in response to a friend's blog entry about the desire to help vs the desire to save:

As one as of these people you describe yourself as, it is difficult to try to do the right thing (to help/comfort, not save) and offer yourself in that capacity, and feel like it falls flat. Instead, you (meaning I) revert to saving tactics, which then turn you (meaning I) into the asshole enemy, and then everything's just a galldern mess you don't know how to fix.

As one of these people you describe as suffering from severe depression. I am miserable/happy to report that in the middle of the raging shitstorm that has been the last week, I managed to get to a doctor during a moment of lucidity. After 17+ years of this galldern mess I don't know how to fix, I've decided to throw some pills at it and see what happens. And then I'll go talk to someone and see what they say.

If my recent endeavors in trying to fix others have proven anything to me, it's that whatever I'm doing isn't working, and fixing is for people who know what they're doing.

That said, I also wouldn't have sought help if it weren't for the push of those who didn't just sit back and pat my head, but rather pushed me gently toward that help, not to fix me or be the hero, but because they care what happens to me.

And when that happens, when they push and I follow, it is not a single one of them but I who am the goddamn hero, because the journey doesn't belong to the mentor or the threshold guardian--it belongs to me.