I don’t mean I can’t care or wouldn't care, I just mean there’s nobody around me I care about. It’s been such a long time since I’ve actively cared in a continuous sense, it feels like I have lost the ability to do so, so used to not doing it have I become.
Recently, I was on my way back from the shop, ear plugs in as usual, not expecting anyone to even try communicating with me, when a woman starts talking to me. It turns out she was concerned about where she’d parked her car and needed me to reassure her that it was ok. I did so, as there was nothing wrong with her decision; she was just a little confused by the street sign. I was glad I could remove her confusion. It felt like I cared. I felt empathy/caring towards her. I didn’t need anything from her; I just got to help her and I liked that. I’ve always liked helping strangers. It feels like getting to temporarily care for a random human being. A few moments of unexpected interaction which feels like real human contact. Nothing else was said between us. I wouldn't even recognise her if I saw her again. I just spontaneously cared because she needed something from me, which did not make me feel reluctant or resistant, just friendly.
Last week I saw an old man trip over and spill his shopping. Almost instantly a few people near to him started helping him and picking up his groceries. I didn’t help; I'm sure I would’ve had there been nobody else around, but these people had him covered, and I liked seeing it. It wasn’t all that surprising they came to his aid; people help people, people are kind, but it was still nice to see. I actually felt moved by how much care was shown. I'm sure most people would have done exactly what they did. I didn’t. I didn’t have to. I didn’t need to. I do feel something if I do. It’s a nice feeling, like I'm doing something real, and it connects me, when I don’t usually feel part of anything.
Here’s the thing: If I care about you, you might care about me. If you care about me, what I do or say might upset you or hurt you at some point, not intentionally, but it probably will, if I'm being myself and not masking.
It is my experience that if I care about you, at some point I will upset you. I may not understand what I did exactly, but you will always believe I do.
If you care about me, it is my experience that at some point you will do or say something that feels controlling or judgmental. You may not realise that you are.
Because you care about me, caring means wanting to protect me from doing/saying something you would not do, primarily because you don’t want to be affected by the way this makes you feel. You care about me and would prefer I act like you do; and definitely not embarrass you or make you feel uncomfortable. It seems that to be cared about means I must care about how you feel about what I do.
Obviously I'm not set in stone. I certainly can and do change. But I cannot change according to someone else’s idea of what I should change to, or at their idea of the pace that change should take. So it therefore seems to make sense that if you do not care about me you won’t expect me to have to do so.
The other thing is: if I don’t show you something you ‘recognise’ as caring, then it may seem like I don’t or can’t care, because how you do it is different to me, so it can look like this important component that you need to see is missing.
I loved and cared about my daughter very much, yet I noticed as she got older, I would worry about her when she went out, even though there was no evidence there was anything to worry about, as well as knowing philosophically that ‘worrying’ made no difference. Most parents go through this. It made me feel conflicted. It seemed like worry was a sign of caring, or caring meant I was supposed to worry, and yet this did not seem right.
I looked at this for ages, and eventually found a way out of worrying, which had the unexpected effect of making it seem like I’d stopped caring. And within a short time, it was believed I no longer did. What I might then do no longer ‘looked like’ caring, and so it further seemed like I no longer cared. I lost my right to care because I no longer needed to worry.
I have lost, or had to let go of, so many people I have loved and cared about, that I’ve had to look at what is going on that makes this occur, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is better in the long run if I don’t care. I can’t help caring sometimes of course, but I can stop myself going further. It is not the way I want to be, but it seems to make the most sense in the long run.
Does this make sense to you? Can you relate? I'm not saying I don’t want to care or be cared about, only I seem to have become more and more like this as time has gone on, since the life I knew and was familiar with, blew up.
