It has been in my thoughts lately as I realize that you can't save a person in danger of drowning (metaphorically, that is), if they don't realize what they are getting themselves into, or if they misinterpret your attempt to throw them a lifeline as something else. Sometimes, after giving it a few good tries, you just have to stop trying to save them and watch them drown. It's not the first time.
It doesn't help that there is a certain level of excitement in doing the wrong thing and in gathering an audience to watch you drown, and even to support you while you do it!
It's pore over books, by the way, not "pour over."
And a friend you know only through the Internet is not a friend, but a person onto whom you can project your fantasies and fill in the blanks the way you want them to be filled in. The real person on the other end is not the one you imagine him or her to be, and will probably get you into some real trouble in between the time you meet them for real and the time you realize who they really are.
Signed, the voice (and victim) of more than one such experience.
Pay more attention to the real people in your real life. Beware of the virtual world and virtual relationships. And when you go on and on about being miserable and broken and not understanding life, and some pitying stranger is kind enough to offer you a resource that will teach you what you don't already know and will allow you to not only understand life, but have it make sense and have meaning, at least give it a look. As hard as it is for you to go through what you are going through, it is almost harder to watch, knowing just how fixable it is if you would just read and understand what is taught here:
Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves
