Or not.

Something stinks.

I really don't know what.

Maggie's been loose in the house the last couple of days. We're working on making use of that doggie door, right? So I figured, she's made a mess somewhere. Except I can't find one. So then I thought, well, maybe she's dragged something in and hidden it somewhere? Except, I can't find any evidence of that, either. So I'm washing her doggie bed. Except...I don't think it's that, either....

I'm thinking maybe something crawled up under the house and died.

Either way...ew.

Anyhow.

So I get a forward today, one of those mass emails with the cute pictures and catchy phrases and the guilt clause of, you know, "if you don't send this back to me I'll know you don't love me." And it led off with this phrase:

"There comes a point in your life when you realize who matters, who never did, who won't anymore, and who always will. So don't worry about people from your past, there's a reason why they didn't make it to your future."

And I got to thinking about that.

I disagree.

I think that I've lost a lot of good people along the way, you know? I've certainly kept a bunch, too, like I mentioned at the end of my last post. But I think occasionally about the people who aren't in my life any longer, for whatever reason, mine or theirs. And sometimes it makes me a little sad.

Sometimes, though, I will concede, I spend more time thinking, "Wow. Glad I dodged that bullet."

An ex of mine told me once, people come into your life, when they come into your life, for a reason. But sometimes, once they've fulfilled that, they no longer have a place there.

He gave me a lot of sound bites, that one. And to some degree, I agree with him. I'm not sure I agreed that it was a good reason to break up with me, but, nonetheless. Sometimes I agree with the logic of the above statement. Sometimes, I don't. I guess it's a case by case thing.

Ruthie and I, while rearranging our office on her whim this afternoon, decided that the gestalt of pretty much all of psychiatry comes down to the title phrase - "Or not." You could treat the patient with meds....or not. You could hospitalize them....or not. This patient has reasonably good defensive mechanisms so she must have been traumatized at the post-Oedipal stage...or, perhaps, not. One of the great things about psychiatry, which is also one of the most frustrating, is the propensity for which things are always the way they are...except when they're not.

Yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this, really. Just sort of waxing philosophic. Then again, maybe there's a point...

...or, not.