Hello, I wrote something about mercy that felt important to me. It’s some truth I sent as a post-argument email. The ideas matter to me, and maybe it could enjoy a larger audience.
Mercy = I don’t deserve your consideration. Please give it to me anyway. I’m a creature who makes mistakes. Please see my foible and hold me anyway. Please admit we all make mistakes and allow me mine as I cry.
I would like to put it here and see if you like it, dear reader. This is a slightly cleaned up version.
The friend who received it did not reply. Maybe it’s off base. Or maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it slipped between digital cracks. Replying to me is often not what he chooses to prioritize. Still looking for the button to turn my love down. Meanwhile I beg for kindness and hope for the best.
I’m a wordy lady. Thank you for showing up for me, dear reader. My words are my offering, and all my art. My body is also my offering. But words can go further.
needs and gifts
If someone has strange beautiful gifts, we often have intense needs that are the flip side of the gifts.
If you enjoy being supported by the beautiful gift, I hope you will acknowledge that and choose to nurture the intense need.
Please have mercy on me for my weird needs.
Please see I am valuable, helpful person and what I need matters, and be kind to me.
helping
If you’re hurting the people who help you, you drive us away. Or put us in a terrible position.
If you don’t ask for help when you need it, you endanger yourself, which also endangers the people who live in community with you. “The one who does not ask for help cannot be trusted.”
Yet your autonomy is sacred. I never want to tread on it.
I want to live with you–I prefer you to let me in.
harsh
I’m sorry people tread on you and your autonomy before. Please go back in time and be harsh to them. Don’t be harsh to me.
But I see if you have no choice.
Thank you for your strange, beautiful gifts.
I wish to have mercy on you for your needs. I’m trying to. And I see you trying to do the same for me. Thank you.
Your sacred body matters to me. Your life matters to me.
yes
It was pertaining to being harshed at for health help. Maybe you recall last month when three housemates had pandemic illness. I was making tea, washing dishes, offering medicine, heating soup. There was that chicken soup I made despite being a vegetarian, with food bank chicken.
Chicken magic was whispered to me, so I tried. It was not an easy time.
I have a quirk / dysfunction / blessing / quality: When I really love someone and they hurt me, I have a hard time pulling away. Rather than step back, I tend to step closer. Hmm, weird strategy, Laura-Marie.
Abandoning people who ouch me is not something I’m good at. But showing up over and over for harm makes it harder for me to do my life’s work. I’m stuck. Luckily the situations and feelings are always in flux. I have many simultaneous projects.
Grateful for the tensions that keep life confusing and rich. Grateful to Ming who cuddles me through the entire situation, confusing beginning to stupid end.
