So it begins..

Vulnerability isn’t something that I’ve ever wanted to embrace; likely, because to be vulnerable you need to face emotions that are at the surface and their root – raw. Whether they are emotions that make you smile until your cheeks are sore, or whether they are so traumatic you want to scream with a force from deep inside your entire body, they are raw. But, to face those emotions, one also needs the coping mechanisms that allow you to not feel less whole than you began with. Funny, I always thought because I could be cool under pressure, strong when others cried, that I was an expert in mechanisms involved with coping. BUT, if you repress the actual feeling and physical reaction that comes with that feeling, you’re never actually feeling! No feeling = no coping. Now isn’t that an ironic way of learning the lesson the hard way? My first traumas came in the mere beginning of my childhood; of course facing that vulnerability is scary – being torn open to bear forth what I’ve stored away like a squirrel with a nut, I haven’t the slightest clue what may pour forth after all those years. Better yet, when it all comes forth, when will stop? My life has been nothing short of trials and tribulations, how unfair to be given a plight where coping would be the most essential tool in my toolbox. I fell on the ability to repress and virtually ignore that one day raw emotion would be just as necessary as breathing. One day, your cup fills over and as it all spills over the sides the emotions that terrified you through forced vulnerability will spill forth in a bumbling messy word vomit. Only here’s the thing – when you’ve anchored the boat for so many, not one person is equipped for when you begin to sink the whole damn boat, or maybe it’s simply because your base fear of sharing one shred of emotion at any passing moment never gave your crew members the life vests needed to handle your equipment failures. Something I was never prepared to learn through the downfall that forced my trip to therapy and coping school, was that while I was so concerned with avoiding the pain wreaking havoc inside my heart and mind, was that I was also shutting myself off to enjoying the incredibly warm and proud moments I had worked to experience. My sense of accomplishment would be hollow and lifeless without my vulnerability and willingness to feel. Being someone who as a result of loss worked so diligently toward a life filled with accomplishments that my father would be proud of, there was a multitude of moments to life that I never truly lived in and felt in a way other people would; a way I was deserving of but starving myself from. The weight of regret I carried for the lack of living I had done could make my stomach turn or wake me from a dead sleep. It was certainly no a stop on my timelines to learning safety in being vulnerable that I had predicted. But, there I was face to face with the immense realization that once those moments fall into our past, you cannot erase the regret by trying to recreate the celebration or the atmosphere to have no longer missed out. That was a lesson so hard it continues to give me headache right along with heartache. How could I expect my Dad or others to feel pride in my goal crushing if I never truly felt pride in myself? While I began by thinking I merely had a fear of vulnerability the roots of this fear ran deeper, compacted by a whole lot of soil. A mental breakdown I thought would pass in days or months now turned into a path of learning, exploration, and self-discovery that I had put away in a filing cabinet for most of my life. Traumas are difficult enough to understand and work through but when you’ve also put off feeling the entire life you’ve been living, felt like this anchor truly was drowning with the boat. How do you even begin when the mountain seems entirely impassable?