I have been angry about something that happened recently. I've written extensively about it elsewhere, making big strides in exhausting it. But anger doesn't easily dissolve, and self-righteous anger, especially, wants to be revelled in, I guess. I know.

Self-righteousness, that's part of it. Not just why I'm angry, but what I'm angry at. So: What good comes from identity-based communities? Pride. Belonging. Support. Community itself. Understanding.Cooperation. But then also? Excessive pride, and fuel for self-righteousness, fuel which presents itself as being part of something so much greater than oneself, not at all petty, not self-involved.

Of course, individuals can create a victim mentality all on their own; you don't need to be backed up by a community to say you're all alone in the world. But then it's an exchange you make, one you would only make when you feel you have almost nothing to lose, right? You exchange the notion that you might have any allies for the right to demand pity. You declare bankruptcy.

When your right to demand pity comes from belonging to a larger identity group telling you that you, as a member of this group, deserve pity, pity-greed can set in. It's still a trade-off, still something you do when you're feeling hurt, but I think you can then resort to it much quicker, much more easily.

This is a cold entry, I know. I don't feel cold. I feel full of sympathy, and angered when it's abused. Pity and sympathy are good and called for, sometimes. But sometimes they are treated like currency. If you think you are owed some, it can justify abusing others.

And if you think you deserve none that's bad too, that's hard, no one should be made to feel that way, I know, I swear, but that's not what's angering me right now.

Someone came to my house. I did not know her very well, but invited her to visit so we could get to know each other better and because she wanted to get away from her home and needed a place to go. After an awkward conversation she became hostile towards me. It didn't settle down; it just got worse. She said increasingly hostile things to me, cursed whenever she accidentally encountered me in my own house, insisted she would have to leave as soon as possible even when I said she could stay. It got to the point where I agreed that she needed to leave, hopefully by the next day, because she was being so unkind to me in my own space - and she was furious at being kicked out, acting as though I was prejudiced against her for being emotionally unstable. I offered to help her find a bus. She refused my help and made more accusations against me. I offered again, said I'd warned her the night before that she would need to leave and was trying to make that easier for her, not that I expected her to be happy... but she still refused, still told me I was horrible, finally I said I had to hang up but if she wanted help later she could call me. I ended up driving her to a hotel, she was still saying cruel things, I felt warn out and furious -

I kept offering to her what I could offer, not to give myself up to her or let her stay in my house spitting verbal abuses, but what I could reasonably offer to make this less difficult for her - and she would spit on my offers until I rescinded them, until I walked away, and then, because I wasn't offering help anymore...

she would call herself the fucking victim of my cruelty. Because she is Mad and oppressed. Because the world won't bend to her when she threatens suicide. Because she is Mad and oppressed and those who disagree with her are the oppressors.

fucking shit. It would be a gross oversimplification to say the "mad community" has disappointed me, and I know that; I've had a bad experience with one person who I felt used her "victim" status in a horrible way, and I know that means little, happens within all identity groups. I never expected this new community, although it centers around a trait I have long since wished I could see reflected in more of those around me, to be perfect.

But in little moments of gross oversimplification, that's what it feels like, and that's why I am still ranting self-indulgently, I guess.

This has otherwise been a decent week; I'm hoping there's a much-desired job on my horizon, I've had a wonderful time getting to know the friend the above-mentioned person brought with her, and... well, I'm dealing with some medication withdrawal, which sucks, but at least I'm dealing with it. I haven't figured out exactly where I'm going in terms of medications, but something is changing, and that's good news.

Grrrrr.