Becoming Vulnerable

I am in the midst of a breakdown. (Or "spiritual awakening," as said in the TED Talk below.) I already made mention of this breakdown on Monday, but I have not done it justice because I just don't know how to end a post without some sort of "Woo, everything's better now!" sort of ending. I like to tell the full story.

Truth is, I am in the middle of this story. It started Saturday when, after the prayer day retreat, an onslaught of repressed memories surfaced for the first time, and not just as some vague, distant, "Oh, wasn't that so sad," detached sort of way. No, I was reliving the memories for the first time, and they were the miserable kind. I completely fell apart Saturday night, pulled myself together, and then fell apart again Sunday morning. I keep pulling myself together to get through certain things, but I keep falling apart again. It is a horrible cycle.

I'm self-medicating with orange juice, Harry Potter, music, adequate sleep, food, games, excessive amounts of writing, and TED Talks. Do you know about TED Talks? If you don't, you're about to find out. Yesterday, I'm not really sure how, but I stumbled across a TED Talk, and I stumbled across just one: Brené Brown's Talk on "The Power of Vulnerability." Rather than tell you everything she said, I urge you to watch it for yourself:



I'm like Dr. Brown: "knock discomfort upside the head and move it over." I don't like being vulnerable, don't like discomfort, don't like messiness. I like everything to be neat and orderly and make sense. I want to solve for x in all situations. I numb. Constantly. I turned to numbing pretty much immediately after the breakdown started.

But take note, world. I am choosing authenticity. I am making myself vulnerable, and I am going to live wholehearted. Because the only way to connect is to become authentic and to become authentic requires becoming vulnerable. It is one thing to get up on stage and hide behind the mask of whatever act you are playing, but to truly connect, you must become vulnerable. I know this, and I have known this for a long time, but never has it been so clear that I have been inauthentic and too afraid to be vulnerable.

I want to connect.