How vulnerable is too vulnerable? Does that answer change based on audience? Location? Or even content?
What’s the level of vulnerability I can honestly portray, before you, the reader, become uncomfortable? Start to cringe…scroll past without reading?
That doesn’t just go for blogging…but writing or speaking in any sense. Who am I talking to, who is the audience? Is it within the paper of my own books where the only reader is me? Is it in therapy where the only one judging me is myself? Or is it anonymously writing to a similarly anonymous audience? Usernames and profiles…a screen to protect the truth. There’s comfort in anonymity. There’s comfort in discretion…in hiding.
So, where do we draw the line? Why the filters? Why hide what I say or think…why diminish it or filter it, or just not even say it at all?
Do we all do that? Do we all have these filters, these assumed topics that we think people just can’t handle or won’t accept?
And if so…isn’t it our (my?) responsibility to absolutely put it out there? If something feels so vulnerable that I dare not say it even amongst the safety of slight anonymity…doesn’t that make it all the more so my duty to talk about just that thing?
These things, whatever it is, whatever we feel is “too vulnerable for anyone to have to hear or deal with”….are you really the only one going through it? Am I?
Who are we doing any favors to by filtering ourselves? By hiding the truest, most genuine parts of ourselves? That parts that hurt?
Where’s the line, and who decides it? If we talk about rape, if we talk about addiction, if we talk about death and the fear of our loved ones dying…if we talk about wanting to die ourselves. Or about self harm, or abuse. Or even about anger. Any of those things, and so many more, and you know you’re in for a world of judgment.
The world is full of opinions and judgments. Some harsher than others, but always existing. Sometimes I feel like it’s my duty to fight that fear within myself. That’s part of the reason I force myself to write. I can’t speak these things, my shameful truths. But I can write them… even if clumsily at best.
I’m not the only one. This life isn’t singled out to get me. For everything I’ve been through, someone else is also going through. And if I feel the shame within myself and my story, if I hide my truths behind fear and avoidance…what am I telling you? The person who might also need to hear this? The person who feels so alone that they think they’re the only one?
My duty is to you….the one who feels like me. I don’t believe your story is shameful. I believe everything you feel is absolutely valid and worth speaking of. Your vulnerability is amazing in every sense of the word.
Who am I helping, who am I speaking to, if I’m ashamed of my own story, if I can’t even speak my own words?
I don’t believe you’ve done anything wrong….whoever you and and whatever your story.
So…why am I the exception?
Again, I ask…what’s the line? What’s just “too vulnerable” to speak of? And why does that have to be the case?