“...if we can ‘look the negative in the face and live with it

“...if we can ‘look the negative in the face and live with it,‘ then we can achieve a truly magical power“ and “convert the negative into being…“
(Marshall Berman using Hegel in New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg)
What this says to me is that it refers exactly to what happens when one searches for ways to overcome depression, mania, intense feelings that drive one into a silent, internal frenzy. After years of flirting around with the concept of somehow “becoming” a productive citizen that fits a profile, I give up and become myself by looking directly at my obsessions and hang-ups and now desiring to lay them out completely.
I have scenarios ready to enact, artwork ready to be presented spontaneously, and questions I am dying to ask people around me. But, this is no change in me. I have always had these sensations. I have just now built up enough examples of things going my way when I am honest and direct with people around me…especially when I share with people—my opinions, my life experiences, my worries…
INSIDE What this means for me, what can I “look in the face and live with”? I can look at my past really clearly, as clearly as any person can self-reflect with time. I can see how fragile I was, so shy, so self-protective, and non-communicative with people. I did not know how to love people, and I think sometimes I still do not. Only now can I sit back and let things happen between me and those I love, instead of orchestrating or bulldozing over what they might say. I do not want to cower behind the idea of being mysterious (read: unknown) to others.
So, the entrenched second language has done me in, taught me a lesson. Now I am desperate to be understood in German. Not just to be understood, I also long for my personality to come through. I face the negativity of being an outsider in a country I expected to fit in relatively easily. I have had to see directly what I did not communicate well, and watch as others do it better. But, by facing this challenge and learning, not being discouraged, I realize after all that no one has been saying what I have wanted to say. No one can say what I want to say.
OUTSIDE Around me, what can I look directly in the face and live with? “Live with” is, for me, to accept that certain things exist and occur, but I do not accept them in and of themselves. I do not want to be separated from what is around me. I cannot live in a walled community and I cannot have only friends who fit my background and up-bringing. This is a perfectly liberal thing to say, but I do not want to exercise the right of choosing and preventing anyone from anything (in practice this is perhaps not easily done, but I hold onto the idea, the spirit).
But, there is a radical point, I believe, to which this idea should be taken. It should be taken with a gender studies-like flexibility. Flexible judgments without conclusions that limit interaction and catharsis.
This quote is one that I can remember thinking already while walking down a street anywhere. From the days of feeling extreme agoraphobia, until now when occasionally I will be hit with the notion that anything can happen to me now, in “public”. On the street, in the dark, on a train. Anyone sees me; I also see anyone who I chose to stare at. (I must insist on seeing more often.) Anyone can hit me, can touch me, can yell at me. Alternatively, anyone can hand me a flyer, kiss me, smile at me.
Every action has its ulterior motive…and this is one negative that one must accept.
I accept that anything can happen. I accept that terrible things go on in the dark. What I mean by “accept” is that I can acknowledge their existence without simultaneously trying to banish them from my thoughts.
Strength, this “power” IS to know what is going on; to know as much as possible about what is “going on”.