It is a visceral feeling to be vulnerable, open, to lay your heart out. As children, we are less afraid, less knowing and wary of pain and heartbreak, less worried about powerlessness, because we rely on others for everything. Trusting as a child is an absolute necessity. And so our guardedness is learned, fostered over the years through the inevitable tumult of adolescent friendships, in love discovered, explored and lost, in familial and societal expectations, in the precarious process of finding your footing in this fecund but oft unforgiving world.
The existence of this grown protective shell is not without benefit, some of what life throws at us requires a thickened, weathered skin to continue our wanders without serious injury. This, we learn. And yet, we must unlearn it too. We must discern when protection or vulnerability may serve us, and courageously move toward the thing that feels right, even if our judgement or execution falters occasionally. We get better eventually, incrementally.
Being vulnerable means having the audacity to show you are a complex, nebulous creature, with traits that span the beautiful, exciting to awful and absurd, in perpetual ebb and flow. And what glorious human capacity that is – for love and wonder, for silliness, for absolute agony – it is life, true connection. When you open yourself up in that way, you bare and stand to lose it all. But, almost always, you don’t, you won’t. Allowing ourselves to be cracked open, our innards and viscera exposed, may be terrifying, but the spoils are so, so worth it.