Adulting is Exhausting

Vulnerability is such a funny thing, isn’t it? We deeply crave it, and yet are terrified of it. I wrote this piece a few weeks ago off the back of a conversation with a friend. I was talking about the importance of vulnerability and why it is necessary in building strong, healthy relationships. All of that remains true. But what is also true is that it can be exhausting. Adulting is hard to begin with, but adulting with your best foot forward is even harder. So here’s my two cents on vulnerability, as someone who for most of her life avoided it like the plague but now won’t settle for anything less, all because I happened upon some TEDTalk.

Brene Brown. If you don’t know that name, you’re in for a treat. Brown’s The Power of Vulnerability speech, story, impartment of wisdom, whatever you want to call it had me in a

metaphorical choke hold. I immediately sent it to all the women in my life, and to the men I thought would receive it open-heartedly. It made shock-waves in my immediate circles. It was like through the screen Brown had taken me by the shoulders and shaken me out of this notion I should be someone I wasn’t, like something I didn’t, and so on and so forth. This feeling or need to fit in reaches an all time high in adolescence and can often make or break how you approach this brave new world.

Brown had captured this un-named fear we have towards vulnerability, cracked it open and revealed its truth: that on the other side of vulnerability, we feared was shame, “shame is the fear of disconnection, the ‘is there something about me that if other people know or see, will make me unworthy connection.’” According to Brown we medicate this fear in three ways, we numb, we perfect or we pretend. And in that moment, the way it resonated so deeply in me, something clicked. It isn’t aloofness that plagues teenagers but this fear of rejection, not knowing who you are and being embarrassed at your very own existence.

From then on I made a decision to cut the bullshit, my bullshit, and just get on with being me. Be friends with who I wanted and not who I thought I should want. I accepted that friendship breakups didn’t always have to be toxic. Boundaries weren’t an ending but the beginning of freedom. I stopped pretending to like blackout benders and started going to bed at nine thirty. Suddenly there wasn’t the need for deep and meaningful conversations because all my conversations were deep and meaningful. Changing like that wasn’t easy, and it was definitely made harder when at university most of the socializing and the meet and greets were done during a smoke break outside the pub. For a while my life felt very small, but then I realized what filled my life was good, honest connections and things that nourished me. Now, I’m not saying I’ve figured out the game of life, because god knows I have my faults, many of them and I’m also not done working on myself. But, what I do know is making authenticity my best friend saved my life. Literally.

The thing they don’t tell you is what makes you vulnerable is also what makes you beautiful. I know we all like to secretly believe it’s weakness but I promise you it isn’t. Vulnerability is hard work, but it’s so worth it.

Love, an exhausted girl trying to adult x