Part of the problem with saviors, the way I see it, is that they are not happy with just saving you. They usually want to “fix” you too. They want no less than to convert you to their way of looking at the world. My savior is doing her damnest to fix me, I am putting up a valiant fight trying to convince her that maybe I don’t need fixing. I don’t know who will prevail in the end, but the smart money is probably on me. She is older and more tired these days. And I take being a contrarian very seriously.

To be fair, it must be tough for her to give up on me, although I know she is tempted most days. For one, she is big on causes and I come fully equipped with a lifetime worth of mess to fix. The fact that I am so stubbornly ungrateful (or so she thinks) for her efforts makes it that much more difficult for her to move on to someone a little less broken.

Then there are those letters after her name. She is a Ph.D., an honest to goodness DOCTOR. A psychologist who didn’t want to fix people, so she retired long ago, before she ran into too many of those crazy, suicidal, ungrateful humans that can seriously upset your gut.

So to pass her time, she decided to save a dog instead. Actually I am not sure if she truly wanted to save the dog, she just couldn’t deal with knowing she would be dead the day after, just because she had green snot coming out of her nose. Somehow my psychologist friend didn’t feel that was fair. She likes things to be fair. I would like that too but being a devout pessimist, I don’t necessarily expect them to be.

And apparently she didn’t know that being crazy, suicidal and ungrateful is what usually happens when someone decides her life mission is to save dogs, especially the kind of dogs no one really wants saved, despite what they might say. It didn’t help that I already had plenty of practice in the crazy and suicidal departments before I even started saving dogs to pass MY time.

Why, of all the crazy dog savers in a fairly major city, I had to be the one the shelter worker decided to “recommend” to my psychologist friend is one of those mysteries of life I have not really wasted much time attempting to solve. I was too busy at the time. It is too late now.

Unlike me, my friend realized what a huge mistake she made following the shelter worker’s advice, pretty much immediately. She should have listened to her gut then, but she is a hopeful and optimistic soul. And chances are no one else would have been crazy enough to even attempt to help her with her snotty dog anyway. Even among the crazy, some are crazier than others.

I did my best to change her mind (about saving the dog that is) but my friend doesn’t take no for an answer. Which kinda scares me when I think about it, because she does seem hell bent on saving at least one crazy, suicidal and contrarian mess of a human before she leaves this world.

Why she wants to save me so badly is another one of those mysteries because we both know how much she hates me. She just told me so this morning. It’s a good thing I am delusional and know better.

I just have to keep telling myself I am the crazy one; makes getting through the day a whole lot easier. And that’s all I have to do for today. It’s a modest goal, but some days, it is a grueling one.