I’m thankful that at least I’ve managed to gain enough wisdom to take lessons from the drama and thousand natural shocks that being an INFJ is heir to.
My apologies to Shakespeare, I know he probably made a full revolution or two in his tomb from that little remark.
Seriously for a moment, how do I ask you to stop? Stop using me for your own immediate emotional gratification?
If this be my fate, then with it comes emotional exhaustion. One of the many reasons I became a hermit for so long, retreating into the comfort of my abode, awaiting the day when I could tolerate being around people again.
I know I’m a good listener. I know I’m a person so many feel they can come to.
But I can’t be a counselor. I can’t be a goddamned therapist anymore. I can’t be a fucking emotional toilet for everyone’s problems. I’m just not strong enough.
The problem, as it always is, is empathy. I simply can’t take what you give me without finding someway to drain it myself. That, of course, takes time, and usually catharsis. It takes this, a public forum for airing my grievances, or at least engaging in creativity. I can pour myself out here, in a directed fashion that harms no one, until finally I sit back in a blaze of euphoric, almost orgasmic intensitity of the afterglow from forming chaos into order. Random peckings of keys, the entropic boundings of electrical pulses on the wire, and suddenly I feel better. Why that works I think I’ll never know.
And normally, afterwards, I’m fine. I don’t even have to offer my tripe for the world to see. Occassionally, it’s enough just to feel my fingertips bounce on the keys, and I’m done. The feeling is back, I’m recharged and able to help everyone solve their problems.
But not anymore.
Maybe it’s been the past couple of months, which have made the year of hell look like a cakewalk.
The lesson that has come out of all this is that I am not emotionally strong enough to handle all of everyone else’s problems and my own. Of course, when I say everyone, I don’t mean actually everyone. I’m not foolish enough to think the weight of the world rests upon my shoulders as though Atlas himself went on break and tossed the blue-green marble to me.
But for those who rely on me for emotional support, those who lean on me, sometimes it would be nice to have someone to lean on as well. You seem to forget that I’m human too, and I am no rock, nor am I an island.
In this soul I offer no salvation, no warm room for quiet escape. That you can only find inside yourself. Maybe I can help in some small ways, but don’t be surprised when you lean on me to far and I fall. I feel like I’m falling already, and I know where I will be falling too, if I can’t stop myself, or find someone to help carry me, a shoulder to cry and lean upon myself.
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