16. Vulnerability

I had a very deep conversation with some dear friends of mine this past week. As the semester has been nearing its end, we began talking about the relationships we have made with each other. Ironically, each of us still considered ourselves to be closed books as far as revealing our true self to people around us. I'll write in the way that our conversation went.

There are two spectrums, one that ranges from an open book to a closed book and another that ranges from being fake to being real. Each person falls somewhere on both ranges, but are they correlated? Someone can be open about things and a very real person or open and fake simply to draw attention to themselves. Someone can be a closed book and real but limited in what they reveal or a closed book and fake to protect anything inside. The all-around problem is that of vulnerability. We are all afraid of being vulnerable to some extent. For closed books, we don't reveal things about our true nature because we fear of reliving something in the past, failing at trying to become something, or talk about it at all. For me, there is one person, my best friend in Montana, that knows me the very most. I have a mental list of things that I do not share, but she knows the majority of the things on there. As we talked, we found out that most of us had that one person in whom we entrusted our true nature to. As a person, we want to learn the truthful nature about someone and feel trusted to know who someone really is. It's almost like we expect to know everything about someone by developing a relationship with them. But does that person know everything about you? Doubtful. Then what do they owe you in opening themselves up and being vulnerable? It is something that is developed over time and is only built upon a foundation of trust. Vulnerability only feels safe when it is mutual. There is no right or wrong answer on the two spectrums we thought of, but understanding them and how people place themselves has much to say about how we mustn't judge but learn through love and trust.