Who likes being vulnerable?
I doubt many people do.
I don’t. But not too long ago, I chose to let my walls down and trust someone fully.
It sure didn’t turn out the way I hoped.
I was deceived.
And being who I am, I spent time looking back, trying to understand what I missed.
I was surprised at what came up.
When we are hurt, it’s so easy to stay focused on what was done to us. How can we not? We’re only human.
However, part of my own growth journey has been learning to express my feelings instead of keeping everything inside. And the woman I’m becoming, she’s the vulnerable one. So I did what I’ve learned to do:
I consulted her. In my imagination.
Funny enough, she didn’t pity me. What I saw was a smiling Future Claudia.
She was glad while I was pissed.
After a while of writing, I could see why. She was focused on my future.
On who I’m becoming.
She saw that Claudia had the courage to do something she had avoided for years.
That was to open up and trust.
What I’m taking with me
Although the result of that trust was the opposite of what I expected, what I’m taking from this isn’t that I shouldn’t have let my walls down.
I realized that trusting wasn’t the mistake.
Ignoring myself was. Ignoring those moments when a feeling or thought made me uncomfortable and I pushed it aside.
Life isn’t going to stop disappointing us just because we’re working on ourselves.
People will hurt us. Things won’t work out. Sometimes we’ll make choices we wish we hadn’t.
So maybe the question for me isn’t, “How do I make sure this never happens again?”
Maybe it’s, “What do I want to choose because this happened?”
As I was thinking about that, I remembered something I’ve been reading in Be Your Future Self Now. Dr. Benjamin Hardy writes that you can let the pain of life swallow you or learn from it and commit to something much better.
I choose the second.
I want that part of me that is willing to trust and be vulnerable to keep doing that.
So I’ll pass the question to you: Is there something that has happened in your life that makes you ask, “What do I want to choose because of this?”
