What it comes down to is that if I said "I understand you may be giving things up in order to help me; is it worth it to you? Do you get sufficient return from helping me to make up for the loss in what you gave up?" to most friends, I would trust them to make a reasonable, considered decision. I got angry because I don't really trust you to make what I feel is a reasonable, considered decision in this sort of situation, and so felt that the onus was put on me to be the person making a reasonable, considered decision, and since you didn't give me enough information to make an accurate decision, I made what I feel in retrospect was a flawed one. (I don't know what I would have done at the time. I was not exactly at my most reasonable, so it's quite possible I would have made a flawed decision regardless.) In other words, I felt that I needed to put things in proportion for you because I didn't feel you could do it for yourself. Obviously, this is insulting to you and overly taxing for me. As I said, the responsibility is yours, not mine. If you choose to abrogate that responsibility (as I see it), and you really felt that what you got out of it was worth what you gave up for it, then it's not my place to say otherwise. Everyone gets to choose what's worth sacrificing and what's worth being sacrificed for.
That being said, I think this is a wonderful example of how your choices in that direction are really, really not healthy for you. If you think they are, why did you keep that information from me?
It was, at the time, a reasoned, considered decision... I thought carefully about the impacts, decided that no irreparable harm would be done, and said yes. You had lost a family member a few months earlier, were wrestling with another relationship, and few reasonable requests of yours would have been too much at that time.
And I did gain something... the drive wasn't bad, weather was nice, and I got to assuage some of my post-9/11 guilt for not having been more useful in those weeks. And I certainly didn't want you to carry any more emotional burden at that point, or feel bad about asking -- so I kept the information to myself for a couple of years, after which I thought it was old enough to be a safe example.
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jay
no subject
Date: 2004-04-21 08:20 am (UTC)What it comes down to is that if I said "I understand you may be giving things up in order to help me; is it worth it to you? Do you get sufficient return from helping me to make up for the loss in what you gave up?" to most friends, I would trust them to make a reasonable, considered decision. I got angry because I don't really trust you to make what I feel is a reasonable, considered decision in this sort of situation, and so felt that the onus was put on me to be the person making a reasonable, considered decision, and since you didn't give me enough information to make an accurate decision, I made what I feel in retrospect was a flawed one. (I don't know what I would have done at the time. I was not exactly at my most reasonable, so it's quite possible I would have made a flawed decision regardless.) In other words, I felt that I needed to put things in proportion for you because I didn't feel you could do it for yourself. Obviously, this is insulting to you and overly taxing for me. As I said, the responsibility is yours, not mine. If you choose to abrogate that responsibility (as I see it), and you really felt that what you got out of it was worth what you gave up for it, then it's not my place to say otherwise. Everyone gets to choose what's worth sacrificing and what's worth being sacrificed for.
That being said, I think this is a wonderful example of how your choices in that direction are really, really not healthy for you. If you think they are, why did you keep that information from me?
no subject
Date: 2004-04-24 11:53 pm (UTC)And I did gain something... the drive wasn't bad, weather was nice, and I got to assuage some of my post-9/11 guilt for not having been more useful in those weeks. And I certainly didn't want you to carry any more emotional burden at that point, or feel bad about asking -- so I kept the information to myself for a couple of years, after which I thought it was old enough to be a safe example.