It’s really something, how a death in my family creates a perspective that prioritizes what’s truly important in life and what’s just bogus noise filling the human need for a troublesome innate void of self-engineered stupid fairytale problems.

Just now, I got out of Laugh It Off at Turquoise Lodge Hospital. Clare came one time. I’m in the parking lot bawling… why wasn’t I paying more attention? Jackie would have talked to her. I know I’m getting blamed a lot by others and no one can blame me more than myself.

My friend Stephie shared with me,

“Steve, I know that you know that we can’t make someone do anything unless they are ready. I can’t make my daughter get help, for example. Your love was very aware, where rehab facilities were, and she had her own connections. If she was ready, she would have gone. She wasn’t ready. And you couldn’t make her. We always say in our social work classes “You have to start where the client is.”

This is something Clare would repeatedly advise me as well, her as an LMSW and me as a newly credited CPSW. “Knowing” is separate from “Feeling.”

I already feel the guilt and sorrow of my own making. You can’t make me feel any worse than I’m doing to myself. I’ll grieve for what is real and what I own.

That said, the expanse between “letting go because she ran out of love for me” and “her running away because it’s easier on me” is ginormous. HUGE. This was our conversation, you were not part of this. With your such limited knowledge of who Clare truly is (somethimg so sad and pathetic), go ahead and cease the baseless lecturing. Never call. Never email. Never text.

Bye.