You don't have to prove me right.
Sometimes it might be nice if you did.
If I said, “I can sprout wings and fly,” that might be a good
time for you to go out of your way to prove me right. Because that
would be awesome. It would probably be accompanied by all kinds of
problems, one imagines a b-movie plot where government agents want to
get their hands on me for experimentation, but we'd cross that bridge
when we came to it. Preferably by flying over it.
Likewise if I say, “I can do this,”
it would probably help if you tried to prove me right.
But a lot of the time it's wholly
unnecessary and sometimes its even actively harmful. It is not lost
on me that after I described to a couple of people how depression and
fatigue made me think I probably couldn't hold a job you hit me with
fatigue so great I couldn't write a blog post and I watched almost a
week pass me by being barely awake. I know it wasn't just the
missing sleep from new year's, we've been together a long time and I
know how you react to missing sleep.
Clearly, I say attempting to maintain
an a straight face while addressing my own body over the internet,
the most logical explanation is that you were trying to prove me
right. You were trying to prove that I cannot hold a job by showing I can't
even function at a vaguely passable level and showing it for a solid week. Clearly
you were trying to prove me right.
But there are two important things to
note. The first is that those people who I said that to weren't
watching. There was no benefit to showing that. The second is that this would have
been an ideal time to prove me wrong. A clear mind and energy would
have been a welcome surprise. Instead of sinking to meet my fears
you should have risen to surpass my expectations. You should have
said, “You don't think you can hold a job? I'll show you,” and
demonstrated that I am not in fact debilitated.
In short, when I say good things prove
me right, when I say bad things prove me wrong.
We've been through a lot, you and I,
and we've dealt with much of it well. Look how well we were typing
right up until I decided to use that as an example. There was a time
when it seemed like we'd never get that down. And we so seldom miss
doorways these days. So seriously, don't meet the minimum possible expectation, rise to surpass things. And stuff.
In an ideal (or even halfway decent) world, you would be provided for by the government, either because it does that kind of thing for those who need it, or because your awesome writing really should be subsidized so that you can spend your life doing it.
ReplyDelete