The problem – they weren’t getting better.
Instead, they were draining me of all my energy and all my
time. I would spend hours on the phone
or sitting across from them while they told me how awful their lives were, how
everything in the Universe and every person in this world were obviously
working against them, just to destroy their lives. They would ask for cleansings, blessings,
spells, rituals, amulets, talismans, anything that would fix their problems. But Bob forbid I should suggest ways they
could make changes by themselves! That
would mean taking responsibility for their own actions and realizing that maybe
there weren’t supernatural powers out to get them --
because that would also mean they weren’t special.
Even the people I considered good friends would come to me
with all these problems that were certainly never their fault, always someone
else’s. They would also spend hours
telling me how awful their lives were because of someone else or some
corporation that they were just sure had singled them out so they could destroy
their lives. After listening for hours
upon end, I would gently suggest maybe THEY make a change instead of expecting everything
around them to bend to their will. What
the hell was I thinking??? I must not be
as good a friend as they thought if I really believed they should be the ones
to attempt some sort of change in order to better their lives. Sheesh….
(Does the sarcasm show through that last statement?)
One day, a little light bulb went off over my head. Here I am, trying to suggest to these people
that maybe if they changed their attitudes a bit or changed the way they
handled certain situation so their lives might be better, and I wasn’t paying
any attention to those suggestions myself.
I was surrounded by so much depression and darkness, but I wasn’t really
doing anything to get myself out of it.
It also occurred to me that all these people who begged for my help and
my counsel never actually seemed to be doing anything to improve
themselves. I started to see where they
needed to have all these horrible things happen to them so they had an excuse
to stay right where they were and never have to worry about actually making an
effort. And I was getting sucked into
their little dramas and feeding into their need to be a victim.
So I quit. I started
saying “no.” It was probably one of the
most difficult things I’ve ever done.
But it was totally worth it.
My whole life, I thought I was supposed to be in some sort
of service to humanity, but I’ve done a lousy job of it. Maybe I didn’t understand exactly what it
meant. Maybe I just had the wrong idea
altogether. Whatever the case may be, it
is safe to say that I burned out – hard – and as it stands today, I can barely
even deal with the thought of trying to offer counsel to someone. I feel like throwing up when I consider it.
The worst part of it all is the fact that I was using all
these other people and their problems as an excuse to not deal with my
own. That was a rough span of time. Once I started working towards focusing all
that energy on myself, I saw some pretty icky crap going on in my own life. There have been oh, so many changes since
then, and there are still many changes to go, but I am very happy with where I
am and where I’m going now.
And sometimes, it’s good to remember where I was, and not
even that long ago.
