I've been thinking about weakness. It is difficult for me to accept weakness in others, especially the people closest to me, most especially anyone I depend on or feel I should be able to depend on. In a recent conversation with my friend and tattoo artist about the challenge of loving strong women, I admitted my attitude about weakness in a romantic partner: "Hey, I see a little weakness there. Let me kill that for you." To me, this has always seemed completely logical. Why would anyone want to be weak? Of course, they would be grateful for my (unrequested) "help" in irradiating any weaknesses they might have.
Wrong.
Today, my ex and I were discussing the time he got a splinter, and I called him a pussy. I claim I was joking. He claims my words were a lot more sinister than that. In hindsight, I don't think I was joking at all. I think I was spewing my resenting and hiding it in sarcasm because I was incapable of identifying and communicating my feelings with others.
I resented anything I saw in him resembling weakness because I depended on him. I had come to view him as strong and reliable and someone I could depend on. If he had weakness, how could I depend on him? Other people in my life who were supposed to protect me failed because they were weak. I had even failed myself at times because of my own weaknesses. Because of these experiences, I had come to view weakness as intolerable and something to be eradicated at any cost.
But the truth is that I am human and flawed. I am incredibly strong, but not all the time. I have weaknesses and flaws and failings. And that is okay. And if it is okay for me to be weak sometimes; then, it must also be okay for others to be weak sometimes as well. Even the people I depend on.
I reject weakness out of fear--fear that I might not survive whatever storms such weaknesses leave me vulnerable to, but I can and will survive them. And even if I don't, I wasn't put on this Earth to live forever anyway. One day, I will die, precisely because I am a weak human. I was not born to be invincible and neither was anyone else.
What I need to kill are not my weaknesses, but my fear of them. I will learn to accept and love my weaknesses and the weaknesses of others.
