this... want, this NEED to help others, and why oh why does is hurt me SO much when I can't? Sometimes I just ache for wanting to help someone and know that there isn't a damned thing I can do to truly help them!
This feeling gets so strong that it takes over all my conscious thoughts and I berate myself because there's nothing I can do! Oh I can give them a virtual hug, or a real one if I know them personally, but what good does that do, really? It may make a small difference initially, but does it help in the long run? I can sit and listen while someone pours out their heart and hopes and dreams, but in the end, that is all momentary... nothing in the long run as far as I can see.
My dream of having a place, The Home That Love Built, is so nebulous and impracticable without the financial means that it might just as well not dream about at all... and yet... it occupies my mind every hour of every day. It makes me buy lottery tickets in the vain hope that one will pay off and I can actually build the place! Have I lost myself in a dream, a fantasy that probably never will happen?
Okay... yes. There ARE those rare times when just a kind word or an understanding, sympathetic hug CAN make a long term difference. In fact, I am the recipient of just such an effect. Several years ago, while talking with a couple or girls I had met in a chat, I indicated that I didn't want to live with being trans. I fully intended to end it all that night, but those two, one in New Zealand and one in Australia, wouldnt' let me log off, and kept me talking until I finally just fell asleep at my keyboard. I only knew them bu their screen names. Prue Walker and Nerrine19 and I lost touch with them a few years later. I don't know whatever happened with them, but I hope and pray that both are alive and well. I owe them my life.
It seems though, that they awakened in me this need to help. Not in any one specific person, but in anyone in whom I could perceive was having a rough time of it. I have literally cried, when hearing about someone who was in such desperate straits that they had no hope of recovering from them. Is it because of those two wonderful girls that I somehow feel like I have to pay back... or forward, for what they did for me?
I just don''t know. What I DO know is that I do have that need, as I alluded to before, and failing to be, or do what those desperate people need, makes me doubt myself. Am I being too hard on myself? Am I mentally unbalanced to the point where I perceive myself to be some kind of savior to the world's depressed and mistreated? Hell, logically I know that there is no way I can help everyone, everywhere. That WOULD require a savior. One of godlike powers. That ain't me and could never BE me. So, do I need to go back into therapy to attempt to find the reasons why I feel as I do? I'm lost here, but I don't have, and can't find a map to lead me out of these feelings.
Catherine Linda Michel
Comments
Never know
You never know how much, your kind words, or helpful message may mean to someone. You don't who your writing inspire. You don't know how many lives you have saved or will save or just make better.
But we do know, the world is a better place for having you in it.
Yes, You're Being Too Hard On Yourself
It's part of the human condition to want to help others. If it wasn't, we'd never have lasted this long.
"Whatever a person's current level of happiness is, his condition will be improved by his becoming yet more loving and compassionate, and hence more ethical. This is a strictly empirical claim - one that has been tested for millennia by contemplatives in a variety of spiritual traditions...the disposition to take the happiness of others into account...seems to be a rational way to augment one's own happiness."
Sam Harris
You help more than you know
Catherine
Good people want to help other people. Unfortunately doing good does not usually give that instant feedback we all desire. It seems that good works slower than evil, so by the time the change is noticeable we might not be there to see it. That means we aren’t aware of all the good we have done in our lives, like the proverbial ripples in the pond the changes spread out and continue even after who caused the changes is no longer seen. I am still shocked when I bump into former students and they tell me how I impacted their lives so many years ago and I wasn’t doing anything but teaching my class.
Catherine, with your words, you make changes to people you have never seen, people you never hear from, but trust me when I say you do change people. Your stories give hope, sympathy, and through the knowledge there are others who care, you give comfort and a type of companionship that cannot be discounted.
You are not the only one who dreams of how winning the lottery would let us do things for others what we only dream about, but know that you are already doing good things to help others, even if you can’t see it.
Jeri Elaine
Homonyms, synonyms, heterographs, contractions, slang, colloquialisms, clichés, spoonerisms, and plain old misspellings are the bane of writers, but the art and magic of the story is in the telling not in the spelling.
I share a lot of what you are going through,
I volunteer in the trans community. I reach out to folk that need help, making sure they have my contact information and being there if they take me up on it.
You can not help people who don't want it, it is a mistake to try. If they come around then you can be there for them.
The reasons I do this is two fold. I stay depressed myself. I am a far reach from the suicidal guy who finally sought help after realizing my situation was not going to get better if I did not change. I want to repay the help I got forward.,
The other thing is it helps fight the depression. Caring about other people will let you fight your own demons, many times we are fighting the same demons. I don't have answers, but I am further down the path so I can be of real help. I have tried to learn how to listen, the most important of all people skills.
Funny thing, while I have always needed people it has only gotten greater since I transitioned. I really feel becoming a woman all the way has made me a better person, and I really do like me more than I did. I was 55 years old when I hit my crisis, a life time of despising yourself is hard to overcome.