Worry-Free Friend

Pat does­n’t wor­ry about me. At first, I was hurt, but soon I under­stood.

It’s not that he does­n’t care, it’s that he knows I’ll be alright.

And this is enough to make me believe that I’ll be alright too.

7 comments

  1. Some of us enjoy wor­ry­ing about you, which of course is strict­ly feed­ing into our nuture-deficit, so you don’t have to feel guilty or any­thing; nor does it imply that we pre­sume you are a net­less Jackass IV can­di­date. It just feels right in an unstop­pable way.

  2. Interesting. I sup­pose the enjoy­ment of being wor­ried about some­one comes from show­ing you care about them, as a form of expres­sion.

  3. Me, I hate it when peo­ple wor­ry about me. That some­how gives me the unwrit­ten oblig­a­tion to wor­ry about them back.

    I guess whether some­one often wor­ries about you has to do with whether he or she is a care­free per­son in the first place.

  4. I used to agree that there was some feel­ing of oblig­a­tion, but I think of it in terms of love now. If you love some­one, they have no oblig­a­tion to love you back. Unfortunately, I learned that the hard way.

    Your com­ment made me recon­sid­er Pat’s atti­tude, and I real­ize that he’s a some­what care­free per­son. Maybe this has some­thing to do with it as well.

  5. This is a good thing — your friend Pat under­stands that you know how to take care of your­self and you’re not falling into a hole.

    I have some friends I wor­ry about because they repeat pat­terns and don’t even acknowl­edge there’s a pat­tern going on. Others lie to them­selves and to me about sit­u­a­tions, and it’s trou­bling.

    But some friends, even when they’re in the fire, are so aware of their dan­ger that they will get them­selves out. So I don’t wor­ry about them. But I’m there for them should they ever need me.

    I was at WTC on 9/11. I had a close friend tell me she was­n’t wor­ried for me, because she knew I’d escape. That’s a damn vote of con­fi­dence, even if it was more for her own san­i­ty.

    C’est une bonne chose.

  6. I’m think­ing it stems from an uncon­trol­lable urge to feel nec­es­sary in some kind of social con­text. Besides being right, good, moral, wot wot, etc.

  7. @Zaira — I guess the strange part is that even I feel like I don’t know how to take care of myself. Not all the time, at least. I’m depen­dent on my friends for many things.

    I sup­pose my desire to improve and learn means that I won’t make the same mis­take twice though.

    It’s quite a com­pli­ment for some­one to say that they weren’t wor­ried about you on 9/11, some­thing reserved for true sur­vivors. I know I would­n’t have made it at ground zero.

    @Xibee — Ah yes, nev­er under­es­ti­mate the val­ue of feel­ing nec­es­sary, even if it’s us who try to cre­ate the neces­si­ty.

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