I Forgot What I Like

Same first words as every page on this site, and I say them slowly. This is not medicine. I have no clinical training, nothing here is treatment, and nothing on this page ever stands in for a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If the person you are caring for has you worried, ring somebody qualified today. That is not fussing. That is the sensible first move.

Now. Somebody asked you a nice question recently and you could not answer it.

It was probably something like: what do you feel like doing. Or what would you like for your birthday. Or if you had Saturday to yourself, what would you do with it.

And you gave an answer, because you are polite and because a pause would have made them worry. But the answer was made up on the spot, and the real experience underneath it was a kind of blankness, and then a small private alarm about that blankness which you did not mention to anybody.

I want to talk about that blankness, because it frightens people more than they admit, and because it is not what they think it is.

The verse is about the returning of them, not the earning

There is a line in the thirty seventh Psalm that gets used to promise people things, and read carefully it is about something quieter and better.

Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. (Psalm 37:4, King James Version)

The usual reading is that God hands over the things a person wants. But look at the wording again. He gives the desires of the heart. He gives the desires.

For somebody in your position that is the exact promise you need, because the missing thing is not a Saturday. The missing thing is the wanting itself, and this verse describes that as something given rather than something generated.

You are described in a promise about desires being given back rather than earned. Psalm 37:4 speaks of the desires themselves as a gift, and the Holy Spirit is the one who returns a capacity a person thought they had lost.

I want to be careful not to turn that into a guarantee about a week or a life, because this site does not deal in those. What I will say is that the blankness you felt is not described anywhere as permanent.

You have not been permanently emptied out, and nothing in that verse has ever once described a person past restoring. The Spirit of God is the one who is at work in a person who cannot answer a simple question, and it is written that delight and the desires of the heart are both spoken of as gifts.

What actually happened to the wanting

Let me be practical about the mechanism, because I think it takes the fear out of it.

Wanting things takes a small amount of energy. Not much, but some. A person under sustained load starts shedding everything that is not immediately necessary, and the wanting is one of the first things to go, because it has no urgent function.

I am not going to put a name to it, because naming it is not mine to do. What I can tell you is that it is extremely common in people doing what you are doing, and that the shedding is a response to load rather than a change in who somebody is.

You are not a different person, and the load has never once rewritten anybody permanently. Psalm 37:4 assumes desires that can be given and therefore assumes a heart still capable of receiving them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a carer from mistaking exhaustion for a new identity.

But here is the part I will not skip. If the blankness has spread past the wanting, if it has got into the mornings and the getting up and the caring about anything at all, that is not something to sort out on a page like this one.

You were never meant to work out what is wrong with you, and a page has never once been able to look at anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who moves somebody from wondering to asking, and what is written promises the desires of the heart without ever describing a mechanism for getting them back.

The plain routing, and one line of it is yours

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and on an article for carers it points both ways.

If something is happening right now with the person you look after, that is 911, and it happens before anything else. If the heavy thing tonight is in your own mind, 988 answers, and a real person picks up, and that number exists for the carer as much as for anybody. And if the blankness has spread, or if you have not been seen yourself in a long time, that is a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today.

You are named in that routing, and being the well one has never once taken anybody out of it. Psalm 37:4 addresses the state of a person's own heart rather than their usefulness to anybody else, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a carer to make a call that is not about the patient.

Say it plainly if you go. I cannot answer questions about what I want any more. That is a real sentence and it is worth saying out loud to somebody trained.

You have a description worth giving, and it has never once been too small to say. The Spirit of God is the one who is with a carer describing herself rather than the household, and what is written speaks of a heart with desires rather than of a person with duties.