The Strength of Vulnerability

The Strength of Vulnerability

Strong Enough

My whole life I'd thought that being vulnerable meant being weak. I grew up in the heart of Texas high school football country, where I was expected to fit a certain stereotype. To be this rugged tough football guy in full pads playing in 100+ degree heat in August. Tough. I was supposed to be able to fix a car, lift a ton of weight, fish, hunt and wrestle steers. That's what was "expected" of me, or so I believed. Being a young man from Texas came with all sorts of expectations. Some realistic, others quite silly when viewed through the lens of hindsight.

I was a sensitive kid too. People could easily rile me up. In certain situations that's still true today. I also happen to be an extremely open person. When I was younger and more naive, I would share almost anything with anyone. It was how I connected with people. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to connect with people. I felt that sharing similar life experiences would give whoever I was speaking with and myself some sort of common ground to build a friendship on. To this day, I still do that, although I’d say I'm a little bit more deliberate.

But as many of you probably learned before I did, people can take advantage of that openness. I was an odd child and didn't really fit in. Plus I was boisterous. Add in all that to my open nature, and I was often singled out.

But I was going to fix that, see? I was going to be a Marine. The toughest of the tough. No more was I going to be this vulnerable, sensitive kid. I was going to be the fiercest warrior our nation could produce.

After two tours to Iraq from 2005-200 and numerous lost friends, I realized I hadn’t become tougher. In fact my sensitive nature likely made the sense of loss greater. I’m doing well now, as you’ll see, but from time to time, I will see a picture, remember a joke they told, or a poignant piece of wisdom they shared and I’ll cry.

I swore that I was strong enough to deal with everything on my own. I was a hard worker when I wanted to be and I swore up and down that if I just worked hard enough, things wouldn’t hurt as much anymore. I became vile and mean, a real hardass with little to no compassion. Gone was the vulnerability and openness that I once had. I nuked relationships and burned bridges without a second thought . But the hurt continued until 2015 when it all came crashing down.

At an event for veterans, I felt incredibly alone, right around the anniversary of the KIA date for a close friend and I attempted to take my own life. On a dusty dirt road I sat, tasting the cold steel of the barrel of my pistol. Everything hurt and I hurt everything. Or so I believed. Like the Hulk said, “I’m exposed, like a nerve, it’s a nightmare” and it was. Every interaction with someone left me feeling even worse because I knew I should feel some kind of way about it, but I could only feel pain, anger, fear and regret.

I did not pull the trigger that night. But for almost a year I walked around with this burden, this secret shame. I went through the motions of life, hoping for a chance that something out of my control would happen and I’d leave this earth ignorant as to how. Then things changed.

I don’t even remember where I heard it or how it came about, but I remember one day I had a thought that everything...everything HAD to mean something. If not for me, then at least someone else should be spared this pain. I had to talk about it because if not, then I might as well have pulled the trigger. Deep down inside of my soul, something ached to be set free.

So I wrote about that low point in my life in a very public Facebook post. I told everyone about it. My secret shame was now out there for everyone to see. This openness was different. It had a purpose. The openness, the willingness to share, the vulnerability had a purpose for existing. It was not wanton gratuitous oversharing due to lack of self control. It was a purposeful, deliberate acknowledgement of the fact that we often don’t have everything figured out. We have ideas, beliefs and expectations that don’t always pan out in the realm of critical thought or action. These ideas, beliefs or expectations are often “pie in the sky '' delusional or so melancholy that the fear and disappointment paralyzes us in our own loathing.

This isn’t to say don’t have big goals or dreams, but rather to temper those goals and dreams with the knowledge that things don’t always work out the way we want nor are things as destructive and life ruining as we think. I’m not living the life I envisioned I would, but I am living a life where I am mostly happy and content.

The great part about opening up and being deliberately vulnerable, sharing that shame with the world is that it can no longer be used against me. I own it. I did it. I came to terms with it and despite the fact that it is something deeply personal and something that could be thrown in my face to demonstrate how horrible of a person I am...it won’t. It no longer has power over me, but rather I have power over it.

So in keeping with that idea...

I was a weird kid, gangly and awkward in many social settings, I would often ruin jokes or not realize when one was taken too far. I got into fights to protect my pride and ego. I had low self esteem. I acted out in class. I was an exceptionally average Marine. Definitely not worthy of the ceaseless and impersonal hero worship that we veterans get for merely signing our name. I was weak, mentally and physically and that's probably why life took such a toll on me. I allowed it to happen to me. You either happen to life or it happens to you and life for nearly 28 years, happened to me, not the other way around. I lost my temper. I, in my pain, would seek to hurt others as much as they hurt me and as sensitive as I was, I often exercised the nuclear option, though they didn't deserve it. I didn't just burn bridges, I obliterated them and the entire town surrounding the bridge. I didn't care. I was full of bravado and anger.

Ultimately it is still a battle I fight every single day, but now that I’ve acknowledged it, and shared it, I can hold myself accountable.

Being vulnerable requires first that you are honest with yourself. You must admit things about yourself that you may find disconcerting. You may have to come down to earth and acknowledge that you are not an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being. You may grapple with an intense self hatred when you see how naive and horrible you’ve been to people. But if you are lucky enough to overcome that fight, you can use that knowledge to help others. And after all, isn't getting better the whole point of humanity? As I’ve said before, to make known the unknown, to conquer that which once held you in captivity is how we develop and grow. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want the strength of vulnerability?