On Vulnerability
Vulnerable. That’s the word right now. I feel vulnerable. And I haven’t truly felt vulnerable in a good, long time.
Not that I really think in terms of battle or defense or protection, but vulnerability is a feeling that has impacts. That truly is a state of being.
Amie McNee, the mind behind Inspired to Write, talks super, super often on her platforms about “vulnerability hangovers” after sharing a lot of her work and creativity — and while I always acknowledged these words, I never got what they meant.
Sharing what you care about is vulnerability. Exposing yourself to criticism and comment is vulnerability. Opening up about yourself, your weaknesses and your wants is vulnerable. And I’ve been doing an awful lot of all three in so many areas of my life lately. I love that- I love the ears that listen, the communities I have, the people around me digitally, physically, and emotionally- but I’m coming to a place where I have to acknowledge how authenticity also means vulnerability. Which, left unnamed can manifest itself as anxiety- as if you’re worried about the pain that hasn’t come yet or an attack that hasn't been waged yet. Not that I’m paranoid or hypersensitive, but there’s a different feeling about your most prized possessions when they’re locked up in a vault versus on display on the globally accessible Internet.
In my quest to be as low maintenance as possible (which is unhealthy, please do not have this quest), I often wanted to let go of as much as possible too. As if I’d run through my head, “Well what if you lost this? How would you feel?” And, on most things, I trained myself into a certain level of not caring - or being able to take the pain but not show it hurts. I really don’t know why, but it’s what my brain did. It’d do it when my emotionally-broken friends and romantic interests would throw out dramatic scenarios that I couldn’t control or didn’t know how to respond to, or when I thought of losing something or breaking something or “what if this happens?” It’s a logic that spans my clothes if they got holes in them or get stained to people if they hurt me too much, too often, or don’t care about me anymore.
It’s a logic that, honestly, makes no sense from a person who cares passionately, deeply, and vehemently- but, also, makes a lot of sense. I’ve violently cared for people only for them to repeatedly take advantage of me, or leave suddenly, or have never really cared about me at all. I’ve been passionate about something only to have been entirely wrong, embarrassed, and pathetic. So, my brain built in a defense mechanism to hold back my waves, to hold back the intensity of how I feel. To dam up and redirect the waterfall into a plethora of calm and maintained rivers. Not all of its elements are bad per se, but they do exist. And they are still in me - some with helpful, maturing impacts and others that held me back- that I refuse to let hold me back again.
And this strange practice of trying to not attach too much or get too passionate about too many things has led to some unusual behavior patterns. It’s why I don’t watch many TV shows or get invested in too many fiction books or only have one fictional world myself. It’s why I cling to one or two entertainment sources and no more. Because I don’t want to attach. I don’t want to be too much. I don’t want to take too much in. Which, again, good and bad. Not obsessively watching every show ever is probably okay for me- for a medley of reasons, but the amount of mental blocks I have to just watching a movie alone is genuinely something I’ve had to conquer. The belief that yes, you can just enjoy this and attach for fun has been a long-fought one.
And so has the belief that sharing what I care about is worth being wrong for. Worth potentially being embarrassed or messing up or being seen trying.
The same goes for believing that I can truly want, attach, and desire something or someone and that’s okay. That’s not a dangerous place to be. That one especially is a belief soaked in tears, hard decisions, and a lot of learning and unlearning.
And now, as I build a life I truly love, I for once feel incredibly vulnerable. I share my words twice a week with an audience who I trust but can’t see. Unlike a beloved sweater, where I’d be sad but also okay if it got stained or ripped, if my words were stolen or used against me- I wouldn’t be okay with it. It’d hurt very deeply. I’m in relationships with people I care deeply about, that I don’t want to lose. If I lost them, I wouldn’t walk away unscathed at all. I’m in a relationship with someone I am fully attached to, and just that fact alone terrifies me sometimes. I’m opening up and trying to build my future career and creative projects practically on-camera, which I love but I know leaves the door open for sudden opinions, scenarios I haven’t thought of, or my mistakes being caught on said camera. And I would not trade any of these things.
I refuse to hide, settle for less, cut all connections, and decide that, “Well, everything dies anyway so why not kill it now?” Because that is actually the dumbest and worst thing I’ve ever heard. But sometimes my brain thinks it- out of a pure, primal instinct to protect me from grief, loss, or pain- things that it knows are the natural consequences of care, love, and showing up in your own life.
I don’t regret this feeling. Or what got me here. But I’m recording it- and yet again- sharing it with you, whoever you are behind the screen. Because there are these things - these hard, silent, given things in life that are the natural consequences of the bigger things we know we want. Building a life means sharing and sharing means vulnerability. Becoming a writer means writing a blog and writing a blog means showing you exactly where my heart is.
If I want to meet you, dear reader, where you are- then I have to show you where I am. I can’t hide, I can’t mystify, I can’t distance. I can have some things, of course, but I don’t want to be some generic generalized woman writing in a tower in an undisclosed location going through unspoken things. I don’t share everything, but I’m sharing quite a bit. And I want to. And that means learning how to listen to and accept my own vulnerability, whatever that ends up looking like. And, you’ll probably hear about that too.
