On Vulnerability

Can I tell you how it feels to be vulnerable?

Utterly and completely.

To be split down the middle,

With all my love and fears,

Slipping simultaneously, uncontrollably out of my insides.

You

Do you see all of me,

Feel what I’m feeling, see where I’m coming from?

Do you notice the quickening pace,

Of my heartbeats cadence,

Underneath the rise and fall of my chest,

As my breaths become shorter, more shallow.

Will it ever feel safe,

Will I ever experience freedom in this state?

Or will this glass house crack and crumble under your persuasion?

Will we succumb to joy or pain,

Or are both inevitable outcomes?

To be sure, we will have to continue,

Sojourning through this life together.

I’ll try to fight the urges to reinforce my fortress, if you’ll be gentle.

I’ll sit with my skin as flushed as the flowers on the table,

Again and again, for you, my Achilles heel. 

Quiet Steps

I recently stumbled upon a song I’ve loved for a long time, one that never really gets old. However, for whatever reason, it felt particularly poignant this time and every time after as I listened to it on repeat. More than once in my life I’ve awoken to find myself in a serious state of disarray, as if someone turned on a light and illuminated just how far I’ve wandered. I know I should be more surprised when the realizations hit. I know I should feel worse but in reality succumbing to guilt isn’t something that I do well.  But it’s different now. I’m in a new stage of life, one that details very little control and extreme vulnerability and it has certainly illuminated my current state of disarray.

I know how I got here, living life one calculated risk at a time mixed in with a compromise or two. The lines of the aforementioned song say it perfectly.

“I don't remember one jump or one leap;
Just quiet steps away from your lead.”

I’ve taken quiet albeit deliberate steps in the wrong direction because frankly it is just easier. It is easier to go with what feels “right” than to be diligent to deciphering the “right” direction. It is easier to shut down the more sensitive sides of myself than to feel disappointment and heartache. So here I stand cold calculated steps away from reality, far from where I want to be and even farther from where I should be.

Call this an admission of guilt of sorts, maybe even a step back in the other direction. The only question I’m left asking myself is, “Is it worth it?” Is the journey back towards reality worth the time of naivety and false assurance? Or would it have been easier to stay put?