I have a bad question. It’s long borne from a set of parallel truths that I regularly fail to separate. I think I know the answer, too, but it always evades me.
Those truths blend together at the worst of time – blurring through tears and into a single line:
Is it worse to realize you’re not enough for someone you care about, or to realize that someone you care about is not enough for you? Wait! No. Don’t answer that. I realized it was a trick question as soon as I finished writing it out. No. More than that. A flawed question, because it puts a question mark behind the word “enough” and then points a finger at someone’s heart.
My choice of word has been the issue, hasn’t it? Enough. To not be it is to be what exactly? Weak? Stupid? Naive? Or is it to be hurt? Healing? Scared? Busy? What a stupid thing I’ve been asking myself. It’s the word that has done this: the blurred truths, the confusion, and shame. Shame both felt and projected (although aren’t those the same?).
That’s enough of that.
I must replace the word. But with what, exactly? Saying “not a good fit”, seems good, up until I apply it to my constants. To my friends. To my family. Shoot. The word “brave” comes to mind next, but it comes preceding the word I just came running from. Not brave enough. Oof.
These replacements are decidedly wrong and yet as I say them and read them and think them, they feel overwhelmingly right. Why do these words put my heart and my mind at such odds?
I’m being avoidant again.
There it is. Remarkable how that word delivers me from confusion with such regularity. I apply “fit” as an excuse to avoid conflict with my constants. Fit that I do not control. Nor they. And then, to my shame, I am bravest in conflicts in a relationship that is assuredly (and perhaps soothingly) temporary. It’s all in the application, then, or specifically, misapplication – misapplication deliberately? Oh no. Have I been doing it on purpose?
A brave man would admit to yes, or at least to sometimes. But in admitting that, they would have to admit to the accompanying fear – the fear that they might admit these things true and still not change for the better.
Then again…
What is fear to someone already being brave other than fuel? Fuel for a growing fire.
And now I have a good question.