Just as many come to me as a crying shoulder, just as a I may be the shield for so many, sometimes I need my own.
We’ve been through this before, but it bears repeating.
I am INFJ, the counselor. Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Judging, all wrapped up into one cuddly teady-bear package. My position in life seems to be to be that crying shoulder, and in the majority I’m satisfied with this lot, but occassionally…
Well, occassionally, I need my own crying shoulder.
Amazing how cathartic crap television can be, what with its pointless tales of triviality and mediocrity never really cracking through more than the first few cursory levels of conciousness.
Reality TV. Now there’s something I love to hate. In my illness-induced channel boogie-boarding several months ago, I managed to click noncommittally to a couple of reality television programs. Since this is the last time I’ve purused any form of this nightmare-cum-reality, I believe I now understand what it is that I hate so much about reality television.
The fact that reality television is passed off with nary a glance as reality, the fact that it’s even referred to as that, pisses me off. The drama, the pain, and the emotional trauma that I experience through my friends, as that crying shoulder, is so much more real that it makes me sick when some network executive tries to make me believe that the lives of perfect strangers coalescing in some unrealisitic sitcom, while vaguely scripted out and captured in the magic of modern television is supposed to be real life.
The emotions they present are false. They’re nothing like those of a friend on my shoulder, forcing out a keening wail as she emotionally crumbles due to the weight of her situation.
The drama they present is false. It’s nothing like what I witness in the honesty of a moment with someone who’s never shared that much truth with a single person, of all that their life has forced them through.
The love they present is false. They know nothing of the care of even just a friend, let alone what those feelings can mean when they’re tearing two people asunder.
The mentality they present is false. People simply aren’t that self-centered, instead, they do care about those they claim to, when there’s not millions of dollars and immortality through syndication at stake.
The conversations they present are false. People really are honest with each other, to each other, and not just in front of a camera, bearing before all that which they couldn’t share with one person.
The situations they present are false. Real life has enough drama all its own, and needs no false scenarios created by environment or host.
And what do you do when you hold someone in your arms, and the drama, the situation they’ve suddenly found themselves is tearing them, rending them, piece by miniscule piece, towards a shell of what they have been, and you know that you can do nothing to save them?
The only answer I’ve come up with in all my years of being a crying shoulder, is that you hold them that much tighter, give them more of your shoulder, let them cry and dry their tears, knowing that it’s your lot in life no matter how difficult.
At least, that’s all I’ve been able to figure out.
The amount of support one can offer is not proportional to the strength of a squeeze, the rock-hardness of one’s shoulder, or the ability of one’s shirt to absorb tears. There’s no secret I know of, no parlor trick, no flick-of-the-wrist that one can use to make it easier on the counselor, or to even temporarily change one’s lot in life.
There’s nothing we, as INFJ’s can do, to push asunder that which ails the ones who seek the counselor. But worse yet, when the counselor seeks his own counsel, we are left, much like the cheese, standing alone.
Perhaps therein is what makes up our unique perspective.
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