who only by moving can balance

BUFFY: I love you.

SPIKE: No, you don't. But thanks for saying it.

So, uh, I know - intellectually - that I am surrounded by people who love and respect and value me?

But I don't believe it. I've spent too much of my life showing up in social circles, attempting to fix a few things, and then trying to vanish again before I do more harm than good; too much of my life having people deliberately and pointedly step in front of me to block me from conversation, with no-one intervening; too much of it hyperconscious of how much I'm speaking, constantly worrying about whether it's too much, whether I'm doing it wrong, whether I'm too much.

Which is not to say that I won't ever believe it: "I am loved, and worthy of love" and "impostor syndrome can fuck right off" are things I am working on. But - for now? It is nice to hear, but I don't believe people mean it.

Which is also some of what's fucking me up about the end of season 7: it's that Spike can't believe Buffy loves him, and it's supposed, I think, to be commentary on Buffy's One True Love (for the record, I think Spike is the least fucked-up relationship we're shown Buffy having, and I'm going to go on about this at length in a bit) and how it isn't him, but I think it's actually a lot more about how you are better than the worst thing you have ever done, and it's douchey to tell people how they feel, and how terrifying it is to trust people to mean it when they say they love you. It is losing control, and it is taking a leap, and it is trusting that the big bruise/from the longer fall looked perfectly white/in a few years./That astounded me most of all.

Simon Armitage is the other person I automatically turn to on the topic of trust and falling:

Homecoming

Think, two things on their own and both at once
The first, that exercise in trust, where those in front
stand with their arms spread wide and free-fall
backwards, blind, and those behind take all the weight.

The second, one canary-yellow cotton jacket
on a cloakroom floor, uncoupled from its hook
becoming scuffed and blackened underfoot. Back home
the very model of a model of a mother, yours, puts
two and two together, makes a proper fist of it
and points the finger. Temper, temper. Questions
in the house. You seeing red. Blue murder. Bed.

Then midnight, when you slip the latch and sneak
no further than the call-box at the corner of the street;
I'm waiting by the phone, although it doesn't ring
because it's sixteen years or so before we'll meet.
Retrace that walk towards the garden gate; in silhouette
a father figure waits there, wants to set things straight.

These ribs are pleats or seams. These arms are sleeves.
These fingertips are buttons, or these hands can fold
into a clasp, or else these fingers make a zip
or buckle, you say which. Step backwards into it
and try the same canary-yellow cotton jacket, there,
like this, for size again. It still fits.