All I Have Is Yours, All You See Is Mine...

Let me begin tonight's entry by relating something that I learned today...

Giving too much of yourself is never a healthy thing, unless it is to yourself.

I was talking with an old friend and esteemed colleague of mine on this very topic earlier this week. My friend, like myself, is a caretaker personality type. We take care, it is just what we do. We both seem to attract the hard-luck cases and I found that our stories were somewhat similar, more in the way of the lessons learned instead of the actual play by play of bad relationships.

I find that my friend and I have more in common than we thought we did, though we hadn't actually seen one another in over four years. We kept in contact via e-mail mostly.

I heard about what my friend went through and while I wish that I could have felt a lot more sympathy than empathy, I just couldn't. I kept sitting there thinking, "Holy crap, my pal's been through pretty much the exact same shit I've been through."

The funny thing about all this is that while I've been through stuff that my brother once told me that he would never wish on his worst enemy, I still recognize the fact that there are others walking this planet who have been through shit ten times worse. I think it is more the fact that a good chunk of the various collection of unpleasant situations I've experienced has mostly been due to tragic errors in judgment rather than mere happenstance.

True, it is understandable that one cannot always see the warning signs of trouble unless one has actually been through a similar experience. What galls me is when I adopt the foolish belief that people can change. Well, they can, but with Herculean effort on their part. Most choose not to. Their flaws are part of the fabric of their being and it takes a veritable act of Congress to change their behaviour, if not more.

Myself, I've been making slow changes. I've been fooled more than twice, so I accept my shame. I find myself being a little more on the alert for danger, but yet I still linger in my mind on the what could be in people instead of just cutting my losses and moving on.

My friend was the same way for years. It took a move halfway across the country for my friend to find a separate peace. I just hope that a move of 45 miles will do the same for me. Remains to be seen, I suppose. I haven't been here long enough to appraise any perceptable change, let alone act on it.

What I do know is that I am now close to maxing out on my vacation and sick hours at work. Almost three weeks of unused time going to waste. I wish I could just leave tomorrow for parts unknown, but my sense of responsibility and my currently strained finances make that difficult, nay, impossible.

It really gives me the red ass. Sure, I could just take the time and putter about the house making comments to myself about how I hope everything will turn out alright, but that really doesn't help one bit.

I cannot stare at the ceiling tiles and reflect. I have to take a drive.