Vulnerability?! On the INTERNET? Where EVERYONE and ANYONE can read it? This used to make me nervous. Channeling the anxiety of a teenage girl getting ready in the morning, I created blogs and deleted them the way above girl would try on outfits while getting ready for the cute boy...er...school, I mean. I closed blogs, made them private, abandoned them, and even closed my Facebook account, for a while, as it offered the world too much exposure into my world, debunking my anonymity.
And then I realized that this masking of honesty to the world is pointless if I ever think of writing an actual book. That's what people that write memoirs, personal essays, and the like DO with their time. They open up to the world, write books about stuff that strangers read, and then they travel all over and talk about it! And why, I asked myself...why is this OK? Well, for some, books sell, and the people that write them make some money. I suppose there is a portion of the population that does it for monetary reasons. The second reason is cooler.
The other evening I was with a friend talking about life circumstances. Things weren't going the way the friend had hoped they would. This made me sad for said friend, but I could also relate to what said friend was going through. This moment of relating, it made me feel less alone, and for a second, it made me feel a little better, that I am not the only one. And that's why I think vulnerability is often good.
I just want to be helpful. I like getting dishes for friends that work in coffee shops that the lazy of America leave on the tables. I like listening when someone needs to talk. I like giving rides to the airport when they are needed, and buying lunch for someone when they are more broke than I usually am. I like being helpful. And this hope for helpfulness...It includes helping people with themselves.
This does not mean I am further along on figuring things out. It just means that sometimes, when someone hears or reads something that they also went through, and can relate, it helps with the day, the moment, the YEAR, whatever. It helps.
While still working at Starbucks, on a drizzly gray day much like today, my boss and I decided to order some food from the Chili's next door. I really wanted a grilled cheese. Bad. When I was little, I ate so many grilled cheese sandwiches the my parents told me that I was going to turn into one. I briefly experienced fear, while imagining my body morphing into lightly grilled buttery bread, cheese oozing out, limbs sticking out.
I called the kind folks at Chili's to place the order and asked if they had this delightful meal on the menu. They said no, but they would make me one. I was so happy to be eating the sandwich, but not simply because it was filling my craving. I told my boss that it was more than a sandwich because "I used to have an eating disorder and never would have been able to order a grilled cheese off of a menu at a restaurant and then proceed to eat the entire thing".
In college, I purchased the light bread, fat free cheese and spray butter. This amounted to a 120 calorie meal, which I ate nearly every day for lunch. I didn't have a period for six months, and I didn't visit the cafeteria for fear of what I would be tempted to put on my tray. Things had changed, over over the course of a grueling few years, and I was at the point where I could refer to it with humor and weightlessness.
I realized, after seeing the awkward, caught off guard look on my bosses face after the phrase "eating disorder", it was not a weightless funny matter to most. I also realized that traveling through it, and saying it out loud, and also saying out loud that the not-so-weightless-not-so-funny-matter maybe should be talked about sometimes, as this is the kind of vulnerability that, I HOPE helps someone else with themselves.
I hope you haven't ever had to deal with an eating disorder, and that you can fully enjoy the joy of a grilled cheese sandwich. I hope this kind of vulnerability doesn't make you nervous, as I think there will be more of it. I hope you keep reading.
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