Not really being super brave this Friday
Yesterday, I tried to go to an event solo and I couldn’t do it.
I got on a boat, got sort of surrounded by people being kind of mean, escaped, sat down, and tried to decompress.
I don’t do super well with people being kind of mean not in real-life, not on Facebook, and not when it’s about other people in our very small community. I am not brave about it. I don’t deal with it well. It’s a flaw.
Anyway, it was a two-hour boat ride. And I decided as I sat there that it was not going to be a fun two hours for me. The people I was meeting were a bit late, which was a factor. Other people who I thought were going didn’t because it was so foggy. I started to feel really trapped. This isn’t something I normally feel. At all.
So, I got up and left and walked home.
It felt weird to do that. I’m not a person who does that. But I did. I’ve had a hard couple of weeks and I’m a little burnt out. That might be part of it? I’m not quite sure.
My very big and weird feelings of being trapped and not fitting in at all made me think of this police chief I used to know, who once who told me he had no friends really, not because he didn’t like people and they didn’t like him.
It was more because he was tired of people trying to get gossip out of him and also because he was frustrated by how their personalities would change when he stepped into the conversation.
“It’s not worth it,” he told me. “I hate how they get stilted. Then they have a drink or two and they get worried that I’m judging them. It makes me sad.”
That was brave to admit and sad to feel.
He often saw people at their worst moments and that impacted him, right?
But even though he did, he also spent a part of his day admiring others—the things they did, the music they made, the quotes they knew, what made them tick, and he’d laugh with them whenever he could, but he felt a bit lonely—an outsider—though he dedicated his life to keeping the community safe. He couldn’t quite let his guard down enough to let other people in, maybe? I’m not sure.
It’s okay to only be okay with people who have your back. And sometimes when people have an entire community’s back people just don’t know how to deal with it.
It’s also okay to leave when you feel trapped, when you just can’t handle it right then. It’s okay to take a pause and listen to your own needs, too, but it’s also okay to let people in.
This post isn’t going to flow perfectly because I’m going to switch things up and I’m not sure how to tie it all together.
I was thinking today about how I see the world and how that lens impacts everything I do and write, right, in ways I’m not even conscious of, but I was thinking primarily of how I take photos for the paper and how I paint.
I am half blind and when I was born the doctors actually thought I was completely blind. I am not. But my left eye is basically useless except for close things (like reading). I told the guy who runs our food pantry here and he said something like “Yeah. That eye almost tracks but doesn’t quite.”
I was surprised that this hurt, but whatever. It made me think about it because it’s how I kind of feel about the world, right? It almost tracks but doesn’t quite. That’s a tangent though.
When I take photos, I do two things: I look for color and I look for emotion.
I don’t have the eyes to really see the world in the way everyone else sees it. I have to lean toward things that I actually can notice: color and emotion.
This obviously makes it hard to try to play tennis or softball because of the lack of depth perception, but that’s okay. Depth can be felt in other ways than just the normal ways. We can feel the emotions of people, exult in the colors, and celebrate them, I think.
That police chief saw the world in painful layers. A woman who was hurt. A child with pain. Car crashes. Gun shots. Screams. Paranoia. Pain.
But he also chose to see other things, too, and try to make it better. That’s brave.
I can’t make this world track. I can’t always make myself be brave. I can’t make people be kind. But I can try, I guess.
I can keep looking for color and emotion.
And maybe, instead of being hard on myself for taking off from that event, for needing a pause, for being a bit overwhelmed, I can recognize that’s it’s kind of okay to step away for a second and breathe. Maybe you can too if you need to?
All photos by me, obviously. :)
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So sales-oriented-weird, I know!
OMG Carrie! “LIDDY HUBBELL IF LIDDY HUBBELL COULDN’T PAINT.” is the BEST! I love it and I bet Liddy admires it as well. BTW, some of my best visuals (before my eye surgeries) were when I wasn't wearing my glasses and I'd try to imagine what I was seeing. It was sometimes disappointing when I'd put on my glasses and see the actually scene/objects in view. And, a final note...you were brave to go to the boat. I sometimes can't get that far unless I'm on someone's arm. XOXO Kate
Removing yourself from a toxic environment is a positive thing; it is self preservation. You did good by this. Blessing on you always.