It’s hard when you have a perspective that another does not, when you can see the foolish choices they are making in their life on a daily basis, the complete lack of responsibility they exercise in their decisions, and their inability to pull themselves up out of the muck they are swimming in due to their own inaction. It is hard to watch someone doing things that will hurt them, and not be able to do anything about it. When it’s your own child, you can help them to understand what they are doing wrong, you can punish them for doing wrong things so they understand consequences, and when they are young they usually understand and change their behavior. When it is an adult, it is not that simple.
Right now, I have a vantage point of someone in my life who simply cannot see how their little daily decisions or lack of decisions in this case, is causing their life to spiral out of control, driving them deeper and deeper down into despair, financial ruin, and spiritual and ultimately physical death. Their actions are pushing all who love them further and further away. I try to talk to them about how just changing a few things about their daily rituals and choices can drastically alter the course they are headed in, but they refuse to accept the truth of their situation.
I can do nothing but watch and pray, offer support and advice when asked, and hope they will “get it” eventually. I hope it’s before they end up homeless and completely alone.
Life...How Hard Can It Be? 
Loralee said,
April 18, 2008 at 9:13 am
Oh, bug. This just breaks my heart. If it’s any consolation, this example is why I have taken some drastic measures of my own this week (Yup. I did it. We’ll see how it goes) but I could see everything spinning out of control and no small part of it was due to one of the conversations that we had about this very thing.
Different issues, but similar behavior.
I’m just so sad that you are all going through it.