230827 - Vulnerability

I find myself habitually grasping at the future. Now I get to see why. It’s a cover-up to keep me from having to endure its pain. I don’t know what the future holds. And every moment is an invitation to leap into it. But that requires vulnerability. How could love be anything else? It’s a self-sacrifice. It’s opening up, embracing the possibility to be hurt. Allowing yourself to feel, deeply. And the truth is that I’m terrified. But I write the best with tears in my eyes, occasionally stopping to blow my nose and hug myself for a while. It has showed me strength, the ability to forget myself and go with the whims of that Other. Giving it a voice is the only thing worthwhile, what am I doing here except learning to be of help? But the terror of its honesty, its sheer magnitude… I am reminded of that psychologist for whom I have the utmost respect; R.D Laing:

“We have to begin by admitting and even accepting our violence, rather than blindly destroying ourselves with it, and therewith we have to realize that we are as deeply afraid to live and to love as we are to die.”

Most of the violence we do is to ourselves, to our own heart, by that grossest of negligence and downright rejection of our emotions. So deeply afraid are we, that we do not allow ourselves the vulnerability to love, to be loved. The possibility to be hurt. Slowly, through my writing, through my living, I am learning how to be afraid. How to cry. How to Love.