The thing that makes you vulnerable is the same thing that makes you so goddamn special.
I heard a whisper. I’ve had them all my life. It’s a knowing, it’s a push, it’s an intuitive spark for me to write something down before I lose it. Lose it to my consciousness or lose it to the wind, it would be gone as sure as the time would change. Sometimes these whispers would come from within my own head and sometimes, like in this case, they’d come to me externally.
I spent a lot of time in 2024 watching Catfish, the TV show, and this happened to be a night similar to other nights that it was on my TV. I’d often use it as background noise while working, I’d scroll or online shop after dinner while the television illuminated our dim living space, or I’d fully turn off my brain and be able to focus my attention on the show – one that has been a staple in my adult life. The re-runs are usual, they’re comforting, often predictable in the way the person on the other end of the line would be who they were or not; satisfaction I needed to fulfill the hopeless romantic side of me or validation that not everyone is who they says they are – be careful who you trust. By this point in my life I felt I could have likely seen the majority of the episodes of Catfish. The show aired on MTV for the first time the November before I graduated high school and continued to be long-running on MTV through its transitions from what it once was to what it has become. I happened upon an episode I had not seen, one that kept my attention. One that, contrary to how I normally behave, caught me by surprise. Nev said to the catfished man on the other end of the computer screen “the thing that makes you vulnerable is the same thing that makes you so goddamn special.”
Vulnerability has always been a word I’ve been scared of. I have feared “doing it wrong” or not “being good” at being vulnerable. I have always been incredibly in tune with my emotions, but the reactions I have always received when attempting to share those emotions candidly have always left me turned away, tail between my legs, typically at my own discretion. I remain uncertain if the reactions I have received are projections of how I’m feeling, or if I truly found myself standing the test of my life, or if I just feel “too much” and my assumption that I, myself, am “too much” has come to fruition. I continued to feel pressured to be unresponsive to things, or at least responsive in an adult-ish, respectful kind of way, not in a way that was too much for others to handle. When my grandfather passed this year, I wrote “I’m finding it increasingly difficult to understand that I have nothing to control in this moment. I cannot fathom sitting with my vulnerability. I cannot run from it and do something because there’s nothing to do. The cool customer is understanding, the cool customer is direct and definitive. The cool customer knows what to do and how to do it. I felt overwhelmingly like an open wound. I felt incredibly vulnerable, scared, unsure, overwhelmed, and still that crazy, cool customer sprang into action thinking about the logistics.”
To this moment I have a hard time understanding that I have the power in me to be logistical and emotional, not completely shut off from my own feelings. I do not understand how these two things can be true at once (more on that later). I do have hope that they can be. My reactions to other people’s reactions made me feel I needed to shut down, I needed to shut off, I needed to keep my feelings to myself. What I didn’t realize in these moments was that reaction, often to freeze, came from the version of me who felt like she was standing her ground but eventually felt it was “the wrong way” to do so dependent on the recipient’s reaction. I never wanted to upset anyone, even if it meant choosing to not have a conversation important to me. It was a pattern I recognized that said “avoid the confrontation, you’ll be better protected that way.” The one who really needed a positive reaction and support was the one deemed overly emotional, not logical, the one who isn’t acting like an emotional adult but rather an emotional child. What I didn’t take into consideration was that the adult reaction was the budgeted reaction of the inner child. Note: the return on investment for suppressed childhood emotions is only an increase in revenue with the right bargain.
Working on character is a lot like trying to ground yourself. Imagine your day is on autopilot, until someone says “how does the back of your neck feel?” and then you have no choice but to focus on the back of your neck. During the pandemic I read The Power of Now and the way it was suggested to force yourself into the present moment was to ask yourself “what is my next thought going to be?” The pro and con, the two things that could be true at once, was that it simultaneously bothered me and was proactive to me when I’d catch myself in a cycle of black-and-white thinking. I have always experienced a sort of existential crisis when thinking about coexistence, and this situation is no different. Tomorrow’s 8 billion stories await our pure ignorance to them. Sure, it’s easy to express a lack of consideration when the “two things” don’t directly impact your day, but how does one handle the perplexing state of being at the center of the two things? If I Google “can I be happy and sad at the same time” will it give me Kacey Musgraves lyrics, an answer, or the link to watch Perks of Being a Wallflower? On paper, it makes sense to be able to say I’m having both a difficult but constructive day, but in practice the two feel like opposite ends of magnets in the way they refute the other's existence in my brain.
I could tell you about all of the things I felt or thought and their oppositions: the things I found myself wishing I was feeling or thinking instead. I could tell you the same spiel that I have in the past. “It was a year of learning, next year will be better” but I’m trending increasingly towards working on not setting expectations for myself. I know they’re impossible to reach. That’s a pattern that stands the test of time. I want to trust myself. I want to write things like this and not edit them bland for fear I’ll make someone upset over MY thoughts. I want to give myself space to grow toward belief that I deserve the space. I want to trust those two things, whatever they may be, can be true and BELIEVABLE at the same time. True is the logical, believable is the emotional. And IF I learn to trust in the coexistence that, as of the present only intrigues me but does not exist within my atmosphere, my hope is that the trust will be in myself, most of all.
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