Skip to main content

Intervene, 2.

So I didn't want to go out the other day. I had off and told myself I wanted to do laundry, as I've done I now realize so many times before. It's a tempting fantasy, you know? The intention of doing right, of being responsible. There's a weak but still gratifying sense of accomplishment in saying "I'm going to do ____" or "I'm going to be responsible today...". Even if you don't end up doing it at all. Even when you don't end up doing anything at all.

Part of why my friends held an intervention for me was they wanted me to know I'm not alone; that I have people and resources to help me. Lord knows I have spent more than enough time trying to do or change things wholly on my own and never gotten anywhere nor even learned from that. I just keep going at it as self-sufficiently as I can and not getting anywhere by it.

So when Parker asked me to go see our therapist yesterday, I realized what I'd done the day before. I'd taken the impetus of my friends' intervention alone and used it to guilt me into feeling responsible without having changed anything. Without asking for help. So I went with Parker; I tried using some of my resources to make change. I didn't get to see my therapist (I did schedule a time to, though), but I did get out of the house. And although I went home promising myself I'd work on laundry and still ended up not doing anything of the sort, at least I can say I tried a bit harder to move forward than I likely otherwise would have done.

Asking for help, in a way, is asking for accountability. Asking "help me do this" is in a way also asking "help me make sure I do this". Doing everything on my own--or trying--as I have done most of my life has left me only accountable to myself in most situations and with most challenges. It's as easy to "forgive" myself of what I was accountable for as it is to make an excuse for myself or promise to do it later. And thus little progress is made.

My friends, I gather, held that intervention because they saw someone they cared about very much have so much ambition and so much potential but letting it all get away from him instead of working towards his dreams. They saw me withdrawing, avoiding responsibilities and goals, and otherwise not exactly being the kind of person they know I want to be, the kind of person I'd value being.

Just reaching out, as they did, has done a lot to make make me conscious of that, even if I'm not entirely sure at all how to go forward. How to use what they've given me--their love--to make lasting change in this vague, confusing period in my life. But I do feel less alone about it, less helpless and listless. I've got friends--beautiful people who care about me enough to take time outta their lives to sit me down and tell me that--and that feels pretty good.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Or just tell me what you think.

Other things that might interest you...

On aging, and fear.

To begin with, I’m not sure you’re aware of it, but I’m middle aged. Oh? What gave it away? Using a blog as my primary literary medium?¹ Hm. But in fact, the APA defines 35 years as the end of “young adulthood.” Yeah. I found out via some shitpost on twitter when I was already 35, so it didn’t sit well with me then either. But my worries about aging began much sooner than that. See, even in my 20s, I feared I’d been wasting my life. I’d struggled with school and life and everything since graduating high school, arguably sooner, and nothing seemed to be going anywhere meaningful . I felt I had a limited social life, a dead-end job, no money, no great travels, a limping love life; I was, generally, a loser, wasting away... There were none of the usual hallmarks of success or happiness. And that scared me. Would my life have been worth it if I continued in this direction? Would it have been a “life well lived” by the end? So, this is my existential struggle. Even now, as I lurch ever nea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Changing lanes.

I was driving home in some traffic last night when I drifted, in my mind, a long way back (about 20 years) to high school. I was caught in one of those periodic traffic slowdowns as I floated back; you know, those waves of congestion that seem to pass backward through the columns of cars in each lane. (I've heard they start because someone switches lanes, and in response, a rippling emergent slowness travels backward and outward as the cars behind it accommodate the change, one by one.) What drew me back to those younger days was that, back in high school, similar phenomena of congestion took place in the halls between classes, when eddies of young humans would get caught in and around those clumps of those chatting by lockers or retrieving books. Occasionally, backups would occur when groups of people got caught in these eddies, or collided with other groups by the lockers, and slowdowns would ripple back from there. Maybe it's not exactly the same, but as I drove it seemed si...
Post a Comment
Read more

Oatmeal is tasty.

{slurps up berry-oatmeal-deliciousness} Indeed. I need to work on rebuilding a morning schedule. I can be zombie-like enough that I'll waste a perfectly good morning, and have often slept through many. And, really, it's such a useful time of day.
4 comments
Read more