Sad news from friends is bringing me low. Substance abuse, depression, bad relationships, and just plain bad luck seems to have suddenly overwhelmed some of my favorite people. I'm being supportive vocally and spiritually, but there's little I can do beyond that. I can't pay anyone else's rent. I can't arrange for anyone to meet the Right Person. I can't help someone decide they want to get better. I'm isolated physically from everyone, so I can't even give them hugs and cookies. I sometimes sit and just pet the littlest cat, thinking about how life doesn't turn out the way anyone plans.
I never really planned anything, myself. I thought everyone else had it all arranged, so there was no need for me to make an effort. This worked pretty well until college. That's when I found out I had to make my own decisions, motivate myself, figure out where I was headed and then head there. I drifted along, first dropping out of college, then getting a series of grim clerical jobs after I got tired of having to hustle singing work at low pay. I lost touch with friends from school. I quarreled with my family. I sat home after work and lost myself in daydreams. I only left my apartment for work and to go grocery shopping. I lived like that for eight months.
Much later, someone who ought to know told me I had probably been experiencing a nervous breakdown. I was kind of surprised. I figured it was normal to spend all your time in darkened rooms, obsessively playing records and dreaming of everyone who ever ignored me finding out that I'd turned into a famous something-or-other. It seemed pretty normal. I was only 21, after all. I didn't have any plans. I knew how to work hard to pay the rent. What I didn't quite grasp was how to work hard to realize my dreams.
Sometimes, I think that's the problem with a lot of people. Maybe not a problem, but a certain factor that underlies the way so many people want to explain how their stuff isn't really any good or, conversely, why any negative responses are blown out of proportion. I'm thinking of the woman at work who talks about how bad her boyfriend is to her, but if anyone says yeah, he's a jerk, why don't you dump him, she goes ballistic. It's wound up in self-esteem issues, and those are tricky monsters.
I don't know, even now, exactly how I convinced myself to try again for my dreams. I know I was heavily influenced by being introduced to science fiction fandom by a woman who is still one of my closest friends. It opened my eyes to possibilities I'd thought were gone (god, everything's so black and white when you're young). I give myself credit for believing in myself enough to go to therapy, getting help with the nebulous but wounding self-esteem issues. And I wonder if some of it was just plain stupid luck. Why me, and not him? Why was my brush with mental illness bad but not crippling when others seem to fall down into the black abyss? Is it like having good teeth, you're just born with it? I don't know. I probably never will, because I have no plans to study psychology or psychiatry. I can only try to put together everything that I learn and reflect on it.
You know, cats have great self-esteem. I think I'll go pet the littlest, and send out some good thoughts to my friends, whom I am so far from, and yet always, and ever, near.