Gabe

“Vulnerability is an infinitely precious thing. There is nothing as lonely as that which has become hardened. When your heart hardens, your life has become numb. Yeats says: ‘Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.’ Though vulnerability leaves one open to pain, one should somehow still be ultimately glad of vulnerability. Part of our origin lies in the Darwinian kingdom of species competition and adaption. Some instinct within us knows that we must be careful about exposure. We cannot let the heart be too easily seen or we will get hurt. Everyone gets hurt. The extreme response to hurt is to close the heart. Yet to make yourself invulnerable is to lose something very precious. You put yourself outside the arena of risk where possibility and growth are alive. Vulnerability risks hurt, disappointment and failure. Yet it remains a vital opening to change and to truth. We should not see our vulnerability as something that we need to hide or get over. The slow and difficult work of living out your vulnerability holds you in the flow of life. It is great when we can learn to behold our vulnerability as one of the most important gates of blessing into the inner world. It is in giving love that we are most human and vulnerable.”
~John O’Dononhue “Eternal Echoes”

equus

I would gladly give my vulnerability up, I'd love to get rid of it, burn it, remove it anything as long as it meant not feeling it over and over again.

I remember my Dad's mock bowing 'All praise to thee almighty .... ' before a shove against the wal or a slap across the face and the feeling that happens inside is vulnerability. I can take the slap without a moments harm but the feeling inside is so strong I would want death. Or to have the nickname 'tramp' for years at school knowing I was filthy, names will never hurt you - accept for that vulnerability. Or to do a job where part of it means correcting manager's that mis read or don't read legislation and rules - because they exist in etha - talked about and bluffed but not read. Then there's a chance for ridicule becuase I've written 'cover' instead of 'include'. What I feel inside as the people round the table laugh is vulnerability - what I feel stuck in an office on the floor of people warned about me is vulnerability.

The person I want to be has no such vanity, will do whatever it takes, isn't vulnerable at all but self contained and contented knowing it's no big thing, knowing that in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter at all. But damn that vulnerability because it makes it all hurt.

So for my part I'd happily set my vulnerablity alight and live freely, either that or learn how to stop being me, which is stupid because I can't exactly be anyone else.