’re all good, we don’t need you anymore”? Maybe pharmacy – you’ll probably need more people to give you the drugs you need.

That is all for today. Probably.

What is up with me and people who were once interested in me who I no longer have interest in continuing to show interest in me years after I have stopped being interested in them? Meanwhile, I fail wrt the people I am actually interested in. Why do you hate me, life??