I have this achingly horrendous disease that I’ve carried with me for years and years and years. One that has no cure. One that preys on its host and has little to no remorse for invading the only thing I truly own: myself.
The best way I know how to describe this disease is by giving you an example. So that’s what I’m gonna do.
A few years ago someone very near and dear to me was headed down an isolated, depressed path. I watched as this person retracted from social engagements, had no urge to change their stagnant reality, and essentially, withered away into a shell of a human.
It was one of the hardest things for me to watch. All I wanted to do was shake this person alive, reinvigorate their spirit, and remind them how worthy they were of a beautiful, fulfilling life.
So, I did everything I could think of. I bought a book on how to motivate someone. I called my doctor asking if therapists provided tips for people to help the people who won’t go to therapy themselves. I had never gone to therapy before, but if a therapist was willing to teach me a thing or two about helping someone else, I would spend the rest of my life in therapy, if I had to.
I devised plans. Actionable plans. Ones that looked a little like this:
Text said person more often so that they feel needed and wanted
Buy said person a gift out of the blue
Ask said person if they want to go to lunch or dinner or drinks or all three on a regular basis
Get involved in what said person likes to do no matter how much you’re uninterested in the topic… act like you love it
I suggested a trip. I suggested a short-term Airbnb somewhere. Someplace other than where this person was. And I offered to pay, for everything. I was willing to do whatever it took to get them out of this slump. I didn’t care about the money or time. I would have taken the rest of my vacation days I had left that year and spent all the money I had to help them see the light of day again.
I was so careful with how I approached this person and with what I said. I never wanted it to seem like I was helping a charity case or treating them like they were broken. Everything I suggested or said involved me in the plan. It was always “we”, never “you”. If you’re in this mess, I’ll be right there to drag you out. I’m not letting you sink alone. Not if I have anything to do with it.
But the reality is, nothing worked. I was shot down time and time again. I was running out of ideas on how to help, and it was getting to the point where the problem was just too big for an unlicensed, uncertified, unprofessional person like me to handle.
I had to slowly come to terms with the fact that I can’t always make people see the things I want them to see. No matter how hard I try. No matter how much effort I pour out or what approach I take to resurrect feelings of significance and potential, I cannot make people feel what they refuse to feel.
And that, my friends, is the disease that has plagued me my whole life.
I can rip out my heart and offer you my bleeding, pulsating vital organ. I can plead with every fiber of my being— get on my hands and knees and beg you to see something in a different light. I can use every single word in the English language, collage all 26 letters of the alphabet together, and craft the most moving story the world has ever read, but I cannot make you care.
I can give you all the tools. All the necessary components I myself can think of to help you crawl your way out of a dark place. And I’ll tell you not to just take my word for it. Go see it. Go feel it. Go taste it. Go hear it for yourself. Because me telling you only does so much. You have to see the light. Be there in person and be entranced by it. I believe with everything in me that when we see more, we love more. And loving is the only way we heal. Pain feasts on hate. It cannot thrive in love. It suffocates in love. It drowns in love. It’s liquified by the mist radiating off love.
I can encourage you to go see the light, and I can shape-shift my person to help you get there so that you’re not alone in the process, but at the end of the day, if you have a guard up around your heart and if you won’t allow the rooted essence of what I’m saying into the innermost sentiments attached to your humanity, there is nothing more I can do.
That thought— that aching, throbbing thought— pains me in a way I will never be able to fully explain.
Perhaps I was born with an immense amount of empathy for anyone other than myself, or perhaps I’ve harvested that skill while being on this journey, either way, I understand that being an empath means I cannot contain the encapsulating emotions that overcome me when I undress from this character I call Taylor and play the role of someone else.
But when I lay it all out on the table and connect every dot for you, when you still don’t see the full picture that I’ve colored in and outlined in the blackest marker I could find, I have to remind myself that my inability to help someone help themselves, is too big for me to carry on my own.
Surrendering is my only option at that point. Handing over the keys to the universe and accepting that there is a grander plan for said person is all I have left to do.
And then no matter what, I pray.
Because those people are the ones who need love the most. They are the ones who are clouded with pain, and when you’re engulfed in pain, everything you see is tinted red.
I have a million examples of times when I’ve tried to help someone see the beauty in something they refuse to see, and no matter what I do, it doesn’t work. It’s in those moments I’ve decided that if I can’t take away from their pain, I’ll, at the very least, add to their peace.
Please remember that kindness and empathy will never come back to bite you. Even if you look back at situations and think to yourself, “I should have treated them the way they treated me,” or, “There was no point of me being nice there,” the grace you offered wasn’t all for nothing. Everything in this world is made up of energy, so if the peace you extended wasn’t received by the person who it was intended for, someone, somewhere who needed it more, absorbed your well wishes and silently thanked you.
I have no doubt in my mind that positive efforts never, ever go unappreciated.
And by the way, the person who struggled with seeing the light, found it again. I suspect at some point they absorbed the energy of someone, somewhere who was sending well wishes off into the ether… not knowing that their efforts would heal a broken heart. So, thank you to whoever unknowingly offered their peace to someone who needed it. You saved a life ❤️
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