Happy Medium...where are you?

Never make a promise or plan
Take a little love when you can
Nobody's on nobody's side
Never stay too long in your bed
Never lose your heart, use your head
Nobody's on nobody's side
Never take a stranger's advice
Never let a friend fool you twice
Nobody's on nobody's side
Everybody's playing the game
But nobody's rules are the same
Nobody's on nobody's side
Never leave a moment too soon
Never waste a hot afternoon
Nobody's on nobody's side
Never stay a minute too long
Don't forget the best will go wrong
Nobody's on nobody'side
Never be the first to believe
Never be the last to deceive
Nobody's on nobody's side
Never make a promise or plan
Take a little love when you can
Nobody's on nobody's side

--Chorus and fadeout, NOBODY'S ON NOBODY'S SIDE, from CHESS: THE MUSICAL

I call them the dark years. The nineties were my lost decade: a time when I had no idea who I was or what I was supposed to be doing. I steamrolled through thousands of dollars in an attempt to fill the hole in my soul with...stuff. That failed miserably, of course. Worse, I treated the people in my life horribly. I live with that shame every day even now. There are people I wish I could apologize to. One of them is a friend of a friend:  I suppose I could contact her, but why? At this late date, I'm sure she'd rather not see my name, much less any words of mine. Another one...I'm not sure, but I think she might be dead now, and if she is it was by her own hand. She was mentally ill when I was with her, attempted suicide more than once, and I couldn't deal with it. (The monstrous arrogance of that statement! SHE attempted suicide, and it was ME who couldn't deal with it. Nice guy I was, eh?) 
I tell myself there's nothing I could have done if she is, in fact, gone now. I remind myself that she seemed to be bursting with new energy and confidence the last time I spoke to her, that for all the research I've done over the years  trying in vain to find an online presence, she might be hiding in plain sight. But I don't think so. In my heart, I know she's gone, and I blame myself for that. Maybe there's nothing I could have done to prevent it...but I sure could have done a hell of a lot better a job trying.


NOBODY'S ON NOBODY'S SIDE was my personal anthem for at least half of those dark years. I'd sing it to myself as I walked away, uncaring or even oblivious to the emotional wreckage I'd caused. I'd tell you, straight-faced, that as a philosophy of life, it had pretty much all the bases covered. I trusted no one, least of all myself.

Eva rescued me from those years, of course: shone a light in and started sweeping cobwebs out. She brought me back to myself, and ever since has allowed me to be the next greatest version of the grandest vision I ever had about who I am.
 I thoroughly repudiated that song, turning all of it on its head. I announced to the world: You have a side, and if it's the side of good, I'm right there with you. I'll make the promises and plans, and keep them if I can, and I won't notice or care when others' promises were forgotten. And never mind taking love: I'll give it instead. This I called "progress".

----------------------

Long before that lost decade....back when I was a child...I lived life in black and white. There was a right way to do things and about ten thousand wrong ways. There was no room for points of view or different sides to a story. I would stubbornly cling to my belief like it was a life raft in a sea of doubt: waves of contrary evidence would wash over me and I'd just cling harder. Try to change my mind and I'd nod and agree in all the right places and simply wait for your lips to stop flapping. And as for happy mediums...they required compromise, and that word wasn't in my vocabulary.

I've since flipped that on its head as well. Now there's very little I don;t believe comes in nearly endless shades of grey...and I firmly believe that every act, no matter how morally reprehensible it may be, is considered right and just in a perpetrator's mind.  This I called "progress".

But happy mediums still sometimes elude me.

I think I may have "progressed" just a wee bit too far, because I'm feeling utterly emotionally drained lately. At the same time, I'm terrified to even think that, because...

People have always come to me with problems. Even back in high school, I was known as the perfect shoulder to cry on, so long as, you know, you didn't actually *touch* the shoulder.  (I lost count of the number of women who came to me in tears over boyfriend issues...I'd sigh, turn off my emotions, and clinically go about helping, or at times just listening. I found that work emotionally draining but also very rewarding. It was just me taking a little love where I could, you know?

I still am that shoulder to cry on, and I'm grateful for that. People trust me with their deepest secrets and they come to me with intractable problems as if they really believe I can tract them. It's immensely gratifying....and still really hard. Because if I care about you (and if you're reading this, I probably do), your pain becomes my pain. Emotional pain, whether it's mine or someone else's, lodges in my gut, and my guts have been awful for about a week now.

How do I turn this off? No, don't answer that, it's the wrong question. How do I turn this down?

I feel bad even admitting to it, because a little gut rot is nothing to what some of you are going through out there. At the same time, I'm experiencing actual despair because it seems like the more I try, the harder it gets.  Worst of all is the little dark age voice whispering "what's in this for you. huh?"

I know I can't heal all the pain. I know there's no point even trying. But it's so deeply rooted in me to try anyway, because to NOT try is to regress into the person I was, once, the awful man who couldn't deal. I don't want that. Nobody wants that. I need to find a way to harden my heart just a little bit. And I don't know where to look.