When Caring Starts Before You Know What It Means
When I think about someone I couldn’t save, my brother is always the first person who comes to mind. But if I’m being honest, he wasn’t the first person I ever tried to save.
That was probably my dad.
After my parents divorced, I spent a couple of years living alone with him. I was still young, but he wasn’t very good at hiding his drug use. I knew what he was doing. I knew his mood swings, too. At the time, I thought the drugs were what made him angry. Now that I’m older and understand addiction a little better, I sometimes wonder if I had it backward. Maybe some of the worst times were when he didn’t have the drugs.
I didn’t understand any of that then. I just wanted peace. And I wanted my dad to be safe.
When you’re young and you hear stories about drugs killing people, that’s where your mind goes. Every time my dad went into the bathroom, part of me wondered if maybe this would be the time he didn’t come back out.
It’s terrifying when you’re a kid and you don’t really understand what you’re dealing with. It’s even worse when it’s just you and him.
There was nobody sitting beside me who understood addiction. Nobody I could bounce my fears off of or ask whether what I was seeing was normal. Maybe I talked to a couple of friends here and there, but even at that age, I knew there were certain things I couldn’t tell another adult. In my mind, that wasn’t even an option.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I pleaded with him to stop.
It didn’t work.
Years later, after I had moved back in with my mom and siblings, my dad met a woman who helped him get clean. I would eventually hear him tell people that she was the first person who really got through to him and helped him go to rehab.
I don’t know if he ever realized what hearing that felt like for me.
I remembered the years when I tried. I remembered being scared. I remembered crying myself to sleep. I remembered wanting him to stop long before I was old enough to understand why he couldn’t.
Maybe that’s part of why helplessness frustrates the shit out of me today.
I’ve spent a lot of my life wanting to help people and trying to break some of the cycles I grew up around. My brother. Friends. People struggling with drugs or alcohol. People who are poor. People making terrible decisions. Even strangers whose stories I don’t completely know.
I’ve also spent a lot of my life learning the same lesson that I couldn’t understand as a kid.
Wanting someone to be okay and knowing how to make them okay are two completely different things.
When Trying to Help Someone Pushes Them Away
Getting older didn’t make me any better at saving people.
One of my closest friends struggled with drugs for years. I could see where his life was heading, and I tried to talk to him about it. Apparently, I tried a little too hard.
He started telling some of our other friends that all I ever did was preach to him about his problems. Eventually, he stopped talking to me for a couple of years.
That was never what I wanted.
I wasn’t trying to judge him. I wasn’t sitting there thinking I was better than him. Hell, I’ve had plenty of years in my own life when I wasn’t doing what was best for me. I spent years drowning my own problems in alcohol. I knew what it was like to cope with life in ways that weren’t exactly healthy.
I just didn’t want to lose my friend.
Eventually, he came back around. We became close again during the last couple years of his life, and I’m grateful for that. He even admitted that I had been right. He told me he couldn’t face my questions or the help I was trying to give him.
And then he died from using drugs anyway. 
Another person I couldn’t help.
I’ve thought about whether I would do things differently if I could go back. I probably would. I’d be smarter about how I approached him. I’d do some research. I’d try to understand what I was dealing with instead of thinking that if I just said the right thing enough times, eventually something would click.
I understand something now that I didn’t understand as well then. Most people aren’t going to change until they’re ready to change. You can talk. You can worry. You can research. You can offer help. But you can’t force somebody to want a different life.
The strange part is that knowing that doesn’t make me wish I had tried less.
It makes me wish I had tried harder.
I miss that dude.
Maybe trying harder would have pushed him away again. Maybe instead of getting those last couple of years with my friend, I would have spent them on the outside of his life, still trying to figure out the perfect thing to say that didn’t exist.
I’ll never know.
That’s what scares me when I think about the other people in my life I can’t seem to reach. I’m older now. I’ve done the research. I’ve changed the way I approach people. Sometimes I keep my distance. Sometimes I bite my tongue because I’d rather have someone still talking to me than push them so hard that they disappear from my life.
And I still don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.
Because once you’ve lost someone you tried to help, it’s hard not to wonder whether the next person will become another person you wish you had tried harder to save.
Loving Someone You Can’t Save
Of course I felt guilty about keeping my distance from my brother.
I’m his older brother, and he might be one of the people I’ve loved most in this goddamn world. He’s been my shadow since we were babies.
And I still avoid him sometimes.
Not because I don’t care about him. Because I can’t look at him or talk to him without something inside me dying a little bit.
For years, I watched my younger brother become someone I barely recognized. He thought I was hiding from him. In a way, I guess I was. I couldn’t figure out how to stay close without enabling him, and my empathy has always been a weakness when someone I love tells me they’re in need. Even when I knew a sob story probably wasn’t true, I still had a hard time saying no.
Keeping my distance became one of the only defenses I had.
But while I was trying to protect myself from what was happening with my brother, my mom was fighting cancer.
And she’s another person I couldn’t save.
That one is harder for me to even write.
My mom actually begged me to help her, and I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. I knew she was stuck in a situation that was hurting her. I knew my brother was taking from her when she had almost nothing left to give. I was angry at him for what he was putting her through, but I was also fighting my own demons over what was happening to him.
Meanwhile, I had a wife and young kids at home who needed me, too.
There were nights when my wife was working and the thought of packing up two young boys and taking them into a situation I didn’t even want to be in myself felt impossible. So sometimes I stayed home.
Maybe that was an excuse.
I’ve asked myself that.
Maybe staying home meant I didn’t have to face what was happening. Maybe I could tell myself I was being a dad and taking care of my own family while, outside the walls of my house, it felt like everyone else I loved was falling apart.
Sometimes people would throw it in my face that I didn’t come around enough.
That made me feel like shit.
Because what they couldn’t see was that I already felt like shit.
I knew my mom needed help. I knew my brother needed help. I loved them both. I was angry at one. Terrified for the other. Sometimes angry at both. Probably angry at myself most of all.
And I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do about any of it.
So at night, I wrote.
I sat down night after night and disappeared into a story that eventually became my first novel, Not My Brother’s Keeper. I don’t want to give away what happens in that story, but I understand now that part of the reason I needed to write it was because writing was one of the only places where I could breathe.
In a story, I could take all that fear, anger, guilt and helplessness and put it somewhere.
Because in my real life, I couldn’t fix any of it.
My mom is gone now. I still carry questions about whether I let her down. My brother is still here, and sometimes I worry we’re heading toward another disaster that I won’t know how to stop.
That’s the part nobody tells you about loving someone you can’t save.
Sometimes there isn’t a moment when you finally figure out what you should have done.
Sometimes they’re gone and you still don’t know.
And sometimes they’re still here.
And you still don’t know.
Maybe People Just Need a Break
For all the people I’ve watched struggle, I have to remind myself that there were plenty of years when I wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire either.
People tell me they’re proud of me now. I’m raising a family. I work my ass off. I wrote a book. I built a website and started putting my thoughts out into the world. And sometimes when people say they’re proud of everything I’ve done, it makes me think about the person I used to be. Was I really that much of a bum back then? Was I really that different from the person I am now?
Because I don’t think I was. I wasn’t always doing my best, that’s for sure. There were years when I drank too much and tried to bury things I didn’t want to deal with. There were times when I felt like the world was against me, and no matter what I did, it was going to be the wrong thing anyway. When you feel that way long enough, it’s a lot easier to give up and do nothing.
But even during my lowest points, I still had a big heart. I would still drop what I was doing to help somebody if I could. Underneath all the things I wasn’t doing right, I was still me.
My life could have gone differently. Addiction was all around me, and I could have easily slipped farther down my own path of drinking. I could have stayed living in my parents’ attic. Who knows where I would have ended up?
Then I found someone who lit a fire inside me. Or maybe the fire was already there.
I think about that when I see people I care about struggling. Sometimes I wonder if all somebody needs is for one break to finally go their way. Maybe everyone has something inside them waiting for the right thing to ignite it. I don’t know if that’s true, but I know how it feels to think the world is out to get you and that nothing you do ever seems to be the right thing.
That’s why it pains me when I see people who have something inside them that they haven’t reached down and pulled out yet. I know people personally who have talents and abilities they don’t know how to use. I see great people holding themselves back when I genuinely believe they could succeed and maybe even love life if they could just get started.
The frustrating part is that I can see it, but I don’t know if they can.
Maybe that’s part of why I write. I started Evolved From Empathy because I thought that if I couldn’t always get through to the people standing right in front of me, maybe something I wrote could reach somebody I would never meet. Maybe I could help someone without ever knowing I did.
I don’t know if that will ever happen. I don’t know if something I write can ignite that fire in somebody, and I don’t know what the thing will be that finally makes another person decide they’re ready to change their life. Hell, I’m not completely sure what it was for me.
But I do know what it’s like to have people look at who you are today without knowing exactly who you might become tomorrow.
Maybe that’s why, even after all the people I couldn’t save, I still have such a hard time giving up on anyone.
When Caring Starts to Cost You
There have been more times than I could count when I’ve wished I was more like other people.
I’ve told my wife plenty of times that I wish I was more like her. I’ve even told her that I need her to teach our boys to be more like her and less like me. It hurts to always care about people and feel helpless, and if I’m being honest, I’m convinced I’ve probably taken years off my life with all the worrying I’ve done.
I started getting gray hair when I was 16 years old.
I know there are probably studies arguing about whether stress actually causes gray hair, and I’m sure somebody smarter than me can explain exactly how all of that works. But I’d be damned if you could convince me there’s no connection between being the only 16-year-old I knew with gray hair and being a kid who worried himself sick about everything.
Even when I was young, worry could take over my entire body. After my parents divorced, I remember my mom dropping us off with someone while she ran errands or went shopping. Sometimes I’d be in tears until she came back. Part of that fear may have come from losing my babysitter in a terrible car accident. Maybe somewhere in my young mind, I had learned that people could leave and not come back.
Whatever the reason, when my mom was gone, I’d worry so much that I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
I wish I could say I grew out of that.
The people changed. The problems got bigger. But that part of me never completely went away.
Now I worry about my brother. I worry about friends. I worry about people I love who are making decisions I can’t control. I can keep my distance. I can bite my tongue. I can tell myself that someone’s life belongs to them and that I can’t be responsible for every choice they make.
None of that makes me stop caring.
That’s the part I wish I could turn off sometimes.
But as much as I’ve wished I could be different, I don’t think I would actually change who I am. Caring this much has made my life harder, but I also think it helped make me everything I’ve become.
I don’t think I would have written a book if I didn’t feel things as deeply as I do. I don’t think this website would exist. I don’t think I would see struggling people the same way. I might not even be as good at my regular job because I probably wouldn’t care as much about taking care of my customers. The people who really know me know that when I care about them, it’s genuine. I don’t know who I would be without that part of myself.
So maybe I don’t really want my boys to be like my wife instead of me.
Maybe I just want them to learn something that took me far too long to understand.
I want them to care about people. I want them to have empathy. I want them to be the kind of men who will help somebody who needs it. But I also want them to have boundaries and know how to stick to them. I want them to understand that saying no to someone doesn’t make them a bad person, and that they don’t have to carry every person they love on their backs.
I want them to have the best parts of caring deeply without letting it eat them alive.
Maybe that’s because I’m still trying to figure out how to do that myself.
At 45 years old, I know caring this deeply has cost me something. I’ve spent more nights worrying than I could ever count, usually about things I had no control over in the first place.
But then I come back to the same problem.
How do you stop being who you are?
And even if I could, I’m not sure I would want to.
Loving Someone Doesn’t Mean You Can Change Them
After everything I’ve been through, you’d think I would have figured out what to do when someone I love is destroying their life.
I haven’t.
If anything, I’ve probably backed away more as I’ve gotten older. I hate admitting that because it goes against almost everything I’ve always believed about helping people. But I’ve been bitten enough times to understand that sometimes trying to save someone ends with both of you getting hurt.
Every situation is different. There are people in my life who I would drop everything for and help until my last breath. Then there are people I’ve tried so hard to help, and been hurt so badly in the process, that I’m not sure I’ll ever be the same with them again.
That sucks to say.
But I also know myself well enough to understand the risk of diving back in. When I love someone, I have a hard time saying no. If someone I care about tells me they’re in trouble, even when part of me suspects I’m not hearing the whole truth, my first instinct is still to help.
The problem is that sometimes helping isn’t actually helping.
Sometimes the money you give someone because you love them makes it easier for them to keep doing the thing that’s destroying them. Sometimes saying yes because you can’t stand watching someone struggle only protects them from facing the consequences that might finally make them want something different.
Then you’re left wondering whether your love just helped them hurt themselves.
That’s a different kind of guilt.
So nowadays, sometimes I back away.
Not because I’ve stopped caring. Usually, I still care more than I probably should. I still worry. I still wonder what’s going to happen. I still imagine the phone call I don’t want to get.
I’ve just learned something that took me most of my life to accept, and some days I’m still not sure I’ve completely accepted it.
No matter how big the love is, and no matter how much you care, you cannot make someone change before they’re ready.
You can tell them what you see. You can offer help. You can research until two in the morning trying to find the answer they can’t seem to find for themselves. You can love them harder than you’ve ever loved anybody.
But you can’t make them want what you want for them.
And the more you push, sometimes the only thing that moves is the distance between your relationship.
Maybe backing away isn’t always giving up on someone. Maybe sometimes it’s admitting that you don’t know how to stay close without becoming part of the problem. Maybe it’s leaving whatever door you can leave open while accepting that they’re the one who eventually has to decide to walk through it.
I wish I could tell you I’ve made peace with that.
I haven’t.
There are still people I worry about. There are still people I wonder if I should be doing more for. There are people I keep my distance from because I don’t trust myself not to get pulled back into the same cycle again.
Maybe that’s the line I’ve spent my whole life trying to find.
The line between loving someone and believing their life is mine to save.
I’m still not sure exactly where it is.
What Do You Do When Caring Isn’t Enough?
If you’ve made it this far hoping I was eventually going to tell you how to save someone you love, I’m sorry.
I don’t know.
I’ve spent damn near my entire life, from childhood until now, trying to help someone with a major problem. My dad. My brother. My mom. Friends I’ve lost and friends I still worry about.
I’ve struck out every time.
Maybe that’s not completely fair to myself. Maybe there were moments when I helped more than I know. Maybe something I said mattered even if it didn’t change the ending. But if the goal was to save everyone I loved from the things that were hurting them, my record isn’t very good.
So who the hell am I to tell you what to do?
I’m 45 years old, and I’ve spent probably 40 of those years trying to help people who didn’t listen to me. Some couldn’t. Some wouldn’t. Some weren’t ready. And maybe sometimes I didn’t know how to help them in the way they actually needed.
The only thing I can tell you is something I’m still trying to learn myself.
As far as I know, we only get this one life.
And I think we’re allowed to try to find some peace in it.
That’s easier for me to write than it is for me to actually live. I can sit here and tell you that you shouldn’t let another person’s choices consume your life, then turn around tomorrow and worry myself sick about someone I love. I can tell you that you can’t save someone who isn’t ready to save themselves and still lie awake wondering if there’s one more thing I haven’t tried.
I don’t know how to turn that part of myself off.
Maybe I never will.
But life is so damn short, and it hurts to think about how much of mine I’ve spent worrying about lives I couldn’t control.
If you love someone who is struggling right now, I can’t tell you when to hold on or when to back away. I can’t tell you whether the next conversation will finally be the one that gets through to them. I can’t promise that if you say the perfect words, love them the right way, or try one more time, everything will turn out okay.
I wish somebody could.
All I know is that loving someone doesn’t give us the power to save them.
Maybe the hardest part of empathy is accepting that.
You can care. You can love. You can leave the door open. You can hope like hell that someday they find whatever it is inside themselves that makes them ready to walk through it.
But somewhere in all of that, you still have to live your life too.
And that’s what I’m still trying to figure out.
Before You Go
If you enjoyed this article, I’d love to stay connected.
Every other Sunday, I share a new reflection about life, family, empathy, and the lessons I’m still trying to figure out. You’ll also get occasional updates about my writing and future projects.
If you’d like to come along for the journey, I’d be honored to have you.
Or, if you’d like to keep reading today, you can check out my debut novel, Not My Brother’s Keeper.
Thanks for spending a little time with me today.