PRESCRIPTION FOR FAILURE

In the midst of all the financial reshuffling and relocating involved in my recently having to change my car for a shinier, newer one, I also had to renew my prescription pre-payment certificate for another year. This is the little piece of cardboard bearing the magic number which means that for the next twelve months or so, the cocktail of drugs that Dr. Dougie Howser thinks are necessary to keep my blood pressure down to a level that keeps my heart beating and my brain from exploding with apoplectic rage, will only cost me the price of the certificate instead of the credit card numbers that getting them individually would.

I had left it to lapse for a while because the previous one had run out at the start of September but the last of my two monthly round of renewals had occurred at the end of August and so, to my feeble mind, it seemed unwise to pay to carry a card which I was unlikely to need for six weeks or so. Anyway, the time for the next renewal was fast approaching and the blister packaging in each of my many boxes was starting to look a bit empty, so I thought that I’d better hop onto the internet and renew it, which, because of our ongoing saga of still having no internet at the office at that point, I did at home one evening.

The next day, I just happened to mention this to a colleague because I have colleagues now. Well, I always did, of course, but I was seldom in the same room as them for any length of time. It doesn’t really matter, anyway, other than to set the scene. Nowadays, I have colleagues with whom I spend my days, and part of having colleagues around you is that you chat, and, because you regular readers of my ramblings will already be aware of what a dull person I am, one of the things that I chose to chat about was my prescription certificate renewal.

I know… It’s a wild and wacky world I inhabit, isn’t it…?

Anyway, m’colleague told me how guilty this made them feel because they, apparently, don’t have to pay for any of their medicines. Now, perhaps under other circumstances, or if m’colleague had been someone less likable, or if I’d been a regular reader of certain tabloid publications and they had been referring to certain sections of the community that they consider unworthy of such benefits, this might once have caused me to seethe with bitter resentment at the injustice of it all, but for once it didn’t.

People’s lives and needs and circumstances are all different and if they qualify for free prescriptions, well good luck to them. I don’t and so I have to pay, and by filling out my little form every twelve months or so, I don’t have to pay quite as much as I could. It’s just something else to budget for, that’s all. I suspect that if I did qualify for free ones it would be because my health or my financial situation would be far worse than they currently are, and that might be too big a price to pay as opposed to just having to fork out a few quid once a year.

It did set me wondering though, about the things that I do have to pay out for that other people don’t and, to be fair, there aren’t all that many. Oh, I might occasionally rail against the number of people rattling around in far newer cars than me and carrying a welter of gadgets far beyond the limits of my humble resources, but I suspect that many of them are also carrying massive quantities of debt on their shoulders, or have long-term leases, or are sponging off their parents at an age far older than ought to be considered decent or respectable for a grown-up person to be doing.

I used to work with someone who used to tell me far too frequently how “selfish” I was because I wasn’t married and didn’t have children. When she wasn’t criticising me for my selfishness, she would use the same criteria to describe me as a “failure”. I used to seethe quite a bit about that too, but I think I’ve managed to rise above it now. After all, if you’re very lucky, you get to choose to live the life you live.

I always thought that it was very interesting how my “selfish” behaviour meant that I got no tax breaks, no benefits and absolutely none of the “free” stuff that she considered to be hers by right of parenthood. In fact that you could argue that my “selfishness” meant that my taxes were part funding her little princess’s education and healthcare if you wanted to, for which I expected (and got) no thanks. Equally, I didn’t have all of the worry about the life of the precious darling nor did I have to endure any of her bitter resentment regarding not being able to go out as often as her more “selfish” colleagues could.

Not that I went out all that much myself, but that’s another matter entirely.

I think, in the end, that there was a certain amount of transference going on there, to be honest. I suspect that my “freedom” to do what I liked (i.e. not much) was seen as something of a source of resentment, which then manifested itself as dislike. After all, “dislike for the unlike” seems to have become part of the human condition for certain sectors of our culture. We want the people around us to be like us and live like us, otherwise we see them as different and some kind of a threat to what we consider to be “ordinary” or “normal”.

Sadly, at no point was that “caring”, “professional” and “unselfish” and, I believe also rather judgmental (although, here I am being just as guilty of precisely that) woman able to bring herself to sit me down and ask me why my life was the way it was, and what perhaps dreadful or upsetting circumstances had led to my being alone and childless at that age. Instead, because of her prejudices, I was instantly branded “selfish” and “failure” with no chance of redemption, filed away in her little mental box marked “useless” and never to be trusted, which was a shame really because, for a while, she was also my boss.

Ah well, I suppose it kept the pressure off and meant that I could quietly get on with my job rather than having other unwanted extra professional responsibilities thrust upon me like the “unselfish”, “successful” characters suffered, usually just before she dashed off to the school or the hospital, leaving all the selfish bastards she left behind to pick up her slack.

Live and let live, eh…?