Ah, so it's Friday. Fridaaaaaay!
I feel lonely. Don't get me wrong, I get lots of interaction with Karen, but the thing is, I need to take care of people. That's my thing, and I'm really good at it. Taking care of people, helping people, getting them back on their feet and strong again. Course now all of our friends are in a basically good place and do not really need any help. Ugh, this is a complicated issue. Let's see if I can quickly break it down.
Growing up I never had a best friend. Actually, not sure I ever really had any friends. I just never learned, until fairly recently, how to have friends. I confused acquaintances with friends, and was constantly being hurt when these acquaintances would not be there for me when I needed them. Karen, I think, Is my best friend. She has always been there for me, and thankfully we're married. After starting to meet people from SG in real life, I started learning how to make and keep friends. Basically, I try to keep my issues to myself for the most part and help people as much as I can. So if you ever hear me talking about an issue, then not any more, the issue/problem has not gone away, it's just that I learned from painful experience that most times people do not want to hear about my problems over and over. Intellectually I know that's not really true any longer, that I do have friends in my life now that are so dear to me, that they have become family, and I would be lost without them. Most of those people came from SG. Still, habits die hard, and learned fears die the hardest.
I digress some, but basically I had a habit of always being there for people whenever they needed me, and they were not friends. It all went one way and they would abandon me at the worst times. Now I have friends, true friends, that that's not the case with, that if I need help, they willingly give it. But here's the thing...I need to be there, to help people. It's the reason, I think, that I loved the job I used to have (desktop computer support) because people always needed help. It's also why I so much energy, or had energy sapped from me, by the job. Why I defined myself so much by the job. If people were nice to me, It energized me and made me feel good that I could help them. If the people were not nice to me (this was often the case) then I felt betrayed and it crushed me. Because I was linking helping these people with fulfilling my need to help.
So, now I am (and I hate this term, but...) retired at a fairly young age because this effect was just killing me. I could not handle it because it was personal to me. I could not separate it and say it was just the job, and leave it at work.
People often tell me I would be a good social worker. Maybe, but not being able to help people (because of the bureaucracy of the system and the limits that I would be able to go to to help) would just about kill me. I think I would have made a decent father, but I could not, until recently, reconcile myself and my emotional troubles and be confident that those would not cause issues for the child. Now it's too late for that. Mostly I grieve over this for Karen because she wanted children and I was strictly against it. I think it ended up hurting her a lot, but she has been able to get past that (not that she ever blamed me, she understood my reasoning).
But I find myself with a lot of extra...emotional support available to give, and nobody to give it to, really. There are a few people that are going through rough patches, but they do not seem to need me, or seem more the type to not want to bother others with their issues. I tell people all the time to tell me if I can help, but I think others are afraid of similar things, that if they start leaning on someone too much, that the person will let them fall. Promise I won't. Sure, a time or two there have been people that we have tried to help and they screwed us royally (including one SG that stole Karen's wedding band, diamond ring, and necklace from her deceased grandmother!) but we still keep putting ourselves out there because people need help sometimes, and we are at a point in our lives that we can give a helping hand. What is difficult for them right now is easy for us right now.
**shrug** The point? I'm lonely. Everyone is busy with their own lives, and I'm stuck in place watching from the outside.
After all that downer talk, here's something cute. This is my cockatiel Merlin. This is the sound he makes when he is content and happy, and trying to sleep. He grinds his beak. Tried to embed the video, but no joy. It should be in my Videos, at least I can see it. let me know if you can/not.
Enjoy and have a wonderful weekend to you all.
