Friday, September 26, 2008

Please Form a Queue and Let me Fix You...

(Hehe... my title rhymes...)

I have a problem...

OK... lots of problems, but there's a specific one that's bugging me.

I have this impulse to give my opinion on things.

More than that, I have a huge desire to help people.

When someone is hurt, I yearn to fix it. I have imaginary conversations in my head where they ask for my advice and I (finally) get to dispense all of this pent of wisdomness onto them.

And then that person thanks me profusely and wishes that they had just sucked it up sooner and asked for my opinion in the first place.

(Or I imagine opening a can of whoop ass on someone and shaking them because they are being stupid... but we all have that fantasy... right?)

But this rarely/never happens (either scenario).

It doesn't help that I have these urges to help people who I have very little business in helping.

They don't want my help.

And they might press charges/disown me if I kicked their ass...

I've been the person who stuck her nose in other people's business... and I've been emotionally pounded for it.

So I'm trying to stay out of other people's lives, unless invited.

Except when it comes to Kevin... it's my job to stick my nose in his life... sorry dude.

And Bonnie and Hannah. I had to give some serious trauma counseling to Bonnie after the deer incident.

And the fam... most of the time.

But with other people, I have to be very careful. I don't want to overstep my boundaries.


So now I just sit here... worrying...

And I wish I didn't. But I've been worried my entire life...

When I was little, I worried about my baby brother. (I still worry about him, but I keep it to myself... for the most part. At some point you just have to let the little bugger climb glaciers and jump out of airplanes...)

As I grew up, I worried about my friends.

When my parents split, I wasn't worried about me... I was worried about them.

When I was younger, my dad would tell me not to worry so much, or else I would get an ulcer.

Then I worried that I had an ulcer...

And those are just the other people that I worry for...

The smell of the inside of airplanes still gives me panic attacks.

Waiting in line gives me panic attacks.

Shopping (believe it or not) gives me panic attacks.

Low blood sugar gives me panic attacks.

And feeling out of control, or that I did something stupid, makes me panic, too.

Granted, it's a whole lot better than it used to be. I don't let it take over my life... and that is a very good thing.

But it's this sick feeling in my tummy that is the problem... the sick feeling when someone else is not doing well.

That's why I don't know if I can be a social worker. I know that it would be interesting, but I have a very hard time drawing the line between other people's feelings/problems and my own.

I don't know how it would all transfer into my own happiness.

Maybe I should just go back to being an ice cream scooper.

Although there is some worry in the ice creaming business... I would imagine that it's fairly less than in social work.

So, do I care too much?

Maybe.

Thinking about it, it may not be a "problem" (at least not in the same way that global warming or poverty are "problems"), but it sure does blow.

Not that I'm looking for sympathy...

Really...

I'm just sharing.

So don't worry about me.