I am ill

because of a complete and utter absence of caring and concern from the people around me. I apparently do not know how to elicit caring and concern of the sort that I need.

People give what's easiest for them to give, what's convenient, what makes them feel good. That's the 'golden rule'.

I heard about something called 'the platinum rule' recently, which basically says something like, "Give unto others what they really need, rather than what's convenient for you."

To me, love is giving a person what they need, as defined by them, not by you. But most people seem to have been raised by the adage, "You'll take what you get and like it." Shiver. Cruel brutality disguised as kindness. The most poisonous pill of all.

What I NEED is a massive dose of Vitamin L, as defined above, in my terms, on my time, to suit my needs. I'm still making up for those long-ago unmet needs from childhood, and you know what? I won't be done til I'm DONE. Period. No ifs, ands or buts. It's like an engine that won't run until it's got the right kind of fuel. Not the engine's fault that it can't run on whatever old crap you happen to have lying around - that's not the way it was made. It was made to run on love, and nothing else. That's human nature.

I thought of an analogy, earlier, for what I'm trying to do right now: It's as if I were a car that had to hunt for it's own gasoline, without speaking a word of english, going from place to place hoping, desperately, that just by chance someone would know exactly what it needs and give it exactly that thing.

Now, according to some folks who write and think about this stuff, we tend to 'call in' what we need by our behavior. But there's also the fact that our upbringing 'teaches' us certain ways to behave - that is, our mental wiring gets kind of 'set' by the patterns we experience in childhood.

So, it's just simply taking time (and lots of practice!) to learn how to undo these patterns.

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I'm finding myself saying 'no' a lot, shutting out those intrusive, unwanted thoughts. I'm getting pretty good at it, like slamming down some kind of protective shield, like one of those 'screens' I used to read about in sci-fi books that talked about telepathic powers and how to protect oneself from invasive attacks by other people.