Uninhibited Emotional Vulnerability

I wrote this on this day 4 years ago:

“I sometimes wonder if having moments of uninhibited emotional vulnerability (or just complete raw honesty) with/at/towards people is a mistake, if people don’t know what to do with that kind of openness or just don’t actually want that much honesty. If those are things best left in the closet. But there is already a lot I keep to myself, so why hold onto that too…

Really I guess it doesn’t matter. I do share moments of vulnerability as an example, a way of saying ‘no judgement here,’ because I wish more people would just get completely emotionally exposed with me. Strip off the superficial bull shit. Show me who you are beneath that carefully crafted facade. I like it when people show me their crazy, ridiculous, irrational, painful emotions. The angry ones and the happy ones. Even, and especially the ones they think will bother/upset me, the ones they think will be too much for anyone else to handle. Unsettle my world a little. Let me get high from the realness of your humanity.”

Today, I kind of wonder where that woman went. I mean, I still want other people to let me get high off the realness of their humanity but at the same time I am too scared to open up and really be raw and vulnerable with people in the same way. I used to be reckless with my vulnerability. I was in the world with an unguarded heart. That’s probably why I went the complete opposite direction. Now my heart is too guarded. My boundaries are too rigid. I wish it were easier, getting back to that vulnerability.

I was reading this book the other day, The Last Lecture, and in it the author says, “The brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. They’re there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. […] Sometimes the most impenetrable brick walls are made of flesh.” I am an impenetrable brick wall. Or, rather, these are the walls around my heart. I think this is why I keep seeking love and acceptance externally because not even I can feel the love emanating from my heart anymore. But the problem with walls is, they don’t just keep things in, they also keep things out because people don’t have the tools to dismantle the walls we have built around ourselves. Even if someone showed me their true, beautiful, honest raw self… I’m not sure I’d be able to feel the weight of that vulnerability. I think that’s why I love blogging so much. Even though I cannot sit with you in raw, vulnerable emotion; I can still give you something of myself that is raw and uninhibited. And, I think, that is what all of you are giving as well.

We are a community of enigmatically guarded and yet still exposed hearts.