(no subject)

[kuangning]

You know that trust game? The one where you close your eyes and let yourself fall backwards and someone standing behind you catches you?

... How many of you are like me, and could never bring yourself to actually let yourself fall? I used to think I was the only one who couldn't do it, but I just found out I'm not. How many others are there?

if it looks like I'm being reckless and blind to the dangers, you're only half right.
if it looks like I'm completely anything -- giddy, in love, sad, angry, whatever -- you're missing something.
if you think I'm too anything to turn around, to stop, to back out? -- you're wrong.

there's the little voice I can't shake, right up to the very last second -- and I will never ever be able to honestly plead being "past the point of no return." Because I can always put my foot back and stop myself. I can always stand up and walk out and walk away, even when you think I'm too committed to even think about setting foot out the door. On the one hand, you'll never be able to be truly sure of me. On the other, every minute I spend with you? I'm there because on some level I want to be.

I can't offer soft blind adoration. I will probably never be able to do more than keep silence on my doubts, my appraisals, my misgivings, while I make the very conscious decision to set them aside in favour of the moment I'm in and the person I'm sharing it with. You will never truly be my hero, my everything, and I will never be completely helpless without you. You will never be completely necessary in my life, and when you catch me, my gratitude will be mingled with surprise and tempered with the knowledge that had you not, I would have found some other way. I will never expect to be caught.

On the other hand, if you remember that I do not completely need you, then you know that I didn't pick you -- and, make no mistake, I did pick you -- to save me. I chose you because I wanted you beside me. To be a companion, not some fairy-tale knight or fairy godmother. If you know that I am never not conscious of alternatives, then you know that every second I'm with you, I choose you. Again and again and again, I'm making the decision to be with you, to stay by you. I will not forget the times you disappoint me. My hurts don't get washed out of existence the first time you take me to bed, or the first time you hand me a gift, or offer a smile, and if you think I'm distracted from them, that's only because I have and always will have thoughts you're not privy to.

The first anger doesn't wash away the memory of the good, either. In the middle of my fury, I will remember that you have been good to me, that I have cared for you, that the reasons I had for choosing you haven't gone away.

I am not soft and gentle and delicate. Compared to most of the women and girls I know, I'm a cast-iron bitch. I save the poetry for abstracts and people in my past, and I have real trouble discussing the present at all, let alone bathing it in soft words and fancies. I will write poems for you only when you are gone from my life.. or I believe you are. When you are with me, you get to be with me, and I will spend the time with you intensely, and you will never be a default decision. That's the blessing and the curse of a woman with a stainless steel spine. And I wouldn't trade places with any of those wide-eyed porcelain dolls for a single second.

Comments

[envoy.livejournal.com]

Many years ago, I bungee-jumped at the state fair. They had this rig, and for $40 they'd strap you in, take you up and you could do a reall bungee jump.

There's a long version of this story, but the short version is that the coolest thing about the experience was making the *decision* to jump. Very much like what you talked about. Being willing to step off into nothing was the best bit. It perhaps marked me a slightly insane, but it's an insanity that has helped me a lot.

[kuangning]

Ooh, yes. I had that experience when I took up swimming. One portion of the class consisted of stepping off the side of the pool, six inches down, into the water. I could not do it. It took me three days. I could sit on the edge and get in, I could do a shallow dive. Stepping off into space? That I could not make myself do.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I could never do that trust game thing either, but I'm shocked to hear that anyone can do it.

[kuangning]

Oh, yes. The vast majority can, really. I didn't know it wasn't something intrinsically wrong with me until tonight, strange as that sounds.

[violetvixen.livejournal.com]

/nods/ too true.... too true.

For all that the road is rough... I like the control I excercise on the world around me - I too wouldn't have it any other way. /cheers/

Re: Ok.

[fifthconundrum.livejournal.com]

I hate the trust game. I've gotten dropped too many times (emotionally, not during the game).

I relate to everything you said.

Re: Ok.

[kuangning]

*shakes her head.* That's not quite what I meant -- I don't think I ever had the capacity for blind faith and trust. It's just not a part of who I am.

I read your own posts without commenting, but I'm going to say now that I admire your strength and honesty. It takes quite a bit to be able to state without either ferocity or self-pity that you've been lied to, disappointed, and used.

That said, I'm also going to say that I'm looking forward to the day when you come to know that blind faith is not the only faith, and that faith despite knowing there will be hurts and disappointments actually has more worth. You are coming to that, I think... one of your recent posts made me laugh, and cry, and remember. I get the feeling that you've never been a porcelain doll either. :)

Re: Ok.

[fifthconundrum.livejournal.com]

I get the feeling that you've never been a porcelain doll either. :)

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeell...that depends on how you look at it. (I am not named Conundrum for nothing!)

My mother tried to make me a porcelain doll, biting its own tongue in order to please everyone around it. Blind obedience was demanded; independent thought was not tolerated. For the sake of my survival, I learned to comply. So she succeeded...so well, in fact, that I didn't even recognize emotional abuse in the men I dated until long after the fact. But I have recently broken out of that mode, so her success wasn't permanent.

My mother tried to keep me from becoming a porcelain doll, fragile enough to crack at the slightest pressure. She exerted pressure and put me into pressure-filled situations with no emotional support, to toughen me up for "real life". As a result, I am tremendously sensitive and easily bruised or broken. Emotionally, I am now porcelain...and that after several years of getting stronger. So she failed in that respect, as well, but due to my own hard work, her failure is not permanent, either.

[powerpynt.livejournal.com]

I do it because it's my nature. I sometimes regret it and add a fall to my list of things to keep me cynical, but I do it anyway. And, delicate is overrated.

Nicely put. Depth is not a trait to shy from, and anyone that would back away from your person because you show the strength of your convictions is less than a fool and deserves not a moments thought.

You are a fascinating and powerful human being Cair, and I always enjoy reading what you have to say.

[lothie.livejournal.com]

I couldn't do that falling thing.

*adds post to memories*

[galith.livejournal.com]

My GF can't do that trust game either.

The nice thing about Trust is that even if they aren't there to catch you, you can still land properly. Yes, its a hard fall, yes, its going to suck, but with proper training you can take it without too much trouble and get up no worse for wear, assuming you are doing it on a forgiving surface.

This is, of course, unless you fall on them, or they make a half assed effort to catch you, which can seriously mess things up and result in both of you being hurt.

[mayamaia.livejournal.com]

I have actually always loved the trust games because they forced me to have faith. But not really blind faith...my eyes were closed, but I knew that I wouldn't be dropped because that person would have to trust me next. I just had to conquer those few remaining fears.

I did the game many times in elementary school in the little PE classes...and almost every time I had to close my eyes and be caught, the person who had to catch me was one of the people who was unkind to me, one of the people who made me an outcast. It requires a very special kind of faith trusting yourself to someone like that.

I wouldn't say it comes naturally to trust like that...that's why we even have the game, so children can learn to trust one another, learn that that's what people do: work together. Personally, I've tried to cultivate that trust...to know exactly how far i can trust someone...and then trust them to the limit. And often, the more they see I trust them, the more they realize they can trust me. And that makes the fall worth it.

Re:

[kuangning]

*nod.* I understand and appreciate the principle. I just never was able to do it. I'd rather trust myself to nothing at all than leave even the next thirty seconds of my life dependent on another human's whim. In my head, I know the fall wouldn't hurt me, if they did let me fall. I would pick myself up and dust myself off and life would go on -- but on the other hand, I would have lost the possibility that someone would catch me if I didn't catch myself. I would never again be able to think, "well, maybe they'd catch me if only I'd let them." That's the faith I do have, and the first time I let myself fall and am not caught, nothing in the world will bring that back. I'd be a much different, a poorer person for that.

[fifthconundrum.livejournal.com]

If we had done that in elementary school and the person who had to catch me was someone unkind to me, I probably would have begged out of the game. If I had not, knowing the children who bullied me, I would have gotten dropped. Hard. And laughed at.

You were much more trusting than I would have been.

Re:

[kuangning]

*smiles.* She is.

[mayamaia.livejournal.com]

Regarding your comment to my deleted post: Hm. There's a reason I deleted that...it didn't say what I meant to say, and the new comment does.

Re:

[kuangning]

*nods.* I understand.

[mayamaia.livejournal.com]

Eventually, most of those people had to trust me. If not in the game, as a tutor, as a defender against the rest of the kids when they acted fickle, as a teammate, as the one of the few people they knew at a new school or church. There remain only a couple of those who have hurt me or tried to who haven't met me again later...those few, I still fear, because I haven't yet had the chance to show them I've forgiven them.

I've been dropped, in the game and in life. But trusting again afterwards and proving to myself that I can be caught again after being dropped...it's so very much harder, but it is more than worth it.

[rbos.livejournal.com]

I have done this, but I've also done falling exercises in my martial arts classes. Trusting the ground is easier than trusting a human, I've found. Total trust is hard for us all, there is always going to be that little bit held back in reserve, just in case. No matter how much you trust someone when you fall, you still tuck your head in and prepare for the impact.

I do trust the world around me, though. The other day, on the train, I saw what looked like, on the same track, another train headed in our direction. My only thought was to wonder what people would do for email without me; I trust that when it's my time to go, I'll go without complaint. I've lived a good life. I trust that if I take the best path I can at all times, it will lead me somewhere good.

Really, we don't have any choice but to trust, fully and totally, the world around us. We're part of it, for better or for worse. Not above it, not astride it, part of it. We can't flaunt it, if you don't trust the world, your own behaviour will doom you.

I figure someday I'll run into someone who is an expression of that trust.

You're rather remarkable, I think.