Clean Break

The first rule of growing up is knowing that there are three plausible routes a question can go: maybe, yes, and no.

I always forget the third. I sit, tail between my legs, attempting to navigate through sticky situations in the least-obtrusive way possible. Sometimes that means not doing anything at all. Or not speaking up when I should. The goal is that nobody gets hurt but I've been inadvertently hurting a lot of people lately. 

I recently heard something pretty apt: people who come from hurt can't help but do what's familiar. But I'm looking to flip the script. 

I wonder why we champion the "yes man" and dismiss the "no-go." In improv, the rule of thumb is the "yes...and," where you must agree to everything your partners say and continue the story. But sometimes the story is better without. Sometimes, we should really just say no (hey, that's catchy, let's put it on a shirt)! 

I think I'm beginning to learn the importance of "no." I've never done anything I didn't want to do but I was never direct about it. I played hide and seek with other people's realities: ignored what made me uncomfortable and buried my feelings under apologies.

I have said sorry so many times that it has lost its meaning. I have said sorry when I wasn't sorry. But, most of all, I have said sorry when there was not anything to apologize for. 

mea cupla, mea culpa, mea cupla. 

This is my clean break: 
After years of dancing around truths and letting the cage around my heart grow weaker under the strain of having to hold itself up in a body that let it get too heavy, of blaming myself, of not saying "no," of assuming the other person was always right...I have begun to realize that the only way to really advocate for others is to advocate for yourself first. It isn't selfish: It's putting on your mask before the person next to you on an airplane. It is the right thing to do. To breathe. 

This is my clean break: 
I am younger than the world I live in but I have read enough books to know how we are supposed to act and maybe I have not been around long enough to learn that every single word was merely a wish for something we've never done exactly right. But I want to change that. So this is how I start. 

This is my clean break:
Proof that some things are supposed to be broken. That we have tape and gauze and phoenix tears to put what cannot grow itself back together. We aren't messy just because life feels like it is. And, if we are, that is just going to have to be okay for a while.