Visit from Outside

The Self-Serving Regurgitators’ Visit

Self-Serv­ing Regur­gi­ta­tors would come and sit at the ledge for a lit­tle while and talk to me. Always start­ing off with mun­dane top­ics and small talk. At first I didn‘t mind their vis­it because it felt like they were keep­ing me com­pa­ny. Some­times it even felt like there was a con­nec­tion. To a cer­tain extent I was just hap­py to not feel so alone any­more. I was sur­prised that some­one actu­al­ly want­ed my com­pa­ny in the state I was in. Some­times even ask­ing for my advice.

It took me a long time to notice that they nev­er real­ly were respond­ing to what I shared with them though. Instead their respons­es had more to do with them­selves. It soon felt as though they had their backs turned to me while sit­ting on the ledge. Even to the point that they would straight up avoid respond­ing to what I said and change the focus to how bad life treat­ed them. All of a sud­den I would find myself con­sol­ing them from way down in my depres­sion hole. Even­tu­al­ly some would show up, an unan­nounced vis­it if you will, with abso­lut­ley no regard to how I felt or I was doing. They just start­ed pour­ing more and more of their emo­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ties into my well shaft. Leav­ing me me feel­ing like an emo­tion­al trash can.

My depres­sion, med­ical jour­ney and mul­ti­ple expe­ri­ences with the fault­find­ers helped me become empa­thet­ic and a good lis­ten­er. My need for con­nec­tion how­ev­er left me com­plete­ly open to oth­er indi­vid­u­als that did­n’t respect my per­son­al, men­tal and phys­i­cal bound­ries.

What first felt like it was giv­ing me pur­pose and tak­ing my mind off of my health con­cerns soon became very tax­ing. This kind of vis­it would be so exhaust­ing that I nev­er had enough ener­gy to deal with my own issues after such an encounter. Pour­ing from an emp­ty cup so to speak. Before I could even think of doing any­thing for myself I need­ed to clear up the emo­tion­al mess they left behind. That again required me to pour from my cup into some­one else’s.

Self-Serv­ing Regur­gata­tors nev­er ‘digest’ what you share with them — hard­ly ever grasp­ing the urgency or mag­ni­tude of the sit­u­a­tion. Instead they regur­gate the bad­ly absorbed infor­ma­tion and add an extra help­ing of them­selves for you to rumi­nate over. It’s almost like they want you to reflect and do all the hard work for them instead of doing it them­selves. Nev­er learn­ing from their mis­takes. Very much like the cuck­oo lay­ing its eggs in a host’s nest for it to take care of, even at the expense of the host’s own offspring.

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