Sometimey

"trust the part of people that doesn’t follow through. let it/future expectations go."

-adrienne maree brown.

The good sis amb must be joking, right??


Lack of follow through is the thing I hate the most in other people, and myself. What's there to trust in that flaky component of humanity?


I know from myself what's underneath that flakiness sometimes - anxiety/depression, fear, shyness, fatigue, selfishness, real & reasonable boundaries. None of that seems like enough, though.


Shouldn't we still show up?


Shouldn't we mistrust people who don't show up for us?


The girls in the classroom who cared enough to take a class on Power & Privilege in Education, but fully believed their private school pathway was paved by merit alone - I'm supposed to let that shiftiness go? And even trust the part of them that makes their complicity invisible to them? The part that refuses to follow through on their stated beliefs?


We won't get into the beliefs I haven't been following through on. At least not to my expectation.


I've been in the Triangle for almost 3 months now. I thought I'd be part of the activist/artist networks already. I fully expected to jump right in. I've been mad at myself for letting apartment woes, the job hunt, and then working, keep me from tapping in.


Time I could spend emailing or reaching out to possible connections, I spent Netflixing and scrolling IG.


I did make it to one event, the Pleasure Activism reading held at Northstar in Durham with Adrienne maree brown herself. That was the first moment I gave myself permission to not be ready to dive in to new relationships. They talked about listening to the messages from our bodies, and when I listened to mine - the ambient antsy, self-conscious energy all throughout it - I knew that forcing interactions wasn't the move. I needed to settle this part of me that was tied in knots about finding community and proving myself to them. Needed to find the part that could rest in being worth knowing, even with all my inconsistencies and shortcomings.


That's something like grace I offered to myself. Grace I have a hard time offering to me, or anyone else.


The kind of consistency I expect from us all - is it obtainable? I loved amb's previous book Emergent Strategy so much for being built around Octavia Butler's works and the basic truth of change. Life is always in flux. Moving with the fluctuations to shape change, and be changed, is a way forward for us.


Can I trust fluctuation in a more than intellectual way?


If I try maybe I'll succeed at it. Sometimes.