Reactions

Brachial plexus injuries spark all sorts of reactions. Whether a person notices or I tell him or her, people respond in a variety of ways. Some people just have no idea how to respond, some people immediately pity me, some people laugh, some people are surprised they've never noticed before, some people are amazed that I've dealt with it, some people just say they're sorry, some people ask a million questions, some people change the subject, some people don't believe me, and on and on and on. Something so rare and confusing can scare or amaze or anything in between and that's okay! I feel like you always hear stories about people getting really upset about insensitive comments by strangers about their insecurities or injuries or whatever it may be but with BPI, I don't see the point. I was born like this and I will live like this and maybe 99% of the people I meet haven't or don't or won't understand this part of my life so I've seen pretty much every reaction you can imagine and I'm okay with them all. I think I used to be really sensitive about it but why should I? Why should I be hurt by it when no one but me knows how my life has been changed by it? Once again, they don't understand and that's okay. It's okay if they want to and try to or if they don't want to and have no interest in talking about it or if they nervously laugh it off or whatever because I should never expect someone to understand or know exactly what to say to something they would never expect. And I hope none of you do either. No one's trying to hurt you so don't let them. You have to remember that you've been learning about BPI your whole life when the majority of the world has never even heard of it. They will react how they react and we gotta just let it bounce right off of us.