Last night I realized something interesting. Granted, it was 12:30 and I'd been up late talking to my friends, but it's a pretty deep insight nonetheless.
It started with the realization that people who have never met me, but read my blog, or people who in the future might read my journals, would probably think "this chick is pretty pathetic." And they wouldn't be wrong.
But they also wouldn't be right.
Because I am a lot stronger than you could tell from what I write.
Last night, I had the thought that if strength and weakness had personalities, Weak would be an extreme introvert and Strong an equally extreme extrovert (this has nothing to do with the value of being introverted or extroverted at all), because strength is really only seen by others. And weakness is only seen by ourselves. Not exclusively, of course. But don't we all keep our weaknesses hidden inside and put our strengths on display?
But when I write, I'm writing from that inner part of me, where the weaknesses hide. Where my thoughts scream at me, confusing me and making it impossible to focus. My writing comes from the darker places in my heart more often than not, and so my weakness is on display. It's how I get my head in order, getting weakness under control and then straightening my mask of strength.
Yet my strengths do not get equal display room in my writing. Last night, I had the thought that this was because of the extroversion of strength. We focus so much on keeping it on display that we become unable to describe it ourselves. Have you ever been asked what you're good at? It's a hard question to answer, isn't it? Because we want to seem humble and not prideful, and because we don't recognize much of our own strength. Our mind lives inside us in the place where we've hidden weakness, and it peeks out through strength, like wearing a Halloween mask (holiday appropriate references are important). It can see glimpses of the mask, but never the whole face - only others can do that.
So if you came up to me one day and said "Erin, you're pathetic" I'd tell you that you aren't wrong. You just also aren't completely right.
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