"Your presence dominates the judgments made on you"
-- The narrator is saying to an unnamed other, "your own sense of self is so confident and brash that you dominate/control/handle the judgments/advice/evaluations made on you by others." In other words, the narrator -- now empowered, looking back on a past time with gained courage -- realizes that this unnamed other cannot be impressed upon or influenced by anybody else because they have an inflated, GLOWING sense of self. So, they don't need a thing like "courage," because they have nothing to fear -- or so they think.
Notice the things this unnamed other says to the narrator by way of advice:
"you'll you you'd never give up seeing eye to eye" (condescending)
"you'll say, don't fear your dreams, it's easier than it seems" (more condescending comments)
This person presumes to be in control of everything and loves to dish out advice on others and yet deflects or dominates judgments made on them by others -- especially people who are broken by some event/issue, like the narrator. And so, "you say you'll understand but you'll never understand" because you are not willing to let yourself be vulnerable and empathetic with others who have been deeply scarred by something.
-- You are living a lie (in that you presume to be strong and NEVER weak, because you think I am ALWAYS weak and never strong). You make promises to me about this or that, but you are in no position to make such promises because you set yourself up on a pedestal of self-importance, belittling me with your words. Your own self-glow blinds you to the fact that you are judgmental and condescending.
-- I wake up at night with nightmares of YOUR dreams for me -- "I'll never live the life that wakes me in the night."
... But even though I am broken and fractured, I have courage enough to face up to that and try and mend those problems; you just pretend they don't exist.
"Your presence dominates the judgments made on you"
-- The narrator is saying to an unnamed other, "your own sense of self is so confident and brash that you dominate/control/handle the judgments/advice/evaluations made on you by others." In other words, the narrator -- now empowered, looking back on a past time with gained courage -- realizes that this unnamed other cannot be impressed upon or influenced by anybody else because they have an inflated, GLOWING sense of self. So, they don't need a thing like "courage," because they have nothing to fear -- or so they think.
Notice the things this unnamed other says to the narrator by way of advice:
"you'll you you'd never give up seeing eye to eye" (condescending) "you'll say, don't fear your dreams, it's easier than it seems" (more condescending comments)
This person presumes to be in control of everything and loves to dish out advice on others and yet deflects or dominates judgments made on them by others -- especially people who are broken by some event/issue, like the narrator. And so, "you say you'll understand but you'll never understand" because you are not willing to let yourself be vulnerable and empathetic with others who have been deeply scarred by something.
-- You are living a lie (in that you presume to be strong and NEVER weak, because you think I am ALWAYS weak and never strong). You make promises to me about this or that, but you are in no position to make such promises because you set yourself up on a pedestal of self-importance, belittling me with your words. Your own self-glow blinds you to the fact that you are judgmental and condescending.
-- I wake up at night with nightmares of YOUR dreams for me -- "I'll never live the life that wakes me in the night."
... But even though I am broken and fractured, I have courage enough to face up to that and try and mend those problems; you just pretend they don't exist.