the problem with C.C.

I'm supposed to be working on being compassionate toward a friend, whom we will reference as C.C. (not her real name). C.C. and I became close friends during my first years here in Neverneverland. This was an important friendship to me because 1. we are so similar, personality wise 2. she is one of my only friends that do not belong to my department. There were things that I could talk to her about that I couldn't necessarily discuss without anyone else so we became quick friends.

Let's fast forward to the past six months or so... My patience is slowly wearing thin with her in two areas: 1. her lack of assertiveness 2. her unwillingness to leave the house, but constant complaints about how she never "does anything fun" or "meets anyone to date." As my therapist is quick to point out, perhaps my frustration has to do with the fact that we are so alike. I'm not exactly the world's most assertive person, and this is putting it mildly. Unlike C.C. I am now completely unwilling to sit up in my house and be miserable and attempt to do nothing about it. I was this way a few years ago when I was deep in the throes of homesickness + lonely + depressed + one step away from quitting grad school. And the fact that she reminds me of this less-than-stellar time period of my life makes me crazy.

My therapist says I should work on having compassion. For whatever reason, she's not willing to deal with the various things in her life that make her unhappy. I am C.C. and have been C.C. To have compassion for her is to have compassion for myself during a dark time in my life (and vice versa) and facillitates my own healing. Now most of this is psychology-speak.... I have no idea of any practical ways to "work on" developing compassion. Or even what that really means. Hence, why I am not a clinical psychologist.

All I know is that today, after she stood me up for the fifty-eleventh time (this time in favor of cleaning her apartment rather than going out and celebrating having a holiday-sanctioned break from grad school), I just felt seriously annoyed.