Paranoia on behalf of another is a disreputable, indefensible sort of neurosis - even paranoia on behalf of one one loves. But I can't help it. I worry. I worry about you. Irrationally, I worry.
I worry about you. I do not worry for you.
Everyone seems to find me an invincible pollyanna optimist, but maybe that's just because every night, I lie awake running through and living in every worst-case scenario that raises its spectre'd mein - for as long as it takes to exhaust its spectral dangers, and only then do I sleep? This tends to cure me.
But my worries are my own, though. As are yours, surely! Do you worry for me?
No one worries for another's sake. It is to grapple with our own horrors, and find ways to best them - if only in imagination - that a worrier worries. In our own horrors, circumstances of cared-for others may loom large, but still it is not for their sake we worry, but for our own. How can our worrying help another?
And telling another of our worry for them - this is pure selfishness, and detestable.
So I apologize!
I worry about you. I do not worry for you.
Everyone seems to find me an invincible pollyanna optimist, but maybe that's just because every night, I lie awake running through and living in every worst-case scenario that raises its spectre'd mein - for as long as it takes to exhaust its spectral dangers, and only then do I sleep? This tends to cure me.
But my worries are my own, though. As are yours, surely! Do you worry for me?
No one worries for another's sake. It is to grapple with our own horrors, and find ways to best them - if only in imagination - that a worrier worries. In our own horrors, circumstances of cared-for others may loom large, but still it is not for their sake we worry, but for our own. How can our worrying help another?
And telling another of our worry for them - this is pure selfishness, and detestable.
So I apologize!
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