Netflix did a documentary with Chris Brown. I had no plans to look at it. I am one of those people who remembers only too vividly what happened the night he and Rihanna had a fight that nearly ended her life. However, I have always said that although I am no fan, I admire his talent. He is the only person who can dance in the vein of Michael jackson and not look as though he's copying the man, and that is saying something. Anyway, I was watching his documentary and he got very candid about the whole violent encounter and he said something that stuck with me. He said that he realized that people would view him as a monster, and that that was the furthest thing from his intentions at the time. But in understanding that he was being portrayed that way, even by himself, he decided one day that if people were going to hate him, he wanted them to be mad because he planned to endure. I can respect that. One can learn from the unlikeliest of places. I am glad that I watched the show, I have a better understanding of the man. It still does not sit well with me that they got into an argument that led to such an awful outcome for both of them. But, I would be lying if I wrote that I could not relate to passionate arguments. My ex-husband and I used to have real zingers. We never hit each other, but boy did we shout at the top of our voices and slam doors and phones down. This year, I find that I spent a great deal of time trying to make sense of feelings that left me so exposed. I still feel a sense of it. I have come to respect that I was given them to experience. I have never had quite 'this' way of encountering myself, splintered off like a piece of crystal. I am shining on one side and at certain points, dull the next moment. I have confronted that I 'feel', yet, it has not provided relief, as it has set itself up in observation to be fascinating. i go back and forth. One moment I am absolutely certain about a course of action. The next, I feel one hundred and eighty degrees different. What that tells me is that both are right. If I act, I am creating an action. If I don't act, I am creating an action within my inaction. Sometimes there is no right, there just is a way. I discovered so much. Chris Brown did say all those years ago that he saw his mother go through Domestic Violence and swore that he would prefer to see his father dead than see her hurt again. What he did to Rihanna must truly screw with his mind. I cannot imagine the tumult. It is as though something inside him mocks him for thinking he could be above what he witnessed as a child. In fact, just yesterday, i was giving some thought to the word 'victimhood.' I shall expound on it in a later post. It is actually 1:31am, and if I write that, it shall take some time to do so. I'll just state here that right now I find that the humanity has a lot to answer for where the victim is concerned. When I think about Indigenous Peoples, Slavery, the Holocaust...people go through trauma and are re-victimized. When does it stop? Is that really about survival of the fittest? This entry is becoming something else from where I set out. So I shall end here. But again, I must say that it is clear that we are all given something to work out. We can either use it to fuel ourselves or to be consumed by it.