Tough Decisions

When someone comes to you and seems to be having a bad day or has been feeling depressed, it’s hard to resist helping them out. For some people, helping others is done only to gain a good reputation or feel good about themselves. But for me, I want to try to help others because I don’t believe anyone should be alone when they are at their lowest. I know that I have had rough days and I’ve gone to my friends or family just to have someone to talk to. It really did not matter what I said or what their response was, what mattered was that they listened and let me get it all out. Being an optimist, it seems that I attract the kind of people that need to find a reason to smile. Of course, I welcome them, because they are the kind of people that my blog was created for in the first place. Sure, some of the people that read my blog are optimists themselves. But I’ve realized that those are the people that have usually been through the most in their lives. One must sometimes go through a lot in order to realize what there is to be happy about at all. Those are the people that I believe are the biggest readers of my blog, the ones still learning and the ones who have already learned so much. If I am wrong about that, please feel to let me know.

My problem is that I can sometimes spend so much effort on trying to help someone else, that I start to forget about myself, my own problems and stress, and my own life. The life of another consumes me and I cannot help but worry about them day in and day out. The hardest thing to do is explain why you care so much, to explain why you are worrying so much about them. And I’ve had some people ask me that. All I can really say is that I begin to think I am right there with them, feeling their pain and crying their tears. Trust me, I know that the pain I feel is nothing compared to the true pain they are feeling inside. It is when I attempt to help out multiple people at one time that I began to lose control and fall into my own slump. A few weeks ago, that is exactly what happened to me. One comment, one simple comment, almost pushed me over the edge.

Someone that I hardly knew at all told me that I was “annoyingly happy” and that it was “not possible for me to be so happy all the time.” I took those words to heart, and they really struck me to the core. Was I annoying? Was optimism really not worth it anymore? It took me two weeks to end my depressed slump and get back to the way I was before. And in those two weeks, I began to rethink my entire life. Even though my friends and family told me to ignore what the person had said, I still began to wonder. Who am I? What does the future have in store for me? The worst part of it all is when I began to think the worst question of them all. Should I even continue my blog anymore? Is optimism worth it still? Looking back on those moments of confusion and doubt, I can say now that I am going to continue my blog for as long as I possibly can. And, yes, optimism is worth it. What my huge realization was in the end, though, was that some people will never be optimistic, no matter what I try to say or do. I’ve accepted that fact, and it has made me wiser now.

This realization also led to the hardest thing I ever done in my life. A few weeks ago I had to cut off contact with one person I tried my hardest to show the beauty of life too. Trust me, I dearly wanted to help this person out. But every time I thought I had helped this person find the light in the ever-growing darkness, I was proven wrong. And I don’t blame this person for being depressed and sad. I don’t blame this person for anything that this person has done. I know that this person has been through much more than what I can even image. What I had to decide, though, was whether or not I could handle the pain and problems and stress and hardship that this person shared with me. In the end, I decided that it was all becoming too much for me to handle. The worry. The feeling of failure, again and again and again, weighed me down. So I had to cut off contact with this person. This was not easy for me to do, and to this day I still think about this person. It may be a while until I can move on, and the same can be said about this person that I tried to help. But at least I tried; I really tried so hard.

My lesson for you is: if you try to help someone, but find yourself being affected past your own breaking point, then it may be time to try and move on. It truly is the hardest thing you will ever have to do, but think about it. If you become as broken as the person you are trying to help, then how can you ever fix anything.