You are so sweet

‘You are so, so, so sweet’, she said with our community of friends as our silent witness.

Her comment may have seemed to be something to take lightly, but it certainly did not feel that way. She is one of the persons that from day one connects with me from a special place, a sometimes hidden place.

The word ‘sweet’ summarizes an intense emotional depth.

‘Who are you, really’ someone asked the other day. Outwardly, I remained silent. Within, the sound of my organs echolocated my essence.

Please find ‘me’ in this deep, deep ocean. This ocean contains sweet water that gradually became more salt.

‘Sweet’ is a metaphor. It has been a life-long trajectory of trying to be there for others. Of gratefulness. And of inhibiting intensities, reducing complexities, dismissing boundaries, living out restrictive cultural narratives of what it means to be a woman being, living my version of the narrative of what it means to grow up in an emotional neglectful world.

Sweet is also a lifelong trajectory of deeply loving my fellow human beings. It is just who I am, I love people easily, they all feel part of the same, tremendous, life-birthing ocean.

My father once gave me a novel titled ‘For Love, look for the letter L’. In my mind, we often communicate through book titles or other symbolic expressions, and I also love this poetic characteristic of our relationship, even though it is related to a lack of direct, concrete communication and therefore easily keeps my treasured needs hidden in the deep waters.

For a long time, I felt a firm pressure on my chest whenever somebody would call me sweet. Besides the fact that I see so many occasions in which I am not that ‘sweet’ according to a layered, complex ideal and my all too normal human vulnerabilities, I also felt the word expressed a learned fixation to fulfill other people’s needs. Sometimes ‘being sweet’ is not what I nor the context needs.

‘Sweet’ can be a very brief way to describe a certain gifted profile, with certain gifted and human tendencies, vulnerabilities, and developmental challenges.

I looked at my dear friend with the loving eyes of somebody that is indeed ‘sweetened’ and finally saw myself.

‘Sweet’, I thought, ‘how sweet, child o’mine, to call yourself sweet.’

I sang like a whale.

Can we rewild our sweetness, please?