I've had an education in need. All my life I've felt the love I have for people, I know how deeply I care for them, I understand what they mean to me, I know how much they are on my mind. What I didn't realize is how little I show it or say it outside my family - in an obvious way. So many friends lament to me about people in their life who are distant, someone far away emotionally and I never imagined myself in that group...but how wrong I was. I'm an action lover. I show my love through actions. I show my love through doing for those I love. But I don't say it, I don't express it, I can't be vulnerable like that. Why does being vulnerable scare us so much when it's often the only way to get what we want?
Vulnerability comes from the willingness to accept that something is out of your control. To trust someone enough to render yourself into someone's hands. To give your emotional security, your feelings, to someone and trust them to keep them safe. It's a scary thought - giving over control like that. For driven people, driven women I think especially, surrendering control like that seems impossible - or stupid. I've always felt it was stupid. Why give that control over to someone? Why trust someone with that when I could keep it under control? Why risk? Is there really only reward when you risk?
I was talking with a very dear friend today and expressed this to her - my feeling that I don't express how much people mean to me. She smiled and I knew that I hadn't done justice to our friendship. I hadn't told her how much she impacts my life. How important she is. Why hadn't I been able to fall completely in front of her when she's always been there? Because I was under the illusion that I was able to do it. I thought I was letting people in...until I started actually trying with someone who called me on my illusion. Someone who had an inkling that my editing went much deeper than I thought it had. Someone that saw through my mask. And it's scary. It's scary how thick my walls are. I know I have walls - everyone does. But I always thought mine could be chipped away once I felt comfortable with someone. What I didn't know was I was only letting the tiniest of holes through the wall when I thought I had taken them down. I thought it was normal to hold back, not to show your darkest. How I can write thousands of words expressing the emotions I have inside, represent them in my characters, but I can't articulate three words out loud to someone I care about. I can't say "I Need You." Physically choke on the words as I try to let them out. Feel my throat constrict as I try to say "I Can't Lose You." I always thought if I felt it, others knew...but I don't let them see it because my walls were up when I thought they were down. My bridge had been closed despite them waiting patiently...so patiently at the gates. By not saying it though, I'm not connecting like I could be. Because when I let someone in this past weekend, trusted someone with even the tiniest of me...I connected. I felt a trust I never knew I was even missing. I did it with two people I care very much for and who I know love me as well - and both kept me safe. Both let me in. Both were patient with me as I tried, even if it was only a little, to succeed at this new endeavor.
When I stopped actually letting people in I can't even pin-point. Now that I know I haven't been doing it, I'm trying to trace back to what changed in me. I think I used to, as a kid. Maybe we all did, before we learned not to trust. But maybe for me I trusted longer than just childhood - I don't know. What made me stop without realizing I'd stopped? I look back and I realize there was a time in my life where I connected more, but then it just slowly dissipates. I don't know what it was and I don't know why. It doesn't really matter. Maybe it eroded over time. Maybe the people who didn't hold my little fragment of trust I gave them, the tiniest piece that wasn't even a whole piece, maybe the people who betrayed that caused me to stop giving even that. Those people who made me think that what I have been giving, what I thought was a part of me, was just the safe parts - the parts I knew people could look past and still love me. It's the dark, the deep that scares even me that I've held back. It's the love I have for people that I'm scared will scare them that I've refrained from releasing. It's the depth to which they matter in my life that I'm afraid I'll be vulnerable if they know and want to leave. It's like showing my Achilles' heel. Those people who betrayed those pieces, left them to spoil or turned them into weapons against me are not my enemies - I don't hate them...they made me who I am. I'm thankful for that - because I'm a work-in-progress that I enjoy. They let me discover this at a time in my life when I needed to discover it. Maybe it was faith that let me discover it now. Who knows, but this was my path. But whatever made me stop...it changed the way I saw the world. It made me think the depth I had shown to the outside world was out in the middle of the ocean, when really it was nothing more than just beyond the shore. Now I have to learn to wade into the water and even though I'll dodge some sharks, maybe I'll end up at the uncharted, beautiful island no one has ever seen before. A place I can call home.
That's where the reward lies - in that moment when your friends are there. When they don't disappoint you like so many have before. When they catch you when you fall and they connect with you and hopefully love you like you love them. When they go from caring about you to loving you. It's that moment, that's the reward. But you have to risk it all - you have to show the dark in you, you have to show you're weak at times...you have to show to let them see there something to connect to. You have to show them you need them - that they're not just an accessory in your life. No one can connect to something that's not there. In return, you have to understand the gravity of the gift your friend, lover, family member, your other half gives you when they fall, when they trust you to be there to save them. When they give you a piece of their wall. You can't let that slip through, you cannot falter when that happens - you have to hold strong because if you don't, you won't connect with them and you can make their walls even stronger if you fail. Failure when you have to be the protector is not an option. Besides simply taking a friendship seriously, you won't get the other side of the reward if you fail. You won't get the CONNECTION - the back and forth. It's the responsibility of getting the reward and it's the path to receiving it. For me, that's the easiest part - the one being there. But learning to be the one who needs. That's where you find the scariest, but also the most rewarding part.
