Bravery

[kaberett]

Vienna Teng, Stray Italian Greyhound:

Oh, no not now, please not now
I've just settled into the glass half empty
made myself at home
And so why now? Oh, please not now
I just stopped believing in happy endings,
harbours of my own

But you had to come along, didn't you
Break down the doors, throw open windows
Oh, if you knew just what a fool you have made me...
So what do I do with this

This stray Italian greyhound,
these inconvenient fireworks
This ice-cream covered screaming hyperactive thought
God, I just want to lay down,
these colors make my eyes hurt
This feeling calls for everything that I am
not

I'm not that kind
I'm so good at shooting down any notion
This tired world could change
It's all been bought,
well at least that was my line
No use in spending all that emotion
when there's someone else to blame

But you had to come along, didn't you?
Rev up the crowd, rewrite the rule book
Where do I go when every no turns into maybe
So what do I do with this

This sudden burst of sunlight and me with my umbrella
Cross indexing every weatherman's report
I was ready for the down slide but not for springs to well up
This feeling calls for everything I can't afford
to know
is possible now

What do I do, do I do with a love that won't sit still?
Won't do what it's told
What do I do, do I do with a love that won't sit still?

Please not now, please not now
Please not now, please not

What do I do, do I do with a love that won't sit still?
With a love that won't sit still
What do I do, do I do with a love that won't
With a love that won't sit still?

What do I do, do I do with a love that won't, that won't sit still?
Won't do what it's told
What do I do, do I do with a love that won't sit still?

Everything that I am, everything that I am
Everything that I am, everything that I am

Last night I sat on Brighton beach and listened to the waves come in and ate chips and onion rings and talked with sebastienne about this and that and the other and bravery - various different media we imprinted on, which boil down to: you can't be brave without being scared.

Which -- obviously resonates with all my current Feelings about being afraid, and the varieties thereof; but also ties in to something else I've been thinking, that I fake bravery by calmly and quietly making space in which other people feel safe to risk speaking their hopes, thereby neatly avoiding ever being the person who goes first or ever being the person who looks scared or, really, ever being the person who takes the risk. I close myself off with fear, and dress it up prettily enough that by and large people don't notice. (I'm perhaps being unfair to myself here: I put my shonky python up on github, and I put poetry up here, and both of those terrified me to the point of day-long adrenaline spikes when I started; and now they're just things I do, without fuss, and that represents more progress than I think about terribly carefully most of the time.)


A bit relatedly, I've been thinking some about compassion and generosity, and about how I might consider going about feeling compassion for people who've hurt me (specifically, I was thinking about how in the hells I might ever feel compassion for my father). And I... don't think I can. I think I can pick apart how they got there and feel pity for them, but that's condescending; compassion, I think, presupposes an equality I don't feel inclined towards; perhaps that I don't feel safe permitting? Something to come back to, I suspect.


& lastly for tonight - trees-post to come tomorrow - we have home internet again; and I am deeply frustrated that a gorgeous wing-backed purple corduroy sofa left on the kerb by some neighbours for rubbish collection tomorrow morning is just too awkward for me to have managed to get it down the stairs solo when I got home at 1am, so I am just going to have to hope that the "please don't take this away" note I left on it is respected and I can badger my housemate into helping me get it down the stairs in the morning, because it is squooshy and comfortable and the right shape for curling up on and I really want it, okay, and I even know where in my room it would live.


Goodnight, Dreamwidth. xx

Comments

[vass]

how I might consider going about feeling compassion for people who've hurt me

I like how you phrase that. Thinking about how you might consider going about it, rather than diving in and pushing yourself into doing something that might turn out to be more harmful than beneficial. And like the way you approach it matters as much, or more, than doing or not doing the thing. You're making sense.

that I fake bravery by calmly and quietly making space in which other people feel safe to risk speaking their hopes, thereby neatly avoiding ever being the person who goes first or ever being the person who looks scared or, really, ever being the person who takes the risk.

Ooh, ooh, ooh. Do you listen to Kimya Dawson? I think you would like Kimya Dawson. She talks about those feels.

From 'Caving In':

"I'm trying to be brave 'cause when I'm brave
Other people feel brave,
But I feel like my heart is caving in"

And ''The Competition' which starts out:

"I never wanted to be better than my friends,
I just wanted to prove wrong the people in my head,
The ones who told me I'd be better off dead..."

and builds up to:

"I got good at feeling bad, and that's why I'm still here."

[silverhare]

Sitting on Brighton beach at night is one of my favourite things. I really, really miss living in my queer seaside city.

[flippac]

On some level, I feel compassion for those who have hurt us is a luxury. I try not to tear people to shreds and I label the effort involved in that 'compassion', but for the kinds of hurt I think we're talking about, it's just not the compassion I'd show to eg Jenny or for that matter you if something's gone a bit wrong. It's just a defence mechanism against letting myself become monstrous through viewing others that way.

Which is important, but sure doesn't take us as far as the things I could in theory do for my shitbag ex to help her improve. I don't owe her it, and I doubt I'm capable of acting on it rather than working out what the steps might hypothetically look like. Sometimes, telling someone to fuck off good and early is the closest to compassion we'll ever be able to express.

[davidgillon]

Compassion is difficult, I think I potentially could for some, but that would pre-suppose a) they understood exactly what they had done and why it was utterly unacceptable in an adult human, and b) had experienced appropriate self-flagellation over it (I can't think of the word I really want and I'm not sure it isn't just lex talionis) in order to ensure they understood the impact on me. As some of that impact relates to damage shaping how I now think I'm not sure that's actually possible, but tough...

For others, where it crosses into outright evil and betrayal of position, then no, I'm not sure I could.