Tag: vulnerability

Joy

Joy is the most difficult emotion to experience.

It’s so precarious. We are so vulnerable. What we have can be stolen so quickly; so easily; so unpredictably.

It’s safer to just stay fine.

If we don’t let joy in, we can’t be hurt when we inevitably lose the source of our joy. When it dies, or gets corrupted, or we find out it was all a con in the first place. If we don’t let joy in, nothing can ever take it out.

That’s why we’re cynical – because we’re cowards, and we would prefer to hide in our shady cave of fine, rather than risk the scarring interplay of bright light and deep dark. Joy is fleeting. That is a fact. We cannot keep it. And, once we’ve held it, we will always feel its absence when it’s gone.

In my pursuit of a wholehearted life, I have tried my best to let joy in. But my strategy has been to find joy in small things. To cultivate gratitude for simple pleasures. To savour the moment. To put my feet in the grass. To listen to the wind. To make joy more abundant, which makes it safer to hold.

I have been successful.

But, still, when I am faced with the threat of something really fucking good happening, I quake. And I say no, that’s not for me. Such good things don’t happen to me.

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Silly

I’ve been watching a lot of low brow Christmas rom-coms lately. Let me specify; I’ve watched four. So far. It’s just seemed like the right course of action. So be it. The last one I watched had particularly bad writing, but I went along with it anyway, I stuck in there and, yes, I needed a couple of time-outs to collect myself when the plot holes were just too jarring, or the drama just too unnecessarily artificial, but I still found myself clapping, dancing, giggling with glee, and otherwise being just very silly at multiple points throughout, alone in my house with no-one to witness.

And I like it. I like the simple joy of it. I like that I can access it with such little provocation. I feel accomplished that I have reached the point where I am so easily pleased. Because I am a fucking complex character, and allowing my mind to enjoy simple, unanalysed pleasures was not exactly written into my programming.

But there’s a weird yet predictable thing that happens when I catch myself being so joyfully, needlessly silly. Because I do like it about myself, and the observer within me enjoys to witness it. But some different part – the analyst, I would posit – immediately wonders what other people would think about it. And veers off on a tangent wondering why we aren’t all like that around each other. Because surely I’m not the only one being so weird and silly when no-one’s around. It’s even a device used in the very films I’ve been watching to endear characters to the audience. So why is it socially unacceptable when people are around? Why can’t I feel comfortable being joyfully, needlessly silly in front of people who aren’t my four year old son? Even with people who I know, rationally, love and accept me for who I am; I’m not going to fully unleash my joyful, needless silliness upon them. Presumably because I don’t want to test it. Because I’m not sure they are quite so weird and silly behind closed doors. I have a suspicion that their weird and silly stops far short of my own, and revealing the true extent of my fucking weird silliness would somehow alienate them.

Why? Why is the world this way? Because I am nothing more than a not-so-neatly packaged product of it, so I can’t take full responsibility. But I don’t think we were supposed to stop playing.

I mean, I do very, very silly things in very, very public places with my son (and sometimes other stranger-children who join us, like that kid who demanded I be a moaning, eyes-half-closed zombie rampaging around the middle of a bustling Newcastle square. Your wish is my command, Child-I-Have-Never-Met-Before). But the truth is, I would like to do those very, very silly things in very, very public places without my son, without any reason, and I am (many would argue, quite fucking rightly) simply too scared. The only time any of us ever seem to do that is when we’re in a pack, and that pack is still largely shunned by the rest of society.

But imagine a world designed for adults that play! That is a world I want to experience.

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The reason

I’m kinda antsy about people coming into my house. Like I have this nice idea of myself some time in the future just welcoming all of these friends new and old into my beautiful, inviting, spacious home and generously sharing my bounty with them all in whichever way is appropriate. But, truth is, right now, if almost any of them turned up at my door today they’d be greeted with a deer-in-highlights expression and a shaky oh, er, do you want to come in?

Why? Because my house is a reflection of myself and that self is barely bridled chaos. And I spend most of my leisure time at my desk in my bedroom, so unless I have a specific reason to go look at it, I don’t even notice how dishevelled my living room is. Don’t get me started on the kitchen that I pathologically refuse to engage with. I live in fear of having to invite someone into it and suddenly being faced with untold pandemonium.

I’d liken it to getting caught with my pants down, but – fun fact – I recently learned I’m nowhere near as embarrassed by that as someone coming into my unprepared home.

So, why can’t I just be comfortable with the fact that I’m a mess and my house is a mess? Well, I’ve figured out at least one pretty compelling reason. The other day my mother visited and when she came into the partially tidied living room she said dramatically “woah, it’s pretty tidy in here, you feeling alright?”, which is completely standard fare – she is guaranteed to either dismay that I haven’t tidied enough or feign concern for my health if I have. It’s very witty. But then it was like, for the first time in her life, she heard what she was saying and said “do I sound like grandma?”, and I said “no, you just sound like you.”

And it was then we both realised she’s the reason I don’t like having people in my house.

I’m exaggerating. But, yeah, kind of.

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Exposure

I am the type of person who physically recoils from the idea of you reading my diary. But I’m also the type of person who forgets to put her diary away and instead leaves it open on the table when visitors come round. I’m the type of person who walks along the street and blurts out what she’s thinking about to herself before she realises she’s not alone. I’m the type of person who may or may not leave sex toys on display when her grandparents come to visit and who won’t notice until at least the second time everyone has been exposed to them.

Privacy is not something I am good at.

The side-effect of revealing myself to the ‘wrong’ person I talked about the other day, whether real or imaginary, sent me into something of a tailspin at the time. Realising that I had unintentionally, yet intentionally, made parts of myself public made me feel excruciatingly exposed. I started becoming contracted and brittle, stuttering through my business endeavours, entirely conflicted about the right course of action, hypersensitive to every indication that people were seeing me. I was too self-conscious to commit to anything. I had chosen to reveal myself, but I hadn’t thought through what that might actually mean, and now that I was, I didn’t like it. I wanted the benefits of feeling courageous, but none of the other consequences.

Bit by bit, I shut it all down. I’ve talked about this before too.

I’ve been diligently trying these past few years to get acquainted with vulnerability, because I’m so very terrible at invulnerability. Vulnerability is a thousand times more healthy than invulnerability, I know, but I guarantee if I was better at not accidentally exposing myself that would be the choice I would make every time. If I could control all the variables, I would.

I am perfectly happy to expose myself on my own terms, in a very controlled, curated way. But not so much in a vulnerable way. I don’t want you to see me make a mistake. I don’t want you to see a side of me I didn’t specifically choose to show you. But I will, and you will. So I’ve been trying very hard to be okay with that. To be okay with all of myself, so that if you don’t like it, at least I still do.

It’s a fucking journey.

Posted on by Yve 0