Responsibility or compassion?

It's that thing in life we're all guaranteed to experience, in some form or another. Even if you aren't expected to work for yourself, you're still going to face some form of responsibility somehow. Dressing yourself, for example, can be considered an albeit minor responsibility. Since birth (like most of you, I'm sure), I've been programmed to accumulate -- and take pride in -- extra responsibilities.

When should I say no?

I'm cursed with an overwhelming compassion. It's bigger than I am and it is limitless in its reach. It doesn't matter if you've tortured me somehow; if you've encouraged me to fail; if you've helped people hurt me somehow. When you need a favor that I can deliver, I'll do what I can. I'll go against the better judgment of my more reasonable friends who know when to say that magic word I never really understood:

No. It's almost impossible for me to conceive what it means to say it. No. I can't even remember the last time I used it in reference to something someone asked of me. No.

I don't consider it a failing. Not really, anyway. Even now, when I'm goaded beyond what I can feasibly expect from my enormous work ethic, I don't think I'm failing myself. Because I'm afraid of what it will mean to fail other people.

Well now. There's a thought. Failing others. Is it possible to fail someone else if succeeding will hurt you? Chew that one over.

One sec. People are hovering outside the shop doors. Maybe when I start writing again, after the hordes dissipate, I'll have something more concrete to babble about.

2.5 hours later...

Back now. It's incredible the amount of emotional chaos that can happen in only a few hours.

I wasn't really able to ponder anything I was pondering while people were in here. A few people wanted prices on tattoos, on piercings, ideas for their child's birthday memorial piece, answers to why the shop is so empty, etc. I obliged with probably more bite than was necessary to most, if not all of, them. What can I say? I was having an existential crisis again. That waits for no man, woman or whatever's between.

When the trickle of customers slowed and people finally left altogether, I started catching up with a few people about my new mountain of problems. I mentioned them as my little stressors in my last entry-- they aren't really that little. Big enough, in fact, that after I had a nice, reassuring conversation with Lori, I let Sigur Ros sing me into my own dimension of turmoil, sat down in the middle of the shop, and cried for a solid three minutes. The song ended in almost perfect unison with my last heaving sob, and I stood up, brushed myself off, and went back to work.

"Work." I'm sitting here doing nothing still. I managed to edit Marshall's email, retyped it because I hate copying and pasting things like this, and did some more catch-up work on old facebook messages from dear friends. Now my memory of today is starting to blur.

A few more people strolled through the shop's door, right before I went to grab my approximately 32560346th slice of Sergi's pizza, and then I read Amanda Palmer's latest blog. Oh, and I stalked a few people via their various internet incarnations. It's crazy how out of the loop I've become. I remember being right there, absorbing all of the social goings-on and filing them into different categories of importance. Self-reflection means sacrificing my awareness of the things outside my immediate sphere of influence, I suppose.

Self-reflection. Here comes my looping, full-circle epiphany. I started writing this blog with the intention of expounding my beliefs in things like responsibility, tact and the melancholy that comes with neglecting everything else, with succumbing completely to the endless string of demands people can have of you if you let them.

Instead, I've come to the almost comical revelation that--

Interruption again. This time, it was a large man with a janitor's smock on who wanted a tattoo. I informed him that our artist is out of town for the weekend, but he'll be back on Tuesday. Actually, the conversation was more like:

Jack (the name on his janitor jumper): When can I schedule one?
Me: Well, you can you schedule an appointment for any time after Tuesday.
Jack: Tuesday? Alright.
He turned and started walking away.
Me: We open at 3 and close at 9.
Jack, without turning around: Thanks.
Me: No problem. Have a good day.
Jack, without turning around again: Yep.
Then, under his breath and to no one in particular, my new friend muttered something that sounded like "dumb fag," threw open the door, slammed it shut and left. Nice guy. I should have asked him to take a look at my toilet.

Anyway. Revelation. It's something most of you have already concluded, which makes it kind of silly that it takes me over-extending myself to the outer limits of my own strength and collapsing before I remember it: our first responsibility is to ourselves.

I don't have to feel anything but neutrality about the way Jack must be feeling (I wondered, in this string of thoughts, if he was having a bad day or if he had an abusive father or if he himself was gay and not really comfortable with it or if something bigger, something that exceeds the power of my imagination, happened and he needed to memorialize it). I don't have to worry about the woman who's crying on the park bench, and I'm not responsible for the bad things that happen to my friends and family, even if I'm there to witness them. I can still help, but I can also choose my battles based upon what I can handle and not by the way my broken fail-o-meter starts to buzz if I turn someone down.

I can spend my time for me sometimes, doing the things I want to do, without the threat of "feeling bad" if I say "no, I don't want to drink tonight, and please don't pressure me into it."

Anyway. I've written blogs like this before. Proof positive that history has a way of repeating itself. Or is it more an indication of how difficult it is to break our bad habits?

Is being too compassionate a bad habit?