Love Letters from Flora: THE GOOD PERSON IS DANGEROUS | 28
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Yes, you read that right. People who are only good, and nice, and sweet, and never angry, or even hate anger, they scare me. I despise fake smiles and ingenuity. Creeps me out. To me, that's like a dormant volcano. You never know what's bubbling under the surface and when it's gonna errupt. You might argue that's hyper vigilance. It might be. And also, what's wrong with anger? What's wrong with intensity? What's wrong with the full expression of the human experience? You wanna know what scares me too? Love and light only. Scares the shit out of me. Again, being human comes with a full range of experiences and expressions thereof, I hope. Certainly, directing intensity against someone, or oneself, is not helpful. But also keeping it in at all costs is not helpful. We live in a world where expression of emotions is not welcome, beyond a curtous smile, perhaps. Curious where that's coming from. My educated guess: religions, spirituality, patriarchy.
Highly problematic, isn't it? So much effort is put into "being good". But, truth is, and that might be hard to hear - the shadow doesn't disappear because we are good. It simply gets pushed away to fester even more in the darkness, the underworld, the subconscious. Life might be easier when we are perceived as easy, chill, good. And that brings me to the question: What have you made yourself incapable of because it didn't fit your identity?
THE STORY
Being good is overrated. We hand that out like a badge of honour. "He's such a good man." "What a good girl." Great. I don't believe that there is no "bad". Let me rephrase that: I don't believe that bad is bad and good is good. We make up those lables, we label one expression of aliveness, of the messiness of being human, as good, the other one as bad. Honestly, some of the scariest people I met in my life so far were "good guys". I my experience, the good is a mask. They say yes to everything. They want to please (guess where that's coming from....). They want to be, tatatataaaaaa LOVED. And good boys get love, that's right. I never really trust the "I'm always avaible, I'm always chill, I never get frustrated". I don't think it cannot be real. And don't get me wrong, I love good, too. It's absolutely wonderful. The world needs more good people. But what does that even mean? People don't consciously decide, "Let me hide my darkenss, my shadows." They think "I'm a good person." That might mean something different individually. But think: I'm not jealous. I'm not greedy. I hate power. I hate money. I hate sex. I'm not selfish. I'm not controlling. I'm not cruel. I don't hate anybody. I never get anry. I would never want that. Or, vice versa: I'm so generous. I'm loving. I'm caring. I love everbody. I'm always happy. Hey, you're HUMAN! You contain multitudes! You are allowed! We all have shadows, we all contain darkness, ain't a bad thing. What is dangerous though, is becoming so identified with goodness that you loose sight of what you are capable of.
Not too long ago I discovered somerthing about myself I was not particulary proud of. It takes quiet a lot to share this story, as always, my side, my personal perception, of this experience. I'm not talking cute imperfection here. I'm talking full on challenge of self image. Cause, you know, I like being a good person, too.
I pursued a girlfriend's ex lover. They are both not in my life any longer. Said people ended their lovership, and, let's call her Anne, for simplicity, confied her heartbrake with me. She had been struggling in this relationship for a while. I felt attraction for her now ex lover since the moment I first saw him, at that point about half a year prior. I hid it, I never spoke to it, 'cause I'm not allowed to feel attaracted to my friend's lover, correct? Right now, I see this differently. We feel attraction for all kinds of conscious and unconscious reasons. And when we speak them out loud (same with emotions, sensations- there was a very recent study published on that- as soon as we name them, speak them out loud, they disperse, they lose their power), they get lighter. But hey, good Flora hid it, kept it in the dark. I had matched with her ex lover on a dating app, and he wanted to give her time to process the separation before spending time with me. Long story short, I really, really hurt my friend. I still cringe when I think about it. There are obviously many layers to it. I gave it zero time. This experience made me understand an immense urgency with securing relationship, once again, stemming in infancy. If I don't go for it right now, it will be gone. It's now or never. I overrode everything I ever knew about sisterhood. Dang. My remorse, regrets and apologies were never accapted. The friendship ended. The lovership eventually ended, too. I got what I wanted. It was not what I wanted.
I'm a little scared of what you might think of me now. How you will judge me.
I do have another story, where a "good guy" really, really scared me. But that's for another day.
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