I thought I had this whole vulnerability thing down pat. But my heart hurts right now. I keep learning a hard lesson about this, but the lesson is only meant to reiterate that it will be hard; it will be painful.
Vulnerability never seems to get easier. In fact, it feels to me like it's getting harder. I'm fighting getting jaded. I'm fighting myself, trying to hold back the anger that comes out when I'm hurt because that's how sensitive me once learned people will actually listen. If you hurt, more often than not, that's unimportant to he who caused it. Remorse is hard to come by anymore. Vulnerability is supposed to beget vulnerability. It really doesn't. And you can't know until you try, and with every try the will to try depletes.
There's a secondary lesson learned from the fight of vulnerability, and that's compassion. I was brought to learn compassion by falling on my face in vulnerability, time and time again. A bruised and scarred heart recognizes the same when it sees it, and there's a knowing between the two.
So it is I fight and I struggle to remain vulnerable, to be honest, and to be true to myself, in spite of the pain it's caused me my whole life. I repeatedly tell myself that's it's a strength, but it sure as hell feels a lot more like a weakness; like stepping up to a fight without armor. I tire of it. I begin to think to myself, maybe I'll just pass next time. Maybe I'll decide no one is deserving of or trustworthy for my truth, my story. Maybe I'll give up on blazing a trail with honesty, and wait for someone to light a path to me.
But even as I think it, I doubt it. I can't bring myself to believe that the heart can survive without being known. That's the very root of the rejection epidemic: there's risk and the risk is painful. So I have to bring myself back to believing the risk is worth the chance, the possibility that it is in fact a strength and one that someone needs. Likely that will land me used up and tossed aside, as it seems to have a track record of doing. But surely someone needs it; surely another heart needs its story to be held, its tears to be regarded.
So I must do my best to bind up my wound, even while it's still aching, then revisit the worthiness of the cause.
