She grew tired of being so nice.
Footnote story: When you’re a nice person who is caring, kind and considerate of other people’s feelings. It’s quite a blow when you come into contact with people who aren’t nice. Sometimes cruel and hurtful. Careless with their words – and the feelings of others. It can knock you flat.
But then you get back up and learn to be a bit more economical with your niceness. Careful about the amount of good energy you give to certain people and ensure it goes where it is safe,respected and appreciated. And when you feel how bad the opposite to nice feels, you realise just how important it is in the world.
(Clunk & Jam book 2019).
This is Impossible – So Let’s Get Started.
Below is an excerpt from a student’s exploration of the book, ‘Clunk & Jam’, for an English assignment. Thank you RB for choosing Clunk & Jam to review and the personal insights you’ve written about and kindly (bravely) shared …
‘The Super Hero series stems from Browne always having had a strong social conscience and being very sensitive – particularly to the suffering of others, or bad things happening. There was a part of her that wanted to save the world (the child/teenage) – knowing full well she couldn’t (the adult self). “I was one of those kids who felt really responsible for people around me and what was happening. And then I had experiences where no-one showed up for me, so I lost faith in the notion of real life Super Heroes.”
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(Reposted from 2008). You will Find Relief here.
Everyone Has Dark Times – A Personal Story…
In relation to the diagnosis of ‘depression’ and the feeling of being ‘depressed’ … I’m uncertain how much of what I’m experiencing are normal feelings and how much is due to a chemical imbalance in the brain? How much of how I’m feeling and experiencing is influenced by past trauma and bad experiences. Circumstance and environment? Belief and perception?While having a diagnosis of depression, anxiety disorder, PTSD and other conditions of mind can help make sense of things and provide a guide for treatment and medication (if necessary). Giving it significance beyond that can further darken our world. It can lead to the perception that, ‘something is wrong with us’. A perception by ourselves and others that we’re weak or flawed. And it can be the entry point into the isolation of social stigma and shame associated with ‘mental illness’.
(Art Harley Manifold, original in colour).
It has been helpful to separate myself from the diagnosis. To work out not, ‘what is wrong with me’, but ‘what’s not right’?
What remains are giant and often unmanageable feelings. A cocktail of emotion. Anger and rage in the mix with sadness, hopelessness and despair. Fear. Panic without a cause. Sensitivity or intolerance to light, noise, stress – people. The world around me. Places I can no longer go. Unrelenting critical head talk. Crippling self doubt. Dominant dark thoughts. Sometimes unbearably intense – other times, blunted. A feeling of nothing.
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Held On A String .
I stretch to forever with the very tips of my fingers. Way up high to a place where everything falls away. Just me and nothing. Nothing and me. Then I let go. Fell into a place much harder than my story. It hurt. Not from the fall. From landing in things I didn’t know were still there. Now my fingers ache for the place where everything falls away. I fight to soothe fiddling fingers still. Lock them in lap. Far less than the place they long for. Much more for being held in a place I believe I have a chance to hold.
(Reposted from 2010. About addiction maybe?)
Boy Oh BOy .
Oh BOy. The bound up BOy. Crushed beneath the pressure, the grind to be tough and strong. Big. The overwhelming wave of responsibility to save everything from time, to the environment – the world itself. But I’ve seen the BOy dance and cry. Read poetry out loud. Wear makeup. Pick flowers. Speak his truth. Challenge his world. Name his feelings. Play piano and sing. Hug another BOy.
BOy oh BOy I cried…and a dream saw hands on the wheel of change. Ploughing a culture in where the feelings, vulnerabilities and experiences of men and BOys cannot be freely expressed and accepted. Burying the angst that has the potential of bringing BOy to his own end.
BOy oh BOy said the dream … may ideals and expectations of the BOy be reset, redrawn. May BOy be moved and freed from his grueling vigil by the roar for change. The momentum of the march towards it. And the wonder at a way and time when BOy is no longer required to be just one of the boys anymore.
(Clunk & Jam book, 2019).
Tug, Tug, Tug .
The pull of the past tugged at her every attempt at a brave step away. But, alas, the counter bell in her mind rang with enlightenment….”You’re just going to have to be a touch more strategic in planning your moves and setting yourself ever so lovingly loose.” At that very moment she felt her shoulders come down from her ear lobes and life return to the balls of her feet. She was ready to go.
(Reposted from 2012. Find her in ‘Clunk & Jam’ book.)
