Nobody, I’m going to tell you a story unprompted, as I am wont to do.  If you were to say anything, we wouldn’t be caught in this cycle of one-sided oversharing, but caught in it we are.  Don’t worry, the story’s short.  Here it is: when I was ten years old, I got hit in the face with a basketball during recess.

I didn’t have time to scream or jerk away, so the ball flew directly into my nose.  I imagine it looked pretty funny, but nobody laughed. I wish someone had; I didn’t want anyone to think I was actually hurt. It must have looked bad, since the boy who threw it immediately ran over to ask if I was okay.  I told him that it was nothing, and not to worry.  I was glad to pretend it hadn’t happened.

Now, Nobody, some might say that this was brave coming from a hurt and mortified child.  I didn’t tell on anyone, throw a tantrum, or even shed a tear.  My face was throbbing and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die, but no one could have ever known.  I soldiered through the pain, as it were.  You might even say that it’s brave of me now to share this humiliation—in which case, thank you.  But you’d be wrong on both counts.  I wasn’t brave then, and I’m not brave now.

As I see it, bravery is doing what you must, even as it drills a pit into your stomach.  And if there’s one thing that could always hollow me out, it would be losing control.  Specifically, losing control of how others see me.  On that day, everything I did was to ensure that that didn’t happen.  My telling this story now with a joke-y tone does the same.

I can do plenty of things that are brave with relative ease, so long as they further my ultimate goal of control.  I’m what is generously called “persistent” and honestly called “stubborn.”  I’m practically fearless so long as I don’t have to conquer my ultimate fear. 

If I had really been brave, I would have done what I wanted to do: I would have bawled.  I would have let myself feel what I felt without shame, and not cared what other people thought.  If I had been brave, I would have been honest.  Instead, I made myself rigid, and refused to bend any which way.  Rigidness, I’ve learned, traps the fear in your body and makes it feel right at home.

Bravery is a manner of living, with fear and honesty side-by-side.  Actions aren’t brave; people are.  And brave is something I’m not even sure that I want to be. Because in a weird way, I need my fear.  I cling to it like it’s armor.  It keeps other people from judging me, or even worse, knowing me.  I have so much fear that I could never live honestly; I barely know how to live.  So my predicament is, how do I let go of the thing that’s protected and guided me all my life?  How do I suddenly become vulnerable, when my soul hasn’t built up any callouses? I have no idea, and I’m guessing you don’t either.

This has gotten a little depressing.  How about another story? 

Here it is: prior to my getting hit in the head with a basketball, I got hit in the head with a soccer ball.  Yes, I have been blindsided by balls of two different sports on two different occasions. I was so embarrassed that day that I literally pretended it didn’t happen.  Even though there were about twenty witnesses, I actually argued that it didn’t happen when people asked if I was okay.  This says just about everything you would ever need to know about me.

See what I did there?  I got uncomfy being vulnerable, so I turned to old reliable: self-deprecation.  You see, I’m afraid that other people will criticize me, so I beat them to the punch.  I really can’t imagine anything more vulnerable or awful than self-praise.

But I guess I can say this: it was just a tiny bit brave of me, the second time I got hit in the face, to admit that it happened.  I was really afraid to do that.  I think it’s hard to be brave without any hope for yourself, so I’ll take what I can get. 

Nobody—in all seriousness, I do want to be brave.  I want to learn to let things in, to be more like seaweed than an oak.  I guess I’m going to have to learn to un-learn a few of my tricks to do that.  All I can say is, I’ll work on it.  And when I get hurt, maybe I’ll try crying for a change.

Talk again soon, I hope