Love is All You Need?

 I remember working in a hospital, in another city, 8 years ago or so.  My mentor was an eccentric, middle-aged Englishman who was a self-proclaimed histrionic. He had an amazing sense of humour and had some very Unorthodox ways of practicing his profession. My classmates labeled being supervised by him as a "waste of time". "You never learn any diagnostic criteria from him or anything that might serve you well on the exam", I was told, "He's a nice guy, but I learned nothing from him". I think I can honestly say that if I ever managed to help anyone it was because of that man. I remember finishing morning report on the ward on a Monday, after having been told about one of our newer patients' acting out over the weekend. She suffered from borderline personality disorder, a dreaded condition that is quite challenging to treat. I was chasing after my mentor: I, with my short stubby legs, then on crutches no less, chased after the 6'4", slim and swift controversial guru. I was about to open the door to her room, when he dramatically stopped me, asking me, to hold it. I assumed he was going to tell me to conduct the interview and discuss my approach. Instead, he modeled the following: He stood tall, took a deep breath through his nose while closing his eyes, gesturing with his fingers as if implying that he was getting himself into a meditative trance. He held in the breath for a few seconds and exhaled while keeping closed and said: "Love!" before knocking on the door and entering the room. He smiled as if he was partly joking. He never really took himself seriously. The gist of his method facilitated some of the most profound human connections I ever made and simultaneously set me up for endless agony.

Eventually, I learned that sometimes love is not enough. Love is not enough when people cannot accept it. It is not enough when they do not know or feel that they are indeed loved. My capacity to love has been both a gift and a curse. While it brought me a lot of love, esteem and validation from the objects of my sentiments but then , because it is but one faint consolation in the midst of too much hardship. The most wonderful people I met had been previously labeled by others as "difficult". For some reason, they sensed my mantra and offered me the most precious gift they had to offer: Their trust. I was not worthy of it. I unwittingly failed them and misguided them. I sold them time-limited hope in the form of an emotional investment. The whole system was against them. Others seemed to give them the run around, passing on the responsibility from one person to the next. Their physical pain was seen as insignificant; their exhaustion as secondary to whatever label of mental illness could be blamed. I saw myself in these people. I would have been just as distressed, anxious and irritable had I been in their shoes. The frustrating situations they would describe to me would have probably led me to being charged on multiple counts of assault, mischief and destruction of property had I been the one experiencing them. The theme is of people giving up, despite being loved, because it no longer matters in the midst of the money-mongering apathy that surrounded them.