Fighting Potential

Saturday, October 10th 2020

Summer Walker, “Potential”

Fighting Potential

Escapism has become my roll dawg during this quarantine, and I believe he’s a mutual friend of ours. Escapism lies in wanting to disassociate from our current reality/situation to a more favorable one. Whether it is the constant daydream or facing a blunt, we are all trying to find the silver lining in this hellscape. And while we’re doing our ditty and finding ways to cope, there are a few things that I’ve noticed I have done that are not the best (liking eating a whole pizza in one sitting…).

One of my major flaws personally has been in dealing with the big boy POtential. Potential is the anticipation of something happening. Its believing in the capacity of a person or entity of improving past its current condition. Potential is hope, and I believe we sure do have a lot of that… even to our own detriment. In romantic relationships, we be wishing well to the point of exhaustion. A major disconnect comes from these expectations versus reality. So, I wanna discuss how I worked through dealing with Mr. Potential.

For some reason, I was enamored with putting people on pedestals without their consent. I would say in my head, “Hey! I want you to be everything I envision, every fantasy of a perfect person I’ve created in my head, for you have the potential to be that if I mold you.” And, for a while, the rose-colored glasses lead me to believe that I can and have changed someone to be something they are not, unbeknownst to them. I was caught up in the daydream of the stew I had concocted and they didn’t even know. I set unrealistic expectations in my head that did not fully reflect the reality of our circumstances. Then, I walked into a situation where my expectations and realities have not been acquainted, causing conflict. I never believed that having standards was the issue and actually felt that I was not assertive in my standards as I should have; however, I also was not modeling the standards I desired, proving myself hypocritical and unfair. Humans are flawed beyond what we truly realize, and the first thing I truly understood was that I had to extend grace and room for others to grow while also becoming unwavering in my boundaries. My main issue is my lack of patience, and I always want things to turn out how I’ve screen written them in my head. But, thats unlikely. I had to learn that without communication and application, my expectations would remain in my head. In the end, this lack of grace extended itself in ways that were self-inflicted.

For me, Potential is like an investment. “I believe in you so I want to stick around.” It was so hard for me to understand why my previous relationships wouldn’t work out. As a young woman, I was always told that loyalty was the most valuable thing to have and staying down was the wave. In popular culture, you see the Bonnie and Clyde romanticism, the Romeo and Juliet deadly love, the ride or die trope. And, we internalize that heavy. But, where is the loyalty to oneself? Can you remain loyal while another person hurts you? Who does that serve? I could never wrap my mind around it. “Why hurt someone that is loyal to you?” Half of it was entitlement, that loyalty is owed just by simply being involved and not a symbol of the effort to give loyalty. Another half was the fact that no one ever talks about the healthy dynamics of relationships, communication and what that entails. Blame it on ignorance, but many do not know. So, here we are, with warped expectations and harrowing realities. I had to realize that entitlement shows itself in different ways, and I myself was being entitled to the outcomes of situations going my way. In addition, I was constantly in the mindset of manipulating situations as to force an individual to change. I was putting constant pressure on people to be all that I wanted them to be, not realizing that who they were was who they were comfortable with. And who am I to interfere with that?

In the end, I had to realize that potential was a smokescreen used in a failed attempt to not do the real labor of understanding/accepting a person. I had to understand grace, humanity, and reality in order to make things work. I couldn’t hide behind good intentions when the impact was harmful to other just as much as they were to myself. Potential is a dangerous game when it’s not reciprocal. It is up to everyone involved to ensure that the crossroads between expectations and reality are met. And, who knows? Maybe things will actually work out for once <3