ANGRY MONOLOGUE
http://soundcloud.com/valerie-k-reid/angry-monologue-enabler-crap
All right, that’s enough. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to just shut up. I can’t listen another second to this “Enabler” crap. It’s so easy to say, isn’t it, such a safe way to label, to look down your smug nose at her, because it’s so accepted, so correct, makes you look so smart, so superior.
“I certainly wouldn’t put up with that,” you say from your privileged pedestal.
Oh, BULLSHIT. You don’t know WHAT you would do because you are lucky enough NOT TO BE IN HER POSITION!
Her husband stopped working, crawled into bed, pulled the covers over his head, watches television, and WILL NOT GET HELP. What do you SUGGEST?? Tell me - what IS the right thing to do???
How about this – she should say, “Hell with it. If you’re not going to work, why should I?”
Then quit her job and lie around the house, too?
Like this would work???
Sure! Up he would get and work from that day forward!
Good GOD! These are serious problems he’s got. Do you GET THAT? Do you COMPREHEND??
She can’t afford to play those games!! She has children and bills to pay and food to buy!!!!!
Instead SHE WORKS MORE!
She’s keeping her family afloat. Because SHE is the only RESPONSIBLE, THINKING, ADULT in the house,
NOT “An Enabler. “
She fights and functions even when she’s tired and weary and heartsick and longing to pull the covers over HER head EVEN MORE!
(More calmly) If you came upon the scene of a bad car wreck and the victims were lying around injured – one bleeding to death, one shrieking hysterically, one staring in shock who can’t be moved for all his broken bones … would you walk away?? (Pause) What if they are not strangers but your family, and you are the only one still standing? Would you curl up in a ball? Would you sit and cry and wring your hands? Would you say, “Too bad for you, but I gotta go. You can’t expect me to stick around and BE an ENABLER, of all things!!”
(More quietly) Well, let’s HOPE you would roll up your sleeves and walk through the flames and shattered glass and apply pressure to the wounds and minister to their injuries and seek help and NOT STOP even when you are exhausted and praying it will end, and becoming injured yourself.
YOU – WOULD – FUNCTION.
Because that is what a human being MUST do.
You would not call THAT person –
who tended to those bleeding, broken people the BEST SHE KNEW HOW – or YOU, if it was YOU who said, “I am the only one standing. By God, I’d better snap to and function cause they can’t” –
you wouldn’t call THAT person, or YOURSELF, an “Enabler” would you?
Of course not!
There’s a much better word for that person.
So you swallow that nasty “Enabler” word. You swallow it, and you call her what she really is.
You use THIS word when you talk about her -
THIS word -
HERO.
You call her that.
This is for all the women and men out there who find themselves in intolerable and heartbreaking family situations and not only have to stay strong and sane while struggling with the problem itself, but have to defend themselves to people who are fortunate enough to have no clue what they are going through.
http://soundcloud.com/valerie-k-reid/angry-monologue-enabler-crap
All right, that’s enough. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to just shut up. I can’t listen another second to this “Enabler” crap. It’s so easy to say, isn’t it, such a safe way to label, to look down your smug nose at her, because it’s so accepted, so correct, makes you look so smart, so superior.
“I certainly wouldn’t put up with that,” you say from your privileged pedestal.
Oh, BULLSHIT. You don’t know WHAT you would do because you are lucky enough NOT TO BE IN HER POSITION!
Her husband stopped working, crawled into bed, pulled the covers over his head, watches television, and WILL NOT GET HELP. What do you SUGGEST?? Tell me - what IS the right thing to do???
How about this – she should say, “Hell with it. If you’re not going to work, why should I?”
Then quit her job and lie around the house, too?
Like this would work???
Sure! Up he would get and work from that day forward!
Good GOD! These are serious problems he’s got. Do you GET THAT? Do you COMPREHEND??
She can’t afford to play those games!! She has children and bills to pay and food to buy!!!!!
Instead SHE WORKS MORE!
She’s keeping her family afloat. Because SHE is the only RESPONSIBLE, THINKING, ADULT in the house,
NOT “An Enabler. “
She fights and functions even when she’s tired and weary and heartsick and longing to pull the covers over HER head EVEN MORE!
(More calmly) If you came upon the scene of a bad car wreck and the victims were lying around injured – one bleeding to death, one shrieking hysterically, one staring in shock who can’t be moved for all his broken bones … would you walk away?? (Pause) What if they are not strangers but your family, and you are the only one still standing? Would you curl up in a ball? Would you sit and cry and wring your hands? Would you say, “Too bad for you, but I gotta go. You can’t expect me to stick around and BE an ENABLER, of all things!!”
(More quietly) Well, let’s HOPE you would roll up your sleeves and walk through the flames and shattered glass and apply pressure to the wounds and minister to their injuries and seek help and NOT STOP even when you are exhausted and praying it will end, and becoming injured yourself.
YOU – WOULD – FUNCTION.
Because that is what a human being MUST do.
You would not call THAT person –
who tended to those bleeding, broken people the BEST SHE KNEW HOW – or YOU, if it was YOU who said, “I am the only one standing. By God, I’d better snap to and function cause they can’t” –
you wouldn’t call THAT person, or YOURSELF, an “Enabler” would you?
Of course not!
There’s a much better word for that person.
So you swallow that nasty “Enabler” word. You swallow it, and you call her what she really is.
You use THIS word when you talk about her -
THIS word -
HERO.
You call her that.
This is for all the women and men out there who find themselves in intolerable and heartbreaking family situations and not only have to stay strong and sane while struggling with the problem itself, but have to defend themselves to people who are fortunate enough to have no clue what they are going through.