Chapter 11: On Vulnerability

Being vulnerable is hard.  I’ve been thinking about vulnerability a lot lately—what it means to open myself to others in a space of honesty and integrity. I’ve been pondering how to be my true self, without any masks. Really, if I’m being honest, this is not a new journey for me. I have been striving for authenticity my entire life. I want to be someone that is true to herself and who shares that self with others in real and intimate ways. But lately it just feels hard.  Really hard.  And I’ve been feeling a bit bad about myself because as a card-carrying perfectionist, I feel like it should be so easy to be vulnerable. I should be good at it by now because I try so hard to be open and honest and true.  But no matter how long I’m on this journey, it’s never totally easy to be myself.  Why is that? Why is being my honest-to-goodness true self so stinking difficult?

As a lover of words, I decided to look up the definition of vulnerable.  The good news is I feel a lot better about thinking vulnerability is so difficult.  The bad news is that vulnerable is defined as “capable or susceptible to being wounded or hurt.”  Well that sounds terrible. No wonder I struggle (and I suspect others do as well) to be so open and honest about myself.  Because when we are honest, we might get wounded or hurt and that does not sound very appealing. Yet, if we are going to fully engage in life and be present to our work and our relationships then we have to enter a space of vulnerability.  Without vulnerability, we risk being fake or shallow or simply untrue to the core of who we are.  Brené Brown, one of my favorite gurus has researched and written extensively on vulnerability.  She says, “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”  I’m struck by this contradictory idea that it is only by digging into the darkness that we experience the light. It’s only by acknowledging our weaknesses, our failings, and our struggles that we can know the beautiful gift of who we are.  To be vulnerable is not a weakness but rather the only way to become truly strong and to be in true connection with others.

I think about and reflect upon about my perfectionist nature a lot. It’s a little thorn in my side and has been for as long as I can remember.  My desire to be perfect, to be the best at everything, is a fruitless attempt. I know that I can never actually be the best at everything and yet somehow this little voice inside me urges me to try harder, to be better, and to work more.  This little voice is not always a terrible thing, as it often challenges me to be the best version of myself and helps me strive to make myself and the world better.  The problem is not striving for excellence. The problem is when I start to believe that unless I reach excellence I am not okay. The problem is when I begin to think that unless I present the most perfect version of myself I am not loveable.  The problem is when I believe my self-worth is tied up in what others think of me or how I did on my last run or whether my parents are disappointed in me or whether my friends think I’m making good choices or whether my coworkers thinks I’m competent.  The problem is when I believe I am only loveable when I am successful or funny or smart.  You can see why vulnerability can be so hard. Because if I’m going to truly be open and honest about who I am, to myself and those I am in relationship with, then I’m going to have to share all of me—even the parts that aren’t so pretty.  It doesn’t take rocket science to see why people struggle with vulnerability.  That level of honesty and openness is scary, and it takes courage to acknowledge the darkness as much as the light.  Boldly announcing that I am not good at things. That I’m scared a lot. That I’m worried I’m not actually that smart. That I am a pretty slow runner. That I sometimes don’t feel like being outgoing. That I get really angry and really sad.  That I’m nervous about new things and am afraid of the unknown.  That I feel anxiety about silly things.  That I am emotional and loud and expressive. These pieces of me are not pieces I love to share with others. BUT they are a part of me. I can’t be Meghan unless I share these pieces along with all the things I love about myself.

As an incredibly outgoing, intuitive, extroverted, feeler, I am vulnerable about 98% of my life. I wish I had a poker face, but I really don’t even know what that means. I wear my heart on my sleeve, well, really on my face.  And there are moments when I feel like I’m my authentic self, and I’m literally terrified that whomever I’m with will walk away because they won’t like what they see. That’s the risk every single time we open our hearts and our souls to another—that we might get hurt. Yet, for as much of a struggle as it is, I don’t know how else to live.  Choosing not to be vulnerable may seem like the safer choice, but I’m pretty sure it’s no way to live. Without vulnerability, we would all live on the surface, never really knowing one another and certainly never knowing ourselves.  I choose to be vulnerable even though it’s scary. I choose to be my true and imperfect self even when I wish I was perfect. I choose to be the most authentic person I can be even if that means people see my warts and weaknesses. In the end, I don’t know another way to live or love.  It’s not always easy to be comfortable in my own skin and to vulnerably share who I am with others, but I take small steps each day.

I think today, I will remember that I’m not perfect AND I’m loveable.

It’s a start.

Chapter 4: Stranger Danger

As a child of the 80s and 90s, I grew up with the concept of “stranger danger.”  Essentially this campaign meant to teach young children that strangers are a threat to be avoided because strangers might try to kidnap you, which obviously would be terrible. You weren’t supposed to talk to strangers or look at them or interact with them in any way because they might want to kill you. Well, I can honestly say that I never learned this lesson. In fact, somehow I learned the opposite.  I love strangers. Love them.  I love to say hello to almost anyone who will talk to me.  I want people to know me, and I want to know them.  I love people.  I find people fascinating and can’t help but want to know my grocery store clerk’s life story.  A few key moments in my life illustrate my desire to befriend the world.  When my brother was getting married, we had coffee at the local Starbucks on the morning of his wedding. He was moderately embarrassed when the entire staff greeted him with congratulations and well wishes, as I had already reported on his impending nuptials.  When my sister-in-law was recovering from the c-section that brought my beautiful nephew, she headed to the bathroom at one point, leaving me with her nurse in the room.  By the time she finished, I knew that the nurse was engaged and had a pretty basic understanding of her wedding plans.  The local cafe I go to knows that I order brussels sprouts as a side dish with my meal (and often gives me free cookies).  I once counseled a young woman on an airplane who was moving to stay with her dad because the state had taken her out of her mom’s home.  I chat with waiters, cab drivers, baristas, and people standing in lines with me.  I can’t help it.  People fuel me.

When we talk about people like me, we use the term extrovert.  Really being an extrovert is less about how outgoing a person is and more about how they get their energy and how they process their thoughts and emotions.  I am an extrovert because I am energized by people, and I process things in my life by talking them out.  An introvert (aka the opposite of me) tends to gain energy from being alone and processes ideas and thoughts inwardly and then presents them to the world.  Much discussion in our culture centers on introverts and extroverts and how they communicate with one another.  A lot of what I’ve seen lately suggests that it is very difficult to be an introvert in our American culture.  This is arguably a fair point.  Most of the time, because extroverts tend to be loud and outgoing, they tend to steamroll the introverts. Introverts can be overlooked because they tend to be quieter and because it takes them longer to process. While an introvert thinks, an extrovert has eagerly offered thirty different ideas, any of which might be insane, but still they are putting it out there.

Many people I know, most of my friends in fact, could tell you about the plight of the introvert.  I can only speak to my own experience of being a loud, passionate, emotional, outgoing extrovert.  And I’ll tell you a secret that truly very few people really know and understand about me.  For most of my life (and sometimes still), I hated being extroverted. I hated that I was loud and outgoing and emotional. I used to pray I could be quieter, more serious, less passionate about every little detail.  No one in my family is like me. My dad purports to be an extrovert but he’s not in the same ballpark as I am.  My mom and brother are not only introverts but they are thinkers more than feelers. So you can imagine a typical dinner at my house growing up where my parents present bad news or something serious.  My mom, dad, and brother would sit quietly and ponder as I raged on, cried, or asked a zillion questions. I felt left out a lot as a kid in my family, which was no one’s fault. It was just a case of “one of these things is not like the other.”  And despite the fact that nearly every person in my life tells me that they’d love to be more outgoing and be able to stand up in front of people or be bold and loud and voice their thoughts, I can tell you honestly, it’s really hard to be so outgoing.  I imagine that those who are quiet and shy sometimes wish they could speak up. I often wish that my emotions were not evident all over my face or that I didn’t need to process how I feel outwardly to be healthy.  But I do.  I have tried to be something I am not, and anyone who ever attempts that knows it never works. My constitution is one that requires me to openly express (albeit in appropriate ways) who I am and what I think and feel.  I would love to be less “me” sometimes but the truth is, it just doesn’t work.

Lately I’ve realized why it’s so hard sometimes to be so outgoing and extroverted and emotional.  My vulnerability is always on display for everyone.  When I’m in a frustrating meeting, I can’t hide my irritation. When someone hurts me, I can’t hide my pain.  When I’m filled with joy, everyone around me knows.  And this is not to say I can’t control my emotions, but rather to acknowledge that for me to be truly Meghan, I have to express these feelings outwardly.  It’s very vulnerable, because to live this way means that those I encounter (including all those strangers I love) get a sense of who I am immediately. I’d like to be more mysterious sometimes and make people guess, but then, I would not be me. What is a constant struggle for me each and every day is how to be myself without apology. And I must say, some days are better than others. Some days I’d literally give you money to be a quieter, more closed-off version of me.  Other days, it’s not so bad being a loudmouth.  I guess that’s part of embracing who we are, which I’m starting to see is an ongoing life process.  I wish I could say that now I love my extroverted self, but the truth is, some days I’m just tolerating me.  And maybe that’s why I love people so much too. It makes me feel less alone to think there are others out there, on the same path as me, just trying to figure it all out.  None of us probably love who we are all the time, but maybe it’s okay to just try to love little pieces of ourselves as we grow older.  Maybe then, we can see the whole and recognize it’s pretty great.