During the last years and months I kept thinking a lot of my ongoing struggle to bond to people, to feel truly connected. This happens so rarely that I started to doubt that this is even possible for me. A couple times I thought that I found a person where I had the feeling that a connection could be possible, but then I lost them. I started thinking that I scare people off, that I show too much of my true self, revealing too much of myself, so that they have no chance than to run away from me.
This started with my parents when I was a little kid, though I wished I could have run away from them I guess. As long as I can think back I was always afraid to show my true self. I was always afraid to be vulnerable and to allow people to hurt me. Somewhere on the path I decided, that I don’t want to be vulnerable. I hate to be weak and I decided that I have to be the strong one. As a consequence I started to look down on weak people. I prefer to be strong, the one that can’t be hurt. I want to armor up. I want to stay protected. As a kid and then as a teenager a practiced not to appear vulnerable and later I became perfectly unapproachable, inaccessible by any other person:
They call me “The iceberg”.
Me
… and somehow I was even proud of it.
But I feel lonely. I am all by myself, even when I am in company.
In this mood of searching for SOCIAL in my life I saw today this show on Netflix, which just hit me on the spot:
“How can you let yourself be loved if you can’t be seen? Vulnerability is the path back to each other, but we’re so afraid to get on it. We want it so bad, but we are so afraid to be seen and we are so afraid to see people. But again, it is the only way back to each other.”
Brené Brown
I know this is true, but always when I decide to open up, to be vulnerable, I get scared. It gets too much too fast. I have all this thoughts regarding the chosen person, like: “Do I know if when I love you that you will always love me back? Will you never leave? What if you get sick? What if you will die? If I really love you then you will die …”
“Love is to be vulnerable. Love is to know this can hurt so bad but I am willing be vulnerable and to love you.”
Brené Brown
I was not willing to take that risk. I was rather willing to not know love than to know hurt or grief, and that is a huge price to pay. But always when I decided to go on and take that risk, I got shattered one way or the other, so it kept happening that I closed up once again. I thought, that I will be all alone again anyway. I don’t deserve to be loved, this is just not possible for me.
Belonging
We all crave for belonging. Brené Brown quotes, that “fitting in” is the opposite to belonging.
“Belonging is belonging to yourself first. Speaking your truth, telling your story and never betraying yourself for other people. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are. It requires you to be who you are, and that is vulnerable.”
Brené Brown
Joy
And then she said something really scary:
“Joy is the most vulnerable of all human emotions. We are terrified to feel joy. We are so afraid that if we let ourselves feel joy, something will come along and rip it away from us, and we will get sucker punched by pain and trauma and loss. So that, in the midst of great things, we literally dress rehearse tragedy. Foreboding joy.”
Brené Brown
This is so true for myself that it scared me off. Anyway, it is true. One day I wrote down, that I am searching for the true ecstasy in life, the feeling of everything vibrates around and inside of you, the feeling that you are fully alive. The step ahead is joy – so how should I get towards ecstasy when I am fighting joy? This way I will never get there. I have to jump into that scary river of joy all around.
Gratitude
After that comes gratitude. And again there is fear. Do you know the feeling to be grateful and then you get afraid to be grateful, because someone could listen and take it away from you? It is even scary to be grateful, because when you are grateful for what you have, the magnitude of what you could loose gets magnificent. This perception to allow yourself to be grateful despite of understanding the greatness of the fear behind is really scary, isn’t it?
Why vulnerability?
Vulnerability is uncertainty, risk and emotional expose. But why do we need vulnerability?
“It is so much easier to cause pain than feel pain. And people are taking their pain and they’re working it out on other people. And when you don’t acknowledge your own vulnerability, you work your shit out on other people. Stop working your shit out on other people. Don’t offload your hard stuff on other people. Stop it!”
Brené Brown
Sadly this is also true. Watching myself I caught me in situations when I am mean to people, that I am only hiding my own weakness when I treat people not the way I should. It’s often just a way to distract from myself. When I am calm and I can accept me being tired, weak and not perfect, than there is no reason to be angry at somebody else who is mirroring me these qualities.
You measure vulnerability by the amount of courage to show up and be seen when you can’t control the outcome. I wanted to go alone. But in the absence of connection, love, and belonging there is always suffering. Vulnerability is hard, and it’s scary, and it feels dangerous, but it’s not as hard, scary, or dangerous as getting to the end of our lives and having to ask ourselves, “What if I would have shown up? What if I would have said I love you? What if I would have come off the blocks?”
Brené Brown
This touched me.
I kept thinking many times during the last years if I should have decided in various situations to be myself and if I should have jumped from the rock of loneliness into the wide and vast openness of life itself.
Ok Brené, I got it.
What do I have to lose anyway what is worst that what I cannot achieve by this braveness.
I take you by the word, willing to be vulnerable. Here I am.
And here you can watch
Brené Brown: the Call to Courage
on Netflix:
https://www.netflix.com/title/81010166
“Show up, be seen, answer the call to courage and come off the blocks, cause you’re worth it.
Brené Brown
You’re worth being brave.”