Of all the many forms of stuck, the muckiest emerge from my compassionate heart. Perhaps I’m playing out some pitiful sort of pity, simply showing myself I care, and I wouldn’t dare deign to demand that you change. True compassion’s never conditional until it must be. After that, it won’t be conditional without more personal change than I ever would have signed up for, had I only known.

I ache when acknowledging that not everyone’s my student, not every child my child. Some seem born to be wind-blown and their fate must remain just beyond my grasp. I tend to grab anyway, throwing lifelines to as-of-yet handless souls, frustrating my compassion as well as their salvation. I might drown myself failing to fish them out, or simply fail to make any difference at all.

Then after, the suffering silence we both know too well. We know for sure this never could have worked. We invested anyway and failed. Do I dare even mention the shame? Better had we never met, had I never mistaken you for the needy one you certainly were without noticing how shamefully needy I had become. My compassion became complicity. Charge ME with the crime. Every single time I say, “I could never have seen this coming,” but I could have, probably should have, and did not. Again.

We will be better once we cut the cord, though the self surgery seems inevitably brutal, and not the finer example of the compassion I’d originally intended and you most certainly deserved. Sorry, my dearest, but I’m cutting the cord. Our complicity should quickly melt in the wind that blows this relationship away.

©2012 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: Unstuck Stuck Consulting