Why do I feel all the things I do when I open my mouth? Why is it that I can voice my displeasure or disagreement in certain settings and remain nonplussed but when it comes to holding the people I care for accountable, I’ve often found myself in a puddle? Well, simply put, the stakes are higher.
I have a friend who often tells me she is a goddess. I’m here to tell you that she is in all the ways that count. She is beautiful. Loving. Warm. Kind. She makes mistakes and has faults, but hey, welcome to being human. Whenever she is standing on a soapbox, lecturing on the unwise or unkind behavior others have demonstrated towards her, she reiterates this sentiment that she is a goddess. The thing is, it is an entirely hollow expression. She doesn’t really believe it. I mean I do, but then I question it. Are you a goddess? Can you be a goddess and permit shitty treatment? Sure, you can and you do. But that’s not the way it should work. How does this particular goddess, my friend, find herself with a tarnished crown and diminished authority? She allows others to see her doubt. To feel it. To take advantage of it. She shows them that what she says and how she feels and what she tolerates are all different.
I can tell you that there are situations I find intolerable, but that is only meaningful if I put a stop to them. That doesn’t always mean speaking a truth. Sometimes silence is a more powerful tool than all the words. But, these actions (or lack thereof) must be selected carefully and with great thought to the intended impact. We cannot control what others do or what the universe will dole out to us, but we are blissfully able to control our reactions to such. And that, is both a blessing and a curse. When we acknowledge that our reaction is our responsibility, we make it ours in the truest sense of the word. That’s pretty fucking scary, but also entirely necessary.
Just like my friend doubts her self-worth and welcomes shitty treatment because of such things, I’ve doubted my reactions, responses, and feelings in many situations. Both of us take extensive and unnecessary pauses, and it is in those pauses that the pain and punishment find us.
I think I’ve talked about this one experience before, but it so profoundly impacted me that it bears repeating. I had a friend who was behaving like absolute shit towards me. I was to find out later that he was taking his own struggle and feelings out on me, rather than expressing them appropriately. Anyway, in the face of my pain and confusion, I decided to confront him. I say confront but our discussion came from a place of care and friendship within me. I was questioning and compassionate, not accusatory and angry. What response did I get? Well, he said the following: “don’t wipe your shit on me and tell me I stink.”
Sorry, as I know that expression is rather crude, even for here, but its important to me that I don’t soften it for digestion sake. It was his clever way of saying that he didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. It was a cutting of the deadliest accuracy. He looked at me and challenged the validity of my feelings. He may as well have told me that I was imagining things or that everything was in my head or that I’m just overly sensitive. His expression, delivered with just the right level of distain and judgment, unraveled ever solid notion I had entering the conversation. Following his declaration, I told myself that I had jumped to an emotional conclusion and somehow made the foolish decision to move forward with something of a confrontation based on extraordinarily flimsy evidence.
The thing is, I never intended for it to be a confrontational conversation. I didn’t feel angry. I didn’t want an ‘a-ha’ moment or seventeen apologies. I just wanted to explain how I was feeling and better than that, have an intelligent conversation that helped move us or me to a better place. No dice.
His reaction to my words reinforced every nervous and bad-belly feeling I had entering that conversation. I felt stupid and reactionary. I felt weak and easily provoked. Bottom line is that my feelings, my fears, were entirely based on his reaction. My intention wasn’t to speak my peace or to take a stand. I wanted to fix it, to make nice. I wanted to come to a mutual understanding. I wasn’t ready to move away from the relationship. I simply wanted a tweak that I felt would make life easier for me. I was still too fucking afraid to let go of a friendship, even if it no longer served me. Even if it never served me. Even if I knew from the beginning that it was a bad idea. Even if it wasn’t ever really a friendship.
It was, and sometimes still is, easier for me to believe that I had some sort of weakness that led to these failures than for me to say, thanks but no thanks. It was easier to have moments of anxiety buried in complacency than face the longer discomfort that comes with shaking shit up.
I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror and not think of myself as a failure if a relationship ended. I couldn’t see myself as a warrior for my truth. I couldn’t recognize that extricating myself from that victim mentality was an invaluable and ever-rewarding freedom. I couldn’t separate myself from the notion that others had and have the ability to figure it out, to muddle through, to put up with shit.
I had a brief relationship fizzle once and I was talking to a friend and expressed to her that I wondered why this person didn’t “choose” me. Why it didn’t work. I thought I knew all the reasons, but I wasn’t sure. She looked right at me and said ‘why don’t you just ask him?’ Ah. The horror. How could I possibly do that? What if I made him uncomfortable? What if I made him angry or upset? Why if he didn’t want to talk to me anymore because he read my question as continued interest rather than what it was, curiosity?
It feels like these are a number of disjointed thoughts, yes? Maybe not. Maybe you know where I’m going or where I wanted to get to.
Here it is, the bottom line: My fears came from prioritizing others’ comfort over my own, from speaking my truth as a mechanism of provoking a reaction, and from an aversion to loss. What if all of that disappeared? What would I be afraid of then? Think on that…
L.
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