Not sure what I am going to write, but I'm going to do it anyway! I have so many random thoughts and feelings drifting around about you. There are the simple direct things, my appreciation for you as a person, my enjoyment of our rapport, my humble blushing at some of the nice things you say...

Then there are the complicated things. The complexity of keeping track of my emotional reactions and making sure they contribute to the quality of our friendship. Doing that at the same time as maintaining some wonder at what the future might bring, in friendship or otherwise.

Then there are the more abstract things... when we were first talking, I wondered, are you just another young person rebelling against the straightjacket of life and what people expect, and what seeds can I plant that might help you continue to be your "self" into your future years... and as I have spent time getting to know you better, the rather interesting dynamic between not worrying about that, trusting that you are probably headed for a more eclectic life than most, one you have chosen for yourself rather than had thrust upon you - and worrying more in some ways about how things could constrain you or hurt you.

Do you understand what I mean?

My support of your personal relations are based on the former, on a respect for you compeletely as an equal and trust that you will see clearly whether things are good or bad and make your decisions accordingly. My worries are based on some of what I perceive to be the more dangerous or scarier sides of your situation. I know it is none of my business, and the trust and respect should be foremost in my mind, but the worry creeps in as well.

I do not think it is based on jealousy or desire for you - those things reside in their own little home in my mind, they get the attention and management they need but I hope do not control me or sway me more than they should. I hope you still are thinking about violence and its justifiability. I realize that it takes many different types of people to make an interesting world and it does not matter to me that many would disagree with me on an issue like this, at some level. There might even be extreme differences of opinion and experience that are pure and completely justified.

What I want to say, I guess almost sounds paternalistic to me, and so that is why I am beating around the bush and trying to make every exception for your intelligence and ability to manage your own life that I can. I am just scared that violence may come into your life in a way that is not pleasant. I hope my fears are totally groundless! I hope I am right when I chide myself for this "protective" attitude and that you are even more advanced than I perceive.

Am I making any sense?

It is not that I do not want to see you "hurt" - not that I want to or anything, but some kinds of hurt are the process of life. I just do not even want to think that you might be in a situation where physical harm might come to you or those you hold dear. And because of my limited information and my own personal beliefs/thoughts about any kind of violence or its justification, I sometimes think you could be exposed to a kind of insidious, creeping harm.

OK, enough of this depressing crap!

I probably overstated my point and I do not want to sound so foolish.

I treasure the bonds of friendship that we have established so far and hope they will continue to grow. Knowing you is one more reason for life to seem to be a happy thing to me, and I hope it continues that way and that the pleasure is mutual. I want to keep knowing you and your story, as I hope to keep sharing mine (past, present and future) with you. I hope I tell it well, so you can appreciate it, understand it, and gain some amusement from it.

Your story has so many possibilities, and I hope it will continue to broaden as it unfolds, as you try to write it for yourself. Perhaps I am running ahead of who you are, even trying to form ideas of who you will be before you get a chance to, but I do not think I am going too far when I say that like to think of you as "one of us," someone who will be an actual person, a somebody, a difficult inspiration...

You see the complexities and the narrowness before you, you have expressed this, and I hope you will always choose to live a life that is true to your own self, and not worry about whether the world has already made a place for that person or not.

I hope we talk again soon!

6/1/01

© Huw Powell
printed 29 March 2024

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