This isn’t about not caring.
There’s someone I’ve been meaning to visit. They asked. I said I’d try. I meant it.
They’re going through a rough patch. Nothing urgent. Nothing dramatic. Just the kind of thing where being there matters.
But I haven’t gone.
And if I’m being honest with myself, I probably won’t.
Not because I don’t want to. I do.
I just don’t have much left to bring with me right now.
That is harder to admit than I thought it would be.
I spend a lot of my life showing up for other people. Work has required that of me for years. Teaching does too, in a different way. You listen. You pay attention. You try to notice what somebody needs before they have to ask for it.
Then sometimes I look at the people I actually love and there is just nothing left in the cupboard.
I’m done.
Not with them.
Just done.
It isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t feel like a crisis. More like being slowly thinned out. Every day takes a little something, usually such a small amount you don’t notice, until somebody you care about asks for a few hours and suddenly it feels enormous.
That bothers me.
I know what it looks like when somebody needs someone.
I know what I would tell another person to do.
Go.
Sit with them.
You don’t need the right words.
Just be there.
I believe all of that.
I still haven’t gone.
People talk about burnout like eventually something catches fire.
For me it has often been quieter than that.
A name comes up on my phone and I watch it ring.
Someone asks if I’m free this week and I start doing math in my head about how much of myself the visit might cost.
I sit across from somebody I love and notice that I am trying to look more present than I feel.
That one scares me.
Because I know how much I care.
I also know there are moments when I cannot feel all of it at once.
I don’t like this version of me.
But it’s the one I’ve got for now.
When it is someone close, someone who knows me well enough to notice when I’m not really there, sometimes I stay away.
Part of that is selfish.
I think I need to say that plainly.
Sometimes I don’t go because going feels difficult and I am tired and home is easier.
There are nicer explanations available.
They are not always the true ones.
There is another part too.
I don’t want to sit across from someone I love and make them wonder where I went.
I don’t want them needing something from me while I’m quietly counting the minutes until I can leave.
I don’t want to arrive with that practiced voice I use when I know what I’m supposed to sound like.
So I hesitate.
Then enough time passes that the hesitation becomes its own problem.
Now I haven’t visited.
Now I feel guilty about not visiting.
Now visiting means acknowledging that I didn’t come sooner.
It gets heavier while sitting completely still.
I know there are people who would hear this and say you make time for the people who matter.
Part of me agrees.
That is probably why this feels so bad.
I love this person.
I haven’t stopped caring.
I also haven’t gone.
There is no sentence I can put between those things that makes them fit together properly.
Maybe there shouldn’t be.
I have spent years listening to grief I could not fix, sitting beside pain I could not change, and caring about people I often never saw again. Most of the time I was glad to give whatever I had.
Sometimes I gave it when I didn’t have it.
That bill seems to arrive late.
Now even a simple visit can feel like another place I am supposed to enter with presence and leave with grace.
Some days I don’t have that.
I wish I did.
I wish caring about someone automatically created the energy required to show it properly.
It doesn’t seem to work that way.
Maybe I’ll go next week.
Maybe I won’t.
I don’t particularly like ending there, but I don’t know what else is true yet.
For now, there is someone I love who I should probably visit.
And I am still here.
