Emotional vulnerability

When I first started this blog, I remember talking to supportive folks in my life about how desperately I was yearning to be heard. I had spent so much time remaining silent on the topic of my abuse, and denying it as a reality, that the only times I did begin to explore my emotions around it was in the safe and contained space of my journal. Writing in my journal was a way of exploring some of the realities I found too painful to speak of out loud or share with others. Eventually, writing in my journal became a mandatory practice for me as it was a place in which I was safe, a space in which my abuser could not get to me. After some time of writing about my experiences with him, and in turn reading through months of writing about the abuse, I was able to move out of my journal and start having conversations with people in my life about it. My journal started to feel confining and frustrating to write in - there all of the abuse was, and my emotions and responses to it, laid out on a page which was tucked neatly into a book with a cover that closed. Tucked neatly into my bedside table, where no one could read it or see my pain. Writing in my journal started to feel like it was an act of hiding - no one could hear or see my pain because I chose to close the page on it, put it away, and keep it inaccessible to others. Starting a blog was my antidote to that sensation. I had desire to begin screaming my experiences as loud as I possibly could, because while being so neatly contained they were not being adequately worked out of my system. They seemed to simply build up and spill over the pages and simmer in myself, with no place to go.

This blog has been a safe space for me to feel heard, and to feel that I am doing something towards changing my life and progressing down my path of healing. Not long ago it started to feel less safe for me. The act of blogging about my experiences online went from feeling like an act of empowerment to feeling like too risky or vulnerable an act. I now see it as both - an empowering act that still holds risks and an element of vulnerability to it. Vulnerability is something I have been struggling with a great deal as of late. Sharing vulnerability, or feeling vulnerable in any context, is a triggering experience and I respond with profound fear of being taken advantage of. Even feeling vulnerable when I am alone is scary for me. As I explore this, I realize my body does not yet know that it is safe to feel vulnerable again. Vulnerability with my abuser was a dangerous and painful act that often resulted in negative consequences for me.

I want to work on experiencing healthy doses of vulnerability - experiencing it as just another emotion in the vast repertoire of emotions available to me, and not as an inherently negative or dangerous thing. I had to take a break from blogging to revisit what it was to feel safe and contained in my journal writing; I'm returning to my blog to revisit what it is to take risks and share vulnerability as an act of empowerment. I'm wanting to work on balancing these things, and appreciating them for what they are.

I'm going to end this entry with a quote from an author that I loved as a child:

"When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable." -Madeleine L'Engle