I don't normally post twice a week let alone twice a day... but I got to thinking about my friends yesterday. Probably because we watched the documentary film "Be Here To Love Me" about Townes Van Zandt recently and watched the additional interviews last night. It is rife with interviews of friends of his and they clearly loved him dearly.
Got to wondering, if I were docu-worthy, what would my friends say about me? And then the mind, as it does, wandered to the question I'd been asked of late "What do all your friends have in common?"
I had a little bit of a revelation about myself as I answered this question in my mind. You see, my friends are brave women and some men all of them. They jumped in with both feet to friendship with me while I was more reserved. I think everyone holds a part of themselves back. But there is a difference between holding back sustinence for yourself and holding in reserve so that you might not be hurt - that is cowardice and I am guilty of it.
I think diving in to any sort of relationship, lover, friend, co-worker, child, with both feet and all your self is very courageous. I attribute the fact that I have many friends to their own bravery. I am still afraid, a little bit of the ugly goose feeling. I feel on some level that at any turn I might be pushed down and mocked. It is a remnant of some elementary school experience no doubt because that is about the maturity level. But there it is, right inside me.
It was a bit of a shocking revelation because I had always thought of myself as brave. But what I am is a good mediator. I am good at midgating pain. I'm not afraid of that and I'm not afraid to feel my emotions once they arrive. It's just the throwing oneself into the ring that frightens me.
I liked to chalk up my lack of bonds out here in exile to the area, the fact that we didn't know how long we'd be here, to 'those' people being so pedestrian and not creative and intellectual like the lovelies I left behind in LA. But really it is because I have not been brave enough, not willing to take the risk.
Wow. What a thing to find out about yourself... what a wonderful thing to find out about your friends though!
2 comments:
I have never considered you to be cowardly. It's not even on the top 50 adjectives list. And the reasons you give make a certain amount of sense. I know that when i have been unsure how long I was going to stay some place I didn't wholeheartedly pursue relationships.
Well, now that you have addresses this issue of solitary confinement, do you figure you'll branch out some? Search out the other exiles?
I am forming a plan to search out the other drama geeks.
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