![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
People whose lives are going badly: please stop. Please stop. Please. Stop.
It's not that I don't love you. I am not without compassion for your pain. But this last hurt was too much for me. This last "I knew this was going to happen, but why did it happen?" This last "I am hurt and will continue to be hurt and why don't you fix it without my needing to change, you're supposed to be smart."
Stop. Please.
There's an economic principle called the Tragedy of the Commons; Alfred Whitehead called it "the remorseless working of things." When property is shared, people take more than they conserve. The need is individual; the cost is everyone's, which means no one's. Together, they graze the sheep until the pasture is gone, pump so much oil in a day that the surrounding wells collapse, force more and more paper through the machine until it falls apart. No one person is especially bad, or mean, or selfish. But everyone is selfish, a little. It adds up.
If you weren't all calling, all hurting, all at the same time; if you could work up a schedule, conserve a little, remember that other people are calling me, hurt.
But you can't. That's not how hurt works. You need me. I understand.
I want to help, but there is no more grass. The well has collapsed. The mechanism is dead. I know I seem to be doing well, that I am a subject of envy, but any joy I had in it is gone. The happiest time in my life, and I am insulated, unable to feel it, dizzy and blank, brain submerged in coedine. I nearly wrecked the car today. I move very slowly because I can't stop shaking. I'd like to say I care whether you get better, but I am numb to it; my ability to feel has broken. Which includes my ability to feel love, to be fully present in the two weeks I have left. You made me leave him early. For that I will never forgive you.
I love you, and I'm sorry. I know you are only taking so much because you need it, because this is the worst time of your life. I am not leaving you. I am still next to you on the road, crumpled, dusty, scraped bloody from pushing myself forward. I went as far as my body could carry me. I'm lying next to you, unable go any further. So please,
stop.
It's not that I don't love you. I am not without compassion for your pain. But this last hurt was too much for me. This last "I knew this was going to happen, but why did it happen?" This last "I am hurt and will continue to be hurt and why don't you fix it without my needing to change, you're supposed to be smart."
Stop. Please.
There's an economic principle called the Tragedy of the Commons; Alfred Whitehead called it "the remorseless working of things." When property is shared, people take more than they conserve. The need is individual; the cost is everyone's, which means no one's. Together, they graze the sheep until the pasture is gone, pump so much oil in a day that the surrounding wells collapse, force more and more paper through the machine until it falls apart. No one person is especially bad, or mean, or selfish. But everyone is selfish, a little. It adds up.
If you weren't all calling, all hurting, all at the same time; if you could work up a schedule, conserve a little, remember that other people are calling me, hurt.
But you can't. That's not how hurt works. You need me. I understand.
I want to help, but there is no more grass. The well has collapsed. The mechanism is dead. I know I seem to be doing well, that I am a subject of envy, but any joy I had in it is gone. The happiest time in my life, and I am insulated, unable to feel it, dizzy and blank, brain submerged in coedine. I nearly wrecked the car today. I move very slowly because I can't stop shaking. I'd like to say I care whether you get better, but I am numb to it; my ability to feel has broken. Which includes my ability to feel love, to be fully present in the two weeks I have left. You made me leave him early. For that I will never forgive you.
I love you, and I'm sorry. I know you are only taking so much because you need it, because this is the worst time of your life. I am not leaving you. I am still next to you on the road, crumpled, dusty, scraped bloody from pushing myself forward. I went as far as my body could carry me. I'm lying next to you, unable go any further. So please,
stop.
