life-long learning
'She's so vulnerable
Like china in my hands'
I remember singing along to those lines and each time wondering about that strange word, vulnerable,
trying different pronounciations, not really understanding what it wanted to say.
its meaning for me became an exact extrapolation from that image of broken pieces of china.
All my life I've known I never wanted to be china in anyone's hands.
I have spent years meditating on the phrase "if he broke her, where would the pieces fly?"
and each time I used it as a charm against whatever unknown thing I was warding off,
my skin grew just a little bit thicker, (wait, are those scales?)
my tolerance for uncertainty a little weaker.
And me, I lost another chance to chase what I wanted and suffer the consequences of really living.
It is easy to confuse a devotion to self-sufficiency with strength,
and cultivating real vulnerability- having understood the actual meaning of the word at age 33-
feels like learning how to walk all over again.
Even so, I vow to not shy away from stretched out hands just because they might break me.
To remind myself that, yes, vulnerable means open to attack, but it also means capable of being wounded.
And to remember, always, that before anything shattered into pieces, it was once beautiful.
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