presence

I try very hard to offer my students and other people my presence. My attention, my mental clarity, my willingness to sit and hold -just about anything...   but it isn't real.

I mean, its real, but not reciprocal, and thus -though I know it gives me a great deal of meaning and purpose, it isn't me sitting there. Just part of me. 

I've been attending a UU small group on zoom. The little readings, the sharing, requires me to get a little more real. To open, to hold space not for others, but for myself. 

I stopped going to therapy a month ago, because I had stopped being able to do that. I was walking into each meeting with a pitch, a story I'd concocted, usually through writing. 

I don't know where to find that space in my life with people. Maybe that's my big issue. I take on a role to please, peacemaker, caretaker, validator in chief. And even when I try to open up, I try to give a canned experience, a storied version, a false sense of clarity.  

I wonder if people start to feel like they don't really know me, or if I have convinced everyone by my giving to them, that I am fully open.  

M used to talk about how I saw lions everywhere, and lions in sheep clothes, and never just recognized the sheep for sheep, and it's true. I do. I see everyone as far more complex, and far more dangerous than they believe themselves to be. Raw vulnerability has never suited me. I have not had a temper tantrum in ages. Removed myself. Lashed out precisely. Sneakily. But not vulnerability. It isn't pleasant for others, it asks too much. 

I've been questioning how much I actually let myself exist in that relationship, how much I held back, a very strong indicator that I was playing a role, and not being present. But I was in the moment. I held space for her and cherished it. But for me?  Rarely, and the more I did, the less interested she became. 

I think that's why the lesson has been so traumatizing, because it reiterated what I learned as a child. Don't be yourself, be what they need or they'll run. Same old pattern repeated. And I know I invited it back, hoping to change the ending, prayed she'd open up -despite all evidence to the contrary, hoped I could win her to me.  I need to stop choosing partners that are the opposite of what I actually want, but how else will I prove the point?

All day long I watch people pushing away what they need to be whole. Watch them avoid, run, sleep rather than acknowledge what they need, ask for it. Some of them have had these behaviors modeled, others learned their roles. It's so challenging to hold space and hold them accountable. Its a terrible tight rope. But what is learning and growing, what is identity development, what is live during societal crisis, what is mental illness, what is relationship strain, what is school, what is teen angst and normal developmental adolescent stress, what does it mean to be a parent and have to be tested in the ways you'd hoped you could always avoid? found coping skills to avoid? found roles to avoid? Life always provides opportunities to heal right? not without fear and pain, that's the stretch, that's the heart tearing to make space for what it didn't think was possible. 

And even knowing this. I spend my weekends alone. I do not reach out. I do not ask. I do not look forward to meeting up. I am as scared as I have ever been of vulnerability, and I'll smile all the way through it. Because, what would it mean to extend myself now? 

It would mean falling apart again, realizing I am just as vulnerable as everyone else, not knowing who will put me back together again... because     who      would?