March 1. The first day of the month. I hate the first day of the month. The rent check is due. Child support. Other kids’ expenses. The checking account that looked so hopeful with some serious numbers in it, (serious meaning there’s enough of a buffer that there is no chance of it getting overdrawn) is drained and I have to reach deep into savings that I hope to replace, but still don’t yet know how.
Hope. This world runs on hope. Most of us wouldn’t get out of the bed in the morning if it weren’t for hope.
I have no reason to complain, though, for two reasons: first, I dug my own financial grave, and therefore it's my responsibility to get myself out again. Oh, not that I didn’t have a little help, but that person isn’t going to own up to any responsibility. A true character out of a Tennessee Williams’ play, living inside her own head and fantasies. Or better yet, someone described best by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby:
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…"
This woman has made a selfish career out of ruining other’s lives, her ex-husband’s, her kids’, everyone near to her gets sucked into her little game — she’s so alluring, she plays so well, adept at really fooling others who have no idea of the emptiness and cruelty that reside inside her — then when things fizzle, as she calls it, she just moves on leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces of their lives. They’re called borderline personalities, and if you don’t know about them, Google the word and read about them. If you meet anyone who even remotely fits this description run, run for your life.
But I’m not bitter. LOL. Seriously, if I weren't, I wouldn’t be human.
But I do have one more reason not to complain. It’s in the bible: Where much is given, much will be expected. I have been given an extraordinary amount. I have my health; I feel good. I’m not dying of cancer like someone I know. Hell, I’m not dead, like others I know (Horseman, pass by.) I do have a means of getting along, perhaps not in a grand fashion, but not like the destitute one sees daily on the streets of Boston. I was given talent and drive; I’ve been taught to fish, rather than just given a fish. I been given the ability to enjoy beauty, and to find it everywhere I look, from a painting hung in the MFA to a book of literature to a piece of music to a gorgeous clear morning. But most importantly, I’ve been given loved ones, family and friends. Special people like my two daughters and Sue who love me, as I like to say, despite who I am. And good buddies like John and Baxter and Scott.
So, March 1. Totalling up the tally sheet here, some of it is in the red, other parts are deep in the black. The important parts are in the black.
Showing posts with label borderline behavior. Show all posts
Showing posts with label borderline behavior. Show all posts
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Giving...and those that take
Like every major city in the world, Boston has its share of homeless people and panhandlers. And my heart goes out to them. Sometimes I think, there but for the grace of God. Most of us don’t realize the thin line that exists between sanity and the insane, between the good-hearted and the criminal. I’ve seen that line. I’ve been pretty close to that line. I guess I’ve even crossed that line. So a little compassion comes easy for me.
I’ll reach into my pocket, and whatever I have in my pocket I’ll drop in their cup. Nickels, dimes, quarters, guitar picks. Whatever. This seems to embarrass a particular friend of mine. Or it insults him, I really don’t know. While I’m fishing around in my pocket, he’ll keep walking. And when I catch up he doesn’t comment. He just ignores the whole thing.
Another guy I used to know would lecture me that it was wrong to do it. “They’ll just use it to buy booze,” he’d admonish me. It turns out that at a later date in our lives he judged me just as harshly. Judge, jury, and hangman. I guess I had that one coming. Maybe they’ll buy booze; maybe they won’t. I don’t know about that. I know that what I’m giving them is more than a couple of quarters. For a split second or so I’m giving them some respect, some validation that they actually exist on this planet and that another human being noticed them, even if it is for the briefest of time. I look them in the eye and wish them luck. I don’t know if that’s enough; if it will or can get someone through a day, but it’s all I can do.
I guess we all do the best we can. As much as I’d like to help everyone I come across, I don’t have enough money in my bank account for myself, much less the poor I come in contact with every day. As much as we’d all like to help, we just don’t have it, and if for some twisted reason we decided to try to help someone full bore, we’d find that our resources would be drained pretty quickly and we’d be left with as little as the person we originally tried to help.
There are others who don’t drain us of money, but of our emotional reserves. There are people who are just as empty of emotion and feeling as the homeless are of currency. I’ve had the unlucky fate of having had one or two people like this in my life. They’re hard to spot. They present just like everyone else. But they need so much, so much more than we can possibly give, and when we do give attention or energy or even our love and lives to them we don’t see the balance sheet going in the red like we would in our checkbook. They can take everything we’ve got, and when there’s nothing left to give they discard us as they would an empty bottle by the roadside. And if we ask for something in return, they just give us a blank look, because they don’t know how to give, only how to take. It’s survival for them, pure and simple. A selfishness bred from never having had love or tenderness in their lives, most likely when they were children. They are empty inside, devoid of any sense of self, of themselves, of who they are, so they take our sense of ourselves. It's like emotional identity theft. This borderline behavior is as insidious as a vampire’s, and leaves us for dead, as empty as they are.
I’ll reach into my pocket, and whatever I have in my pocket I’ll drop in their cup. Nickels, dimes, quarters, guitar picks. Whatever. This seems to embarrass a particular friend of mine. Or it insults him, I really don’t know. While I’m fishing around in my pocket, he’ll keep walking. And when I catch up he doesn’t comment. He just ignores the whole thing.
Another guy I used to know would lecture me that it was wrong to do it. “They’ll just use it to buy booze,” he’d admonish me. It turns out that at a later date in our lives he judged me just as harshly. Judge, jury, and hangman. I guess I had that one coming. Maybe they’ll buy booze; maybe they won’t. I don’t know about that. I know that what I’m giving them is more than a couple of quarters. For a split second or so I’m giving them some respect, some validation that they actually exist on this planet and that another human being noticed them, even if it is for the briefest of time. I look them in the eye and wish them luck. I don’t know if that’s enough; if it will or can get someone through a day, but it’s all I can do.
I guess we all do the best we can. As much as I’d like to help everyone I come across, I don’t have enough money in my bank account for myself, much less the poor I come in contact with every day. As much as we’d all like to help, we just don’t have it, and if for some twisted reason we decided to try to help someone full bore, we’d find that our resources would be drained pretty quickly and we’d be left with as little as the person we originally tried to help.
There are others who don’t drain us of money, but of our emotional reserves. There are people who are just as empty of emotion and feeling as the homeless are of currency. I’ve had the unlucky fate of having had one or two people like this in my life. They’re hard to spot. They present just like everyone else. But they need so much, so much more than we can possibly give, and when we do give attention or energy or even our love and lives to them we don’t see the balance sheet going in the red like we would in our checkbook. They can take everything we’ve got, and when there’s nothing left to give they discard us as they would an empty bottle by the roadside. And if we ask for something in return, they just give us a blank look, because they don’t know how to give, only how to take. It’s survival for them, pure and simple. A selfishness bred from never having had love or tenderness in their lives, most likely when they were children. They are empty inside, devoid of any sense of self, of themselves, of who they are, so they take our sense of ourselves. It's like emotional identity theft. This borderline behavior is as insidious as a vampire’s, and leaves us for dead, as empty as they are.
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