Among my closest friends is Polly, a spunky nineteen year old student at State University, about two hours from here. Neither of us really know how we became as close as we have, but in a sense we're dependent on one another. There's nothing between us romantically speaking and there never will be. At first she was too young and now, two years and two 19th birthdays later (one suspects she was actually not 19 when we met...), age isn't so much a factor (though she's still way too young, depending on how many 19th birthdays she has left till she hits 20) as that I know far too much about her and she about me to even consider it. Anyhow, like I mentioned, we're dependent on one another. We even each other out.

Like all friendship (particularly intergender ones), it is not without its problems. She is a girlie's girl and I am a nerdboy. She's an ENFJ and I an INTJ. At root, emotion is her fuel and I am generally suspicious of emotionally-driven action.

Some time ago she determined that she was very unhappy at State University and wanted to leave Collegetown in the dust and return to the suburbia of Clear Lake and go to school at the local branch of the University of Houston. To be fair, she had a lot to be upset about in Collegetown. I can't go in to it all, but she had a boyfriend I affectionately called Weasel that left her under the most humiliating circumstances imaginable. Her once good friendship with her roommates had turned quite nasty to the point that Roommate A was obstructing Polly from being there to console Roommate B, who lost a very close family member, so that she could be the "good friend." Attempted romance after attempted romance had failed and she was just miserable.

She told me about her idea and I didn't say much at first until I had time to mull over whether or not it was a good idea. I determined that it conclusively was not. In fact, I further reasoned, it was the worst thing that she could do for herself. She was initially taken aback.

Polly: Why not?
RAW: Because it's a bad idea.
Polly: Why?
RAW: It won't solve the problem.
Polly: What do you mean? Of course it'll solve my problem. My problem is Collegetown. I'm miserable here.
RAW: Your problem in the short term is Collegetown, but it's largely circumstantial. Weasel. Roommates. Those are all things that can be fixed without leaving Collegetown.
Polly: But going back to Clear Lake would make me happy!! Even you can't deny that!

And I couldn't. She returned to Clear Lake at every opportunity. One or two weekends a month, every break for more than a couple days. This has been especially true since her breakup with Weasel. In fact, she'd first mentioned the possibility of returning home right after her breakup with him. She said, over and over again, "I need to go home. I need Daddy to hold me." She wanted, more than anything, to be held and reassured by someone that she knew loved her more than anything in the world. That person has always been her father.

I bided my time hoping that the sensation would pass, and it did, but here it was renewed. This time, she'd had more time to mull it over and I got the feeling that it wasn't going to pass so I couldn't just stay silent or merely voice my concerns. I needed to stand my ground, however unpopular my view was with her. Because I cared about her and only wanted the best for her.

So I explained her tendency to want to return home whenever things got tough. Gradually, I modified my wordage and started saying "retreat" home, because that's what I felt it was. College, I reasoned, was a time for growth. It's a time to handle your own problems and make your life better on your own (to the greatest extent possible). A return home now would deny her that opportunity. The further along she gets in life, the more difficult it will be to return home so she needed to use this opportunity, when the stakes are small, to stick it out. I felt very passionately about this.

Her response: Growth is overrated.

Now, let me be clear about something. Polly is neither stupid nor weak. She has a 3.5+ GPA and is law school bound. Further, she is one of the most resilient people that I've ever met. So don't interpret any of this with derision towards her and understand that she was, at the time, very depressed.

Which comes to the crux of our difference. I viewed her depression as a distraction. It was, to me, something that distorted her judgment and made transferring schools, adding semesters to her college career, and forfeiting the college experience seem more attractive than it should have. In her mind, however, her depression over recent events was everything.

"I am miserable here! Doesn't that mean anything to you?!" she would ask.

It did, but my sense was that her misery was independent of whether or not she lived in Collegetown. I asked her repeatedly why moving to Clear Lake would make things better except by relying on her parents, which she had finally agreed was not a sufficient rationale. I asked her why she doesn't transfer somewhere else, keep the college experience and leave backwood C-town behind. Her inability to answer that question without saying "Cause I was so happy in Clear Lake" strengthened my resolve and my impression that this was simply a retreat to a former life before things got so complicated and that complication was just something she needed to get used to sooner or later and the sooner the better.

The debate literally continued for weeks. Partially because she seeks my approval, but mostly because she knew that her father had shot down her previous mention of the idea and she was testing arguments against me to use on him to change his mind (like I said, she isn't stupid). Unfortunately for her, nothing stuck on me. She eventually wrote out a Word doc explaining her argument, and I was still unconvinced. She talked to her mother and step-mother about it. They completely agreed that moving back was the right thing to do, but I was unmoved. She talked to her friend in New York, who also agreed with her.

It was about then that I started noticing the gender divide. On one hand was her female friends, mother, and step-mother. On the other side was me and (presumably) her father.

The argument came to a head on a Friday evening when she laid out her arguments for one last time before heading down to Clear Lake to talk to her father about it. I told her that I want her to be happy, but I didn't think that a retreat would solve her problems. The debate ensued and got increasingly passionate. I eventually realized that she was going to talk to her father about it regardless of what I said, so I simply stepped back and said

RAW: Do what you think is right.
Polly: But you don't think it's right, do you?
RAW: No.
Polly: Why not?
RAW: ...
Polly: WHY NOT?
RAW: I've said all I have to say on the matter. I can forward you the transcripts if you really need them, but we've been talking in circles. I just want you to be happy and we have different ideas about what will bring that about.
Polly: But you've said yourself that moving to Clear Lake will make me happier.
RAW: It will in the short term, but it's instant gratification. I want you to be happy longer than the next couple months.
Polly: No you don't. You just want to be right. All you care about is being right.

Most people who know me would say that I am a rather cool-headed person. Truth is, I have a spitfire temper that I got from my mother. It's something I've learned to control over the years and it is rarely a factor in my life. That comment, however, flew me off the deep end. Truth is that The Great Divide was supposed to play their last show ever in Houston that night and I was running late because I wanted to complete the conversation that we'd started and talk to her one last time before she got the verdict from her father.

At the same time, we were having this conversation on AIM. Her AIM Buddy Icon is a Care Bear.

Do you know how difficult it is to have a heated argument with someone that has a Care Bears Buddy Icon?

I was more of a Thundercats guy than a Care Bears one. I had my GI Joes and Thundercats figures, but no Care Bear stuffed animals. Never had a desire for one either. Not my thing.

But when you think about it, the Care Bears is truly an awesome concept. I saw one of their movies once on a church youth group trip. The plot, if I recall, was this little boy who wanted to be a magician. He opened up this magic book and this Evil Face corrupted him and made him a doodie-head. There were these two other kids that he tried to be a meanie to. And, of course, there were the Care Bears that came to the rescue. At the end, they all stood around the corrupted magician and his book and they gave him the Care Bear Stare. The Care Bear Stare, if I recall, is this thing where they all stand around and care a whole lot. They care enough that their little logos on their tummy light up and shoot a whole bunch of Care at the mean person, and he becomes no longer mean. They shoot the Care at the Evil Face and he goes away.

The lesson, of course, is that if you just Care enough, all the bad and evil in the world will just go away. You can save anyone, be with anyone, and make everything okay if you can just Care enough. While the GI Joe's used their laser guns and the Thundercats used swords, nanchaks, and wips, the Care Bears just used a heaping handful of Care. No one dies, no one gets hurt, no one loses, and everyone is happy.

RAW: What do you want me to say? Do you want me to lie and tell you that I think you're doing the right thing?
Polly: It'd be a start!! Not that you can do it now because you just told me that you'd be lying.
RAW: But I just told you... argh. Look, I just want you to be happy. I don't think this will make you happy in the long run. If you go through with it and your dad agrees, I hope that I'm wrong.
Polly: But you don't think you will be.
RAW: Exactly.
Polly: And you hope that I don't convince Dad?
RAW: Yep.
Polly: I know what I need, Alex, you don't.
RAW: With all due respect, I don't believe that you do.

There wasn't much we could say to one another after that. She was going forward with her trek to her Dad's house and I was hoping she would fail. It pained me not to be able to give her what she wanted. In her mind, if we could all just agree that this would make everything in her life okay, it ultimately would. She ostensibly needed to convince her father because he held the purse strings, but more than anything else she needed his approval. Even if she could do it on her own, her father's disapproval (much moreso than mine, anyway) would taint the entire process. This is why she felt so alienated by me and why my failure to offer support (not just for her, but for her position) amounted to a lack of Care on my part. Cause if me and him could just care enough, we couldn't all be wrong, right? It would be self-perpetuating.

In my world, Care is not only insufficient, it's often counterproductive. For instance, if I didn't care, then I wouldn't have been arguing with her over all that time. When I look back over the years at various friendships that have become strained or relationships that didn't work because of something I did, it's not because I didn't care enough, it's because I cared too much. I got too angry or too infatuated, too impatient or too demanding. If it didn't matter to me one way or the other, I could have weathered any storm with just about anyone. But the Care was there and a price was paid.

In the words of Nick Clayton, "I never hated anyone I didn't love first."

In Polly's world, everything I said may have been logically correct (she couldn't really refute my logic except that she just felt I was wrong), but that didn't actually make it right. "How can I grow if I'm miserable?" she once asked. "How can you grow if you never are?" I replied.

My logic has its place. In this particular argument, I was right. She drove down to Clear Lake, talked to her father about it, and he said the same things that I did. She complained about it all to another good (male) friend of hers who, despite having never talked to me, said almost the exact same thing. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. She is presently in Collegetown, found a new roommate, and has gone on with her life. She's happy now.

Of course, she's been right before as well. After Weasel broke up with her, she desperately wanted to ask him if he missed her. I told her in many ways how much that was a BAD BAD BAD idea because either he did and she was going to want to save things and it's not going to work or he didn't and that'd just hurt her. She, of course, did so anyway. He told her that he did but he didn't want to go back, and that was all she wanted to know, that he did in fact miss her. She just needed that validation. I don't know what, if any, solace that would have given me, but sometimes we forget that other people are not us.

I'm not advocating her philosophy or mine here. I'm just thinking that much like Polly and I often need each other's input, they compliment each other quite well. I help keep her grounded and when I'm upset she will go to hell and back to make me smile again.

"Love will not keep us alive. Food and shelter keep us alive," I can imagine myself saying to her.
"But without it, you may be breathing but you're not actually alive," she'd probably respond.

We're both probably right.