Princess Cat of A Swift Kick and a Band-Aid wrote two posts dealing with a sensitive, personal, and extremely painful issue that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, including me, and these lines in particular struck me:

people can care, and nurture, and make you feel loved. They can put their own feelings aside in the short term and make the effort to show you love in the ways you best understand it, rather than in the ways they understand to show it. They can make you feel safe. They can be selfless enough to let you be irrationally upset, without taking it personally. They can be sensitive to your wants and needs for more/less/different types of attention. They can be inconvenienced and do it gracefully.

I've met Cat. I like Cat.

But, being a guy, it's very difficult to know how to go about showing support - even with these instructions in hand. I'm marginal at emotional nuances, at best, and I'm mostly geared toward taking some physical action. But in this case, what's requested is "being" more than "doing", which leaves me feeling frustrated, helpless, and a little guilty. My "knight in shining armor" reflex has been triggered, but there's no dragon's head to be severed to save the distressed damsel. All that remains is the scorched earth the dragon left behind.

I don't have the tools to fix this. How do I use a sword to plant a new garden?

However, what I *do* have is a swift and gallant steed. I can ride to spread the message of the destruction that's been done, in the hopes that others may know that there's a dragon in need of killing, and perhaps a gardener or two may overhear the tale, and work her magic to make Cat's blasted land green and beautiful again.

And so - with this post - I ride.

Posted by: Harvey at 08:06 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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