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Sunday, October 01, 2000

Qualified to Care

I've been talking with Tara about thriving, surviving, caring and being cared for, depression, and all that stuff.

People seem to have the impression that I'm morbidly depressed, obsessed, miserable, and the whole list of other dark adjectives in the dictionary. I find this fascinating.

I am inclined to make a psych test of my own, perhaps call it the Hero/Victim test, with questions like:

There is a lone man standing in the middle of a battlefield covered with fresh corpses. Is he:

1. Mourning over lost friends and relatives.
2. Lucky to be alive.
3. Thinking about what should be done next.

You are abducted by space aliens. Do you:

1. Assume it's just a bad dream.
2. Pray they wipe your memory after the anal probe and return you home.
3. Seduce the one with the large tentacles and join the crew.

And so on.

I told her I am unwanted and un-cared for. "In your wildest dreams what would people who care for you be doing that they don't do now? Can you even imagine it?" she asked. My reply:

Here's the thing: It doesn't really start with someone caring for me, it starts with someone who cares for themselves as much as I care for myself. And then these two people can care for each other, because they are qualified to do so, and because they are both better off for it.

Get it?

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