Maybe you're not being asked for solutions

...and isn't that the hardest thing, sometimes?

I'm trying to understand some things. It doesn't come easy. Mainly 'cause each time I do, it makes me feel kinda like I wasted a lot of time understanding other things. Like I don't got time for all the things I'm meant to understand or would like to understand before I move on with my life.

This is something I'm working with, and sometimes, against.

Consider you're not being asked for a solution.

That's the ha, the yang dominance of our modern, urban world. It's the 'doer', the spirit in you that says come on, let's get to work. We got important shit to do, we got work, we got to keep busy. We got to show our worth. The masculine worth is intrinsically tied to rajas, the force of doing, the continual movement. The problem solving.

Except, in an over-masculine, over-productive world, neither gender knows how to not fix things anymore. I grapple with this one a lot. I wouldn't say I'm in a healthy relationship with my inner masculine just yet, but at least, this one I know.

The feminine, poor thing, has had to fight for every scrap of space it currently owns, because it doesn't come natural to me. And it sure as shit don't come easy.

I didn't like what was being said, so naturally, my first impulse was to offer an answer. I thought if I could, then things would be alright. That my friend wouldn't be sad anymore. Moreover, that this was a prime opportunity for me to be of use.

Luckily, I've come to a place where I take a lot of breathers. Not as many as I should, but more than I used to, and that's progress. I took one and realized this wasn't about me at all. That my friend, this special, dear person to me was taking a chance. She was being vulnerable and honest when she had no need to be.

I had, immediately, an impulse to offer reassurance. Even petty, bland, surface-level reassurance. Just say something. Anything as long as it lets me not feel. Except that's just it. She wasn't asking me to say. She was asking me to feel, to sit with her while she sat with this terrible, deeply disappointing truth.

Sometimes, there's nothing more terrifying than feeling. That's the masculine, too. The feminine knows how to sit with shit - foul, festering, dark shit. It has to. The black light can only rise from the shadows. But despite all the sexual awakenings and revolutions we have celebrated over the past hundred years, this is still very much a man's world.
We are driven, almost compulsively, by the need to act, to think, to justify our own worth. We cast aside old wisdom, especially if it comes from that most shameful of sources. Womb knowledge.

Knowing you're being asked to take in this darkness, to partake in it, to walk the path of it, is no easy business. But then, most things worth having aren't easy, either.

Often,

I just don't know how.

I'm not sure how to handle trust with care, so I say silly things and put it back too quickly before I have a chance to break it. But I didn't this time. I tried, in my own skewed way, to sit with my friend's pain, and not look for answers to it. I tried to feel when every inch of my rational body screamed to do, to fix. Surely, you love your friend, you don't want her to go through this.

I am not being asked for solutions. I am simply being asked to be.

I'm currently learning how to do that. How to only ask myself to be, and not do. Or bring. Or fix. I'm grappling with the masculine in me to give me enough room to seek a sort of equilibrium. It's hard. We're all afraid of being replaced or eliminated. Even him. And I know. I get it.

I get the feeling this won't be an easy journey. I have a sense I'll try to stop several times along the way.

I hope I don't.