"A daring and confident disregard for personal safety or conventional thought or restrictions..." Erin Schaden
I kind of love audacity as a contrarian. I did not set out to go against the grain every chance I got, but that is kind of what resulted. I think my daily rebellion was just a very thinly disguised plot to prove my own existence. I know when I was younger, I just felt so unseen. Just there, never at the top and rarely at the bottom, just somewhere in the massive heap of humanity that made me feel worthless and overlooked.
Audacity is a good tool to get to the top of any pile...it took me years to realize being at the top of a pile of steaming shit was no real win.
I disregarded personal safety a lot. I mean, a lot, a lot. In everything I did there were stupid chances, risks that were not required. Dangerous men, places, ideas, behaviors. Somehow living on some edge (certainly not the bleeding edge, but at least the cutting edge) made me feel alive. That somehow the audacity I brought would somehow make me more memorable or wanted or liked or something.
It never occurred to me, ever, that perhaps the biggest issue was my own total lack of regard, respect or care for myself. Perhaps, just maybe, no one else could be present and loving and caring when I behaved with such reckless disregard for myself.
But I have to pay homage to Audacity because it is her reign that brought me to my knees and then humbled me into a submission that would save my life. And she has been a steadfast mate ever since...largely to woo me out of my habitual responses and patterns and into something or someone that requires more from me.
I am in the place now where Audacity and I are redefining the terms. Our late night exploits are largely a thing of the past. I am still known to go clubbing on occasion. Dancing seems a fitting outing for Audacity and me.
Audacity and I write everyday, her encouraging me to say the things, all the things that my tender and frail ego insist would be better left unsaid. But Audacity requires remarkability (I know it isn’t a word, again, but fuck it should be! See how Audacity shows up?)
I feel like Audacity used to be my evil twin...a separate persona I donned when the real me lacked courage, or zest or confidence or grit. She showed up and took over and launched me into whatever shitshow I wanted access to next. And then she was the one that picked me off the floor of the inevitable bottom I seemed so fucked to repeat.
Today, I feel more like Audacity and I are in more of a lock step situation. We have a lot of knowing glances...and sometimes she even lets me decide whether we engage in the next particular bad decision or if we just sit that one out. We spend a lot more time in communion rather than our old pattern of command and obey.
Today it feels like Audacity and I are always in some coffee shop, her rapid firing her ideas and thoughts and commands at me and I am there pencil in hand desperately trying to write it all down. I mean, she is fucking grand and I love her and all of her ideas but I have learned, the hard way, that not all of her great ideas are necessarily best for me. It is more of a brainstorming session and then we go for an afternoon stroll to further knock all those audacious concepts around.
I guess really what has happened is Audacity and I have slowed our rolls. The thoughts still come in a rapid-fire manner but the action, if there is any at all, comes more slowly, after more consideration and thoughtfulness.
Like two lovers who have come to know each other so well there is a comfortable familiarity between us that allows for an intimate discussion about things most people do not ever discuss, or likely think. Which is kind of audacious, if you think about it.
Audacity and I still chew the fat on the daily. But the actions required for all her crazy ideas and plans is something that has slowed and mellowed with the passage of time. And that feels to be as it should be. I never want to lose her reckless energy and drive. I love her pushes to do more, say more, be more, that are not limited by convention, popularity and some outwardly defined standard of “right."
I realized while writing this that she and I convene daily as I write this all down each morning. Her daring and confident disregard required for me to own all these truths I attempt to tell. It is she that pushes the boundaries of convention and ideologies accepted and followed. It is her that blocks me from deleting most of what I just wrote out of fear that I will be too seen, too revealed, too known. It is her that says, “fuck it, just send it.” And since I have done the work to come to know her and where she comes from well, I feel oddly safe in my compliance with her requests. And I also know because she is audacious and wild that sometimes she will take it too far...and I have come to accept that too. Without her, there are so many wild rides I would have missed...and that, in the end, would leave me with so much less to write about...
Again...still.
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