Being Brave (part 3)

Oh, OK. There it is.

A faint whispering, of missed opportunities and things that might have been, has started. The ghosts of regret are beginning to arrive.  It's funny how a tiny piece of new information can summon them up; one minute you are absolutely fine and then suddenly there they are, starting to poke you, daring you to listen to them, and luring you into a wallowing pit of gloom.

(I say absolutely fine, but that's not quite true. It has been a tough, tough week; so hard I can't even begin to explain.  I have learned a lot though. Mainly that learning important life lessons is EXHAUSTING. )

I'm trying to fight the regret ghosts off for now, almost on principle, but I'm not sure how long that will last.  I've learned, over the years, that sometimes the only way to deal with pain, sadness, hurt - any of those horrible emotions - is to let them take hold of you for a while.  The trick is to let yourself feel them, wait for them to wash over you and trust that eventually they will pass, and be replaced with something else. (God knows what though. For me at the moment it really could be anything.)

It hurts, it REALLY hurts, but if you can let it hurt for a little while, your brain inevitably finds itself feeling so sick of being in pain that it somehow chases the emotion away. That's my theory, anyway.

It is literally how I've spent my weekend, and most of the past week really -  letting emotions arrive when they want to (and boy do they pick their moments),  watching them hurtle towards me, waiting for them to crash and implode then just riding them out.  Waiting, not knowing which one is going to come next, or how long it will last.

I had no idea when I wrote that first post, and made that resolution to go and do something, that there would end up being three parts to the story (The Bravery Trilogy. It has a nice ring to it, no?) but here we are.  It's a classic three act structure, and this third act has seen the very thing I was protecting myself from in the first place still sort of happening but in a way which was out of control and messy, and forced by circumstance. And so, with nothing else to lose I ended up doing  the thing I'd first decided to do, and then not to do, after all; knowing exactly what would happen, knowing exactly how much the outcome would hurt, and without the benefit of hope.

And it was f--king HORRIBLE.

Those moments of sadness still happen, and they are about a million times sadder than before, but they still lift sometimes.  And when they do lift, it's because they've been replaced with an angry energy, a fierce determination to get through this, and to be better for it, and to Just. Keep. Going.

I laughed today, for the first time. That's a good sign, I think. And I have begun eating again, which I wasn't really doing much of  earlier in the week. Some hard, hard lessons have come from this particular situation. Which is the silver lining I suppose. Plus, those in-between times have been surprisingly productive; frighteningly so in fact.

But the regret is circling.

I keep telling myself to ignore it, because after all, what's the point?  That's thing thing in life; there are no bad decisions. Not really. There is no knowing, anyway, if a decision was a right or a wrong one, because you can't possibly know that. There's nothing to measure against. You don't know would have happened it you had taken that other path, if you'd just waited a little bit longer or perhaps if you hadn't waited for quite so long.  It's so easy, and tempting, to wonder about that. But that's not the point.

At the end of the day there are decisions.  Just decisions. You make them, and sometimes you make them by default, because you don't do anything else, and then there are consequences.

So I'm trying not to listen to the ghosts.  I don't know how long that will last, and I expect that at some point I'll just have to give into them, for a little while at least, and let those feelings of regret take hold. Not forever, just long enough to give them a chance to pass.

Because eventually, of course, they will.


(I don't know why I am writing about all of this, really.  It helps to write about it though, and maybe reading about it will help someone, somewhere, too.)

Being brave part 2

So. That tiny-but-huge act of bravery I was gearing myself up for? In the end, I didn't do it.

I KNOW.

The particular act in question has now, for reasons I won't go into, been rendered more than little bit  redundant. Windows have sailed, ships have been bolted, horses are now closed.  Or something like that.

I keep waiting for the regret to kick in but - somewhat surprisingly -  it hasn't happened. There are plenty of other emotions swilling around in my head and my heart;  hurt, disappointment, anxiety, wounded pride.....all the really fun ones. Then there's the occasional bout of fear that things will always feel like this; that I'm doomed to be miserable forever (they won't, of course, I know they won't, but right now it's a little hard to remember that) and a general sense of confusion, interspersed with the occasional flash of anger - often irrational,sometimes not - directed at everything and nothing in particular all at once.

Mainly though,  I'm just sad. It's a constant, low-level sadness that just sort of hovers around like a mosquito, buzzing just loudly enough that I know it's there. Sometimes it settles over me and makes it impossible to think about anything else, other times it lifts for a while and I find myself surprised to be joking with strangers, smiling at shopkeepers, getting on with my day as if life were perfectly normal.  And then the buzzing starts again, and we're back to square one.

And yet, no regret.

I think perhaps it's because it was never about not being brave enough. There are risks and there are calculated risks and sometimes when you do the calculations, you get an answer you really, REALLY didn't want. You can check, and check again and triple-check but the answer is still the same, and  at some point you have to admit that it's right.  And if you're really honest with yourself, deep deep down, you knew that all along.

And so, if you're smart, you don't act.  For your own sanity, your own safety, your own peace of mind. Because there's a very fine line between being brave and being stupid; actions which are risky and ones which are downright foolhardy.  And sometimes, giving yourself permission not to act is the bravest thing you  can do of all.

Being Brave

I've been having a few ups and downs in the world of freelancing lately. Ups have included a lovely mid-week trip to Edinburgh; downs mainly involve  narrowly missing out on some work I would have loved to do, and worked really hard to try and win.  Still, life goes on. The scars will heal. The bills will be paid (I hope.)

One thing I've realised is that freelancing is a lot like dating. In the last few months I've swapped contact details with someone who sparked my interest then played the will-they-won't-they-call waiting game; I've had coffee with various people purely so we can size each other up and I've had a REALLY awkward break-up conversation. Someone I know has said to me 'I'm not going to hook up with this person, but I think they're perfect for you. Can I pass on your details?' and I've even, I'm a little ashamed to say, resorted to dodging emails in order to extricate myself from an expired (in my mind, at least) relationship. None of these things had anything to do with my personal life. 

Courting people for work, courting people for romance....there's a lot of overlap. You're constantly presenting your best self to others, then waiting for their judgement. You have to be honest with other people and - the even harder bit - with yourself, about what it is you're looking for, and what you're not prepared to do. You have to be brave enough to say no to things which aren't quite right, and trust that there's something else out there. And when you do find what you're looking for and you fall in love – whether with the perfect work opportunity, or the right person, you have to go and chase after it, without any idea of what the outcome might be. You have to take risks. Constantly.

In both love and work, there are safer options. You can simply do nothing at all (and end up unemployed and alone) or you can take the 'normal' route. Find a regular full-time job, settle down with Mr He's-OK-I-guess-and-it's-better-than-being-on-my-own. These are not terrible options. Plenty of people take those options and there is still, even now I think, a lot of pressure to follow that path. It's easy to see why it's so tempting.

But for some of us - and I think we're growing in number – that's not the right choice. The alternatives might involve doing things which are, quite frankly, sometimes terrifying, but as hard and as scary as it can be sometimes we still know what feels right for us. Don't ask me how we know - we just know. I know I'd rather be freelancing than be tied down to a not-quite-perfect job in much the same way I'd rather be single than settle for a relationship with just anyone. I suspect it's the same something, deep in my DNA, which is responsible for both.

It takes guts though. You need the courage to go against the grain in the first place. And then (and here's the real kicker) you have to keep being courageous, performing little acts of bravery over and over again. It's easy, after a while, to forget that this is what you are doing. Being brave might have become a habit, but doing something habitually doesn't necessarily make it more pleasant, or less painful. Anyone with a regular waxing appointment will tell you that.

In the news we hear stories of great acts of bravery all of the time. People climb dangerous mountains to rescue other people and watch loved ones battle cancer and  fight for what they believe in even under the most extraordinarily difficult circumstances.  Perhaps not as newsworthy, but no less important, are the smaller acts of bravery. The tiny moments of fear which we feel but try to ignore. The times we don't just listen to our heart, but we actually act on what it is telling us. Even though our head is freaking out. The times when we say out loud what we really want, or tell someone how we really feel about them, or ask a question we're scared to know the answer to.  When we finally press the 'send' button on the kind of email where you have to take a deep breath, and hover your finger over the keyboard for ages first, and then when you do press it you feel a combination of relief and anxiety and hope and wishing the internet had never been invented all at once. 

The risks we take in love, in work, in life generally every single day, seem small. We have to tell ourselves that these moments are tiny, and were no big deal, otherwise we'd never be able to cope with the thought of doing them. But sometimes  it's important to remember how big they feel in the moment too. Being brave is hard. Really hard.

One of my friends performed one of those little acts of bravery recently, in matters of the heart. It didn't pay off – or at least, not in the way that she wanted it to - but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth the risk. Regardless of the outcome, those moments leave us with something. They leave us with stories.

The stories of these tiny-but-huge moments are the ones we tell ourselves the next time we need to do something scary. We use them to remind ourselves that we know how to be brave, that we can be brave, because we've done it before.  When they have happy endings they provide concrete evidence that sometimes risks are worth taking. And when they don't end the way we wanted them to, they can give us comfort. We know that even if something terrible happens, we've been through something similar before, and survived. They help us remember that no matter what happens as a result of the crazy, hold-onto-your-hat-and-just-jump leap of faith we're about to take, we'll be OK.  

Those stories are what make us brave enough to be brave again. And again. And again.  They provide an extra boost of courage, just when we need it the most, and give us tiny scraps of faith we can cling on to. They are what make the difference between thinking and doing, acting and not acting. Being proud that we tried or regretting the fact that we didn't. 

Small moments, powerful stories.

The best thing about bravery is that it's contagious. Talking to my heroic, kick-ass friend the other night reminded me of that. By sharing her story, she passed a tiny nugget of courage on to me, too. I haven't done anything with it yet but I absolutely intend to. And when that tiny-but-huge moment does arrive, it is going to find me waiting. Still terrified, still wondering what I'm about to let myself in for,  but perhaps with enough courage now to go and find out.