Actually, Screw Vulnerability
No confessions. We die like men.
This is how the year starts: not with a whimper but with a bang. 2023 opened with me literally slamming into the year at eighty kilometers an hour. The crash yielded no casualties except for my pride, my car (whose chrome exterior has caved in to expose mechanical viscera, yikes), and the bowl of wonton soup I cried into that night. I wasn’t prepared for busting a hole in my bumper and driving into the ditch that day, but I guess I was due for a reminder of the fragility of life or something.
On a bright note, do you know what else I wasn’t prepared for? How much people care. Strangers stopped by the side of the highway to see if we were okay, and the guy I crashed into was nice enough to offer me a seat in his car while I was on the phone, just because it was cold outside. Like Brennan Lee Mulligan monologues in Dimension 20: Fantasy High:
“The first rule of existence is ‘as above, so below.’ People are fractal images of the universe. […] In the same way that your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings, are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares; and if you don’t, it doesn’t.
As a result, I’ve been thinking a lot this month about how we show that we care about the people we love. As a Words of Affirmation love language girlie, I’ve spent the better half of my life making clumsy, drunken declarations of affection. Words are soft in a way I like: blunted edges and rounded corners, smooth when the phrase is turned just right.
But some things defy language, and the older I get, the more things there seem to be. It’s almost unfair: I’ve spent the past decade building lifeboats and longbows out of words. I used to think that if there exists something rare & tenuous & intangible & precious between you and another person, you should speak it into existence; name it, and claim your vulnerability as the sharpest crown you own.
Now I’ve changed my tune: darkened the melody, because some things can only thrive at night when no one is making eye contact. Sometimes we cannot name the animals at the tree line because to do so would be to scare them off.
So no offense, Brené Brown, but I’m ricocheting to the opposite side of the spectrum this year. I will walk softly upon the earth. I will feel the forest alive around me. I will thank whatever stars I’m under and will not squander the glow by wishing for more.
love,
anna