I recently wrote about capacity. Capacity is someone’s ability to do anything really, but the focus of my writing was someone’s capacity to give and receive love. There are people in this world that have a 10 gallon hats worth of capacity for love, empathy, understanding, and comfort. There are people in this world with a 1 gallon hat capacity for love, empathy, understanding, and comfort. Neither is wrong or bad but it is good to know your own capacity and that of others. This can help you set your expectations of the other person correctly. You cannot know that a person is a one gallon person and expect 10 gallon love from them, it isn’t fair to either of you..
Tonight I got a lesson, a hard lesson, in capacity. It hurt. Ouch. Because even if you understand capacity and what your capacity is, you can be mistaken about someone else’s capacity and it can hurt. I’m an optimistic person and I think positively about most people unless I have a good reason not to. Many times I just assume someone is a ten gallon person unless they have shown me they are not. I trust people until I have reason not to. It really hurts me sometimes but I cannot imagine going through life the opposite way. Especially as a teacher, mother, friend, it serves me well to believe that anyone could be anything they want to be. I may have been born a one gallon capacity person but life has worn me by experiences that have carved me ten gallons deep. I believe that anyone can be worn deeper and deeper by life or by willingness. Sometimes I confuse comfort with capacity. Just because I’m comfortable with you doesn’t mean you have the capacity I might expect.
When I turned to a friend tonight, I was very specific about what I needed. I explained it clearly and asked if they could meet me in the space I needed to be met in. I needed to let my guard down, be irrational, be vulnerable and have them feed me certain words I knew I needed to hear. It was a weird but simple request. They accepted. I picked up the phone and let myself go to a place I only show to a very select few people in my life. They are my bakeries that I know will always have fresh bread for me. They can meet me in the ten gallon depths. I wasn’t positive that this person was a ten gallon friend and I didn’t know if they were a bakery, but I had basically written a script for them to follow so that they could bake the bread even if they weren’t sure how. I literally gave them the words that I needed to hear back and told them when to say them to me.
Painfully, there was no bread. No bakery. No ten gallon depths. Instead of a warm bakery I suddenly found myself in a cold hardware store full of hammers, saws, and sharp, hard objects. Opinions I didn’t ask for were given. Harsh words about getting over it and moving on and being happy were said. Judgement of my state of vulnerability, grief, and emotional state followed. The listening I had asked for was cut short with questioning and the words of comfort I had requested were never said. Ouch.
My first reaction was to sit in shock, but then for some strange reason, I started to try to explain myself. I would not recommend taking this path if you should ever find yourself in the hardware store when you thought you were entering a bakery. Hardware store people do not understand bread, they just don’t. Next time, I hope that I will simply say “Oopsie, I suddenly find myself in a hardware store and I was looking for bread, I have to leave now.” Learn from my pain. Sitting on the phone trying to explain your heart to someone who can’t hear you is abusive to yourself. I forgive myself for participating longer than I should have, I was just very surprised. I don’t open myself to many people and my very small group has some ten gallon people in it. I guess I didn’t realize that this person was not capable. I’m sure I hurt both of us with the assumption that they were.
I can see how difficult it would be to find yourself in a situation where someone you know and care about is crying and hurting and needing something from you and you don’t know how to fix it. I had not asked to be fixed, to be clear, I had asked to be listened to and to be given words that I provided, but that isn’t what was interpreted by this person. They felt like they needed to fix it, to make it better, and to offer advice and opinion that wasn’t needed. Wires were crossed and it was very uncomfortable, yucky, and it hurt. We won’t continue to be friends after this. Not out of anger or revenge or anything other than self-preservation. I cannot be in relationship with people who cannot see me, hear me, or meet me in the ten gallon depths. We can say hello at the grocery store, we can like each other’s dog pics on Facebook, and we can wish each other well in the future, but we cannot be friends.
It is a privilege and an honor to be invited into someone’s inner world, into their depths. It is a sacred space where people are allowed to be vulnerable, irrational, deeply hurt, contradictory, and to be given space to be perfectly imperfect and human. It is a space where grief lives alongside love, where reality gets mixed up with the ghosts of the past and you need someone on the outside to just pull you back with a kind word. Shame is not allowed in this sacred space. Judgement is not allowed in this sacred space. Advise is not needed in this sacred space. What is needed is love, understanding, and presence. Sometimes you just have to let someone fall apart and lay next to them and say nothing except “I’m here. I don’t understand it, it scares me, I don’t have any answers, but I’m not going anywhere.”
I must confess that I got the hardware store/bread example from Al-Anon recovery groups. There is a reading or a saying that says going to an alcoholic and expecting them to meet your needs is like going to the hardware store for bread. You aren’t going to get what you need, they aren’t capable. So we can punish the alcoholic for not being able to meet our needs and shame them for their lack of capacity, or we can move on and find the people out there that can meet our needs. It is mean to stay in a relationship with someone and expect them to give you things that they cannot.
The journey to find out who is capable is hard. Sometimes you are pleasantly surprised by someone’s capacity and depth and sometimes you find yourself in the hardware store with no bread to be found. There is grief in going home empty handed and there is hurt if you found yourself on the receiving end of opinion, judgment, and harshness when you bear your soul to someone. Walk away, have a good cry, say ouch, call a ten gallon person and have a good laugh about your surprise hardware store visit. The one thing my ten gallon friend reminded me of tonight is that just because someone is incapable of giving us what we want, it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with us. I shouldn’t feel bad for baring my soul and allowing someone in, I should not feel bad that I needed something or that I needed to fall apart.
Some people want you to be different because you make them uncomfortable. They would prefer you to suck it up, get over it, be happy so that they can be more comfortable around you. Do not listen to that bullshit. That is what people who don’t ever go below the surface say to people who frequently swim in the depths. I used to be scared of deep water too, of life and it’s pain and depths, contradictions and unfathomable complications. I’ve done my work. I’ve put on my oxygen tanks and I’ve trusted myself enough to dive deep into all of my pain and hurt and trauma and heartbreak. I’ve watched things coming in the distance that looked like sharks and I wanted to swim as fast as I could to the surface and never look back, but I didn’t. I stayed and sometimes it was a shark, with big fucking teeth that scared the hell out of me, but I stood there and faced it. I stayed down there long enough to learn what is a shark and what is just a parrotfish that looks like a shark in the distance but up close is just a big beautiful fish. It is frighteningly beautiful in the depths and there is nothing down there that is going to make you comfortable, you just get used to the uncertainty and realize that that is what makes life beautiful.
So if you find yourself in a hardware store when you really needed bread, leave. You do not have to spend long time comforting the hardware store person for not having what you need or shame them or convince them that they should look into stocking bread. Just leave that store, it is not your store. Get your butt back in your car and drive to the bakery. The place that you know will have bread. Go there.
If you think you might be a hardware store and you think you would rather be in the bread business, do your work. You can start with these little gems of advice:
When someone is crying in your presence, shut up. Do not talk. If you cannot bring yourself to comfort them with a hug or if you cannot just say that you don’t know what to do but that you are there for them, then at least just shut up and don’t try to stop the crying just so you can feel comfortable.
When someone warns you that they are going to show you something difficult, personal, and painful take a deep breath or two, shut your mouth, and practice saying these words in your head “I am here. This sounds painful and difficult and personal, thank you for sharing that with me. I don’t know what to do or say but I’m here.” If you can’t say those things, let them know that you don’t have the capacity right now and that maybe they should not share.
When someone is grieving, you do not get to tell them how to do that. Yes, I can post a montage of pictures of myself with my ex-husband on social media and say that I miss him on the day that he died. I can choose to remember the part of him that loved me deeply, just like I loved him deeply. That does not mean that I forgot all of the pain, the hurt, the traumatic experiences that I had with him. It means that grief, divorce, addiction, abuse, love and loss are fucking messy and complicated. You do not have to understand my journey to honor that I’m on it. You can be confused by it but understand that I am not. I’ve done my work.
Never tell someone to get over it, move on, and just be happy. Not when it comes to their life experiences. You tell someone to get over it, move on, and just be happy when they ordered no onions on their burger and the cook gets it wrong and they have to pick the onions off the burger. If you have not experienced the deeply personal, tragic, painful life experience that this person who is confiding in you has, do not ask them to kindly get over it so that you can feel better around them. If you cannot handle them, they kindly exit their life and do both of you a favor. Insisting that a person get over something and assuming that there is something wrong with them if they cannot is mean. Expecting someone to be happy all the time is denying that person their full humanity.
When someone isn’t handling something the way that you would, again, close your mouth. You need to sit back and let that person have the dignity to make their own mistakes, their own choices, and go through their own pain. Do you really think you know what is best for someone else? Do you really understand the complexity of their life? Do you really not trust them to do what is best for themselves? If you have not been asked specifically for advice do not give it. If you have been asked specifically for advise you can practice saying “I’m not you and I don’t know what I would do in that situation, but I know you will figure it out.” The only exception I have for this is if someone’s life is in danger. Feel free to tell them to get out and offer to help.
Last, if you find yourself face to face with someone who came to you thinking you were a bakery and you realize that you are a hardware store with no bread, do not be personally offended when that person has to leave because you don’t have what they need. There are plenty of people in the world that need hammers and saws and the things you have to offer. It doesn’t mean that you should change what you have to offer (though my local hardware store does have bread and donuts) but don’t chase after someone trying to sell them a hammer, trying to convince them to stay in your store and get what they don’t need and didn’t ask for. Point them in the direction of a bakery and let them go.
I’m physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. I’m a person with a large capacity to hold others and their truth, pain, and sorrow. I was looking for someone to show my own depths to, only wanting a few comforting words to tell me that the shadows I was seeing in the depths weren’t sharks, just parrotfish that wouldn’t hurt me. I picked the wrong person tonight. It hurt. I won’t do that again with that person but I won’t let it change me and desire to be met in the depths. I will let them go in love and I will remember that all is not lost. Just a couple of humans being human and hurting each other, it’s what we do. My reminder to myself is that I can meet myself in the depths. I can go there with my Higher Power and my wise self and tell myself those words I had so wanted to hear. So I’m off to have my own back, to comfort myself, and to tell myself that I was brave for trying.
Take good care out there.
