Brave Enough To Be Bliss

and family who always took more than they ever gave. From all the situations when someone told you “we’re in this together” or “I got you” then abandoned you, leaving you to pick up the pieces when shit got real, leaving you to handle your part and their p art, too. From all the lies and all the betrayals.” Jamila White

In early March 2021, I received a text message from a male friend of a friend. We exchanged a couple texts then he asked if he could call and I said yes. We talked on the phone for a while and figured out we would both be going to the same event and planned to meet there. It was a great event, and we did meet, but it was uneventful, and I didn’t hear from him after that . A couple females who knew him saw us talking and later warned me about him saying things like he wasn’t “good enough ” for me. By now, I just enjoyed getting to know people, so I took note of the caution, but wasn’t the least bit worried about Brett. It made me think of my intern year working in sports information. I had been “warned” about a particular coach who no one seemed to like working with. I am not sure why since I was fearful of so much in life, but when someone told me about someone like that, to me it just signaled they were a hurting person, so I adjusted my behavior to be additionally kind. It’s not t hat I was timid at all professionally, I was confidently kind if you can follow that. I didn’t enter into a new relationship with preconceived fear toward them, so I could simply walk into the relationship being authentically who I was because that’s the part of me I thought they needed. Perhaps I thought they were more scared of me than I

was of them, and that’s why they behaved the way they did. So, if I met them with the real me that was kind, giving, caring and softer, gentler than sometimes I let people see, then perhaps it would make them a more human version of themselves too. Maybe I trusted hurt people more than others because I hoped they would see the hurt person I was, and we could connect on that level. I wouldn’t have known how to describe it then , nor was I even aware that was what I was doing, but I did always try to see the person behind the behavior so I could adjust my behavior to create the best possible professional relationship. Who knows for sure, but whatever it was, it seemed to work well professionally and perhaps if I hadn’t been so scared of people on a personal level, I could have taken some of that and applied it there too. But now back to Brett. It wasn’t hard to tell he acted like a self -centered, cocky, selfish jerk because he wanted people to think he was confident, but deep down he didn’t feel that way at all about himself. We all have issues, and that was just one of his. And at this point, I was gaining more real confidence on a personal level too, so meeting people was always interesting. I t didn’t scare me to have harmless conversations with them and if nothing came from the interaction, i t just wasn’t a big deal to me either way. If he followed up, I’d talk to him, if he didn’t, no harm, no foul. Fast forward over a year with zero communication with Brett since the event. Late one evening post-op week four, I receive a text out of the blue from him. I didn’t keep the texts, but basically, he said hello and in a sort of backhanded way he complimented me on the little black dress I had worn at the wedding. It made me laugh and I responded with something to the effect of good to hear from you and thank you for the long overdue compliment. I questioned how he even remembered what I had worn and made the point that if he was so caught up in himself, why was he thinking about what I wore and remembering the specifics of an outfit over a year later? He then complimented me on my comeback and that started an actual real conversation about who

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