vulnerability?
myself as a person, i think i've always had struggled with opening up to people. being raw in a sense. i think from an early age i learnt to sort of be ashamed of opening up to others. instead being told to keep it to myself and struggle with it on my own. i come from a household (and background) in general that sort of had that mentality that, if its not a physically issue, its no issue at all. maybe the wars fueled it, but i definitely felt that atmosphere growing up.
i distantly remember being 14 or so at the time, and coming to my mother, telling her i had a bad day and was wondering if i could go to therapy (dumb idea telling an immigrant that). i remember being told that there was nothing wrong with me, and that there were kids my age in worse conditions. its felt like a canyon in a sense. a topic that i could never bring up to my parents, no matter how bad i felt. any emotions that i would have, id sort of swallow them up, and when it became too much, id either cry silently at night, or resort to food, video games etc. for a long time my life was this sort of cycle of gluttony and catharsis. rather than sit and process the emotions i had, id feel them, and intensely at that, until i wore myself out.
i think as i grew up, i started becoming more introspective with myself. classifying my emotions and sorting them into buckets within myself. one for anger, one for loneliness, another for worry, etc. i did this for a long time too, any time these buckets would sort of overfill, i would shut down, cowering myself from the world until i was able to punch a hole in the bucket.
the first time i ever really opened to someone was probably in the winter time two or three years ago with one of my long time friends. i remember i had told her about this new relationship i was in. how my first time was. how it made me felt. and for some reason i had started opening up to her about my struggles the past few years. how badly i felt about myself. it was the type of conversation that sort of carves a friendship out into your heart. it felt terrible to relive all of that, but at the same time, it was something beautiful sharing with her. i don't tell her this enough but i truly love her. even though we don't necessarily talk each day, or see each other often, i don't think i've ever doubted the bond we have. the sort of bond where you know you guys don't have any ulterior thoughts about the other.
i think that human beings, as flawed, as terrible, as evil, as vulnerable as we are, need community. they need people. we cant do everything ourselves, both physically and mentally. we get to preoccupied with being independent that we end up just isolating from everything, losing ourselves in the process. i'm not saying that every one of friends is available for us to have deep conversations to, but i think that we need to surround ourselves with people that we can mutually empathize with. people who understand our struggle and we understand theirs. cause at the end of the day, what are we alone?