integration

accepting others while accepting yourself

Elizabeth Murray, Study for "Body and Soul", 2001

I don’t think you’re good at arguing. I don’t feel that when we disagree you ever assume the best of me, the way you do when you’re calm. I bet everyone in your life feels the same way about you.

It’s okay. Everyone doesn’t have to be good at everything. For instance, you are infinitely more gentle and kind than I am. I know that it is my calling to learn to love people as they are. I’ve always found it so hard to manage my intensity, the sheer weight of my expectations for others. Everyone I’ve been close to has said that I’m impossible to control. If you get in my way, I will chew through you like an animal chewing off its own leg to get free.

I’m also receptive, easygoing and warm. I love to listen: I do it for a living. I do best with difficult people. You can drop me in any room of people anywhere for an hour and I’ll have fun. But in me, receptivity is the flip side of aggression.