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| Lizard in a Bishop's Lace White Lace flower bud |
I can't even count the number of times over the last week that I've spammed my friends on Facebook with this picture and the plea to vote for it in a Garden Photo Contest.
What started as a forward from a friend about the photo contest - has become an entirely different contest all together.
I sit here in my office shaking my head at myself.
Laughing at myself as well.
But more than that - humbled by how many warrior friends have stepped up to help me win the contest.
So often in this "Life with Autism, Seizures, and a side of PANDAS" I feel so alone, so isolated. Yet over the last few days I have been reminded of just how not alone I am - and I am deeply grateful to each of you for showing such love and support over a picture in a contest.
A contest where the first prize was $300 to be used at the Garden Center that is the host of the contest - and as all of my warrior friends know - that is like a million bucks. Money you have to spend on something other than medical bills and supplements is priceless. So I worked hard at "earning" it through begging for votes...
But, alas, it is a contest I don't care if I win anymore.
All I have been focused on the last several days has been that contest. No longer about the merit of the photo, but about the pimping of votes from friends. Friends who quite honestly have more pressing things to do than vote for a photo. Yet they did. Four hundred times over they did. They even took the time to share and ask others to vote too. So much so, that I surpassed the current first place photo days ago... But then I suppose that person went to check on the votes on the pictures and found my lizard and how I had way more votes.
And it was at that point, where it became about anything but the lizard.
Or the butterfly.
Her picture is a Monarch butterfly on flowers. A deserving picture. But then she started asking for votes to get back in first place. And then I saw she was ahead again and asked for votes even harder to get back into first place. Then she realized that and asked for more votes even harder...
The lizard lost, the beauty of the butterfly long forgotten...
It was about winning. At all costs. I tagged friends more than I was a friend. I searched for friends names I haven't seen on my feed for a while for the sole purpose of tagging them and asking them to vote, when instead I should have reached out to them to ask how they were doing in this crazy, mad, life of vaccine injury and isolation.
I will not win that contest because I'm not trying to anymore. As I sat at my desk early this morning I realized I had become what happened to my son with his vaccine injury...
Pharma.
I had become who I hate most in this world.
A Vaccine Manufacturer more concerned with profit than safety.
Perhaps in the beginning vaccinations might have been for health. A noble idea. But then the innocence of that became about so much more. It became a competition between vaccine manufacturers. Between CEO's as to who could earn more because of them. It became how can we sell more, give more, mandate more, make more.
It became about anything and everything except the lizard.
Or the butterfly.
Or the baby.
Child.
Adult.
It became about votes that were measured in dollar signs.
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at how I saw for myself in a weeks time how quickly something so innocent became so corrupt.
Much like what should happen with the vaccine industry - the only photo contest I will ever again enter will be one that has an independent panel of judges who choose the winners based on the beauty, the skill, the capture of a moment.
Not popularity.
Based on what the entire vaccine industry should have been based on all along -
The person's safety, not Pharma's profit.
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To each of you who have voted for my picture - thank you so very much. To all of you who have shared it in helping me get even more votes - I thank you.
But most importantly to each of you - I apologize for making it about voting for me instead of me reaching out to ask how you are doing or how I could encourage you.
Please forgive me.
Michelle M Guppy
