Being vulnerable is scary. If for most of your life you have protected that vulnerability, opening it up is like walking into uncharted territory.

I have stepped into the unknown a couple of times only to go running back to the safety of my private cocoon. It was like letting loose a damn that has built up over time. Opening the damn causes a tidal wave. Too much pours out and pretty soon the people around me are drowning in my stuff and running for the hills.

I have spent most of my life safely behind a wall of self sufficiency. No one gets in. I don't know another way as well as I know this way of co-existing in a world that I feel has let me down and forced me to stand alone or drawn in my own sorrow.

It is important to let people into our lives and to expose the 'not so pretty' and ask for help. People are interdependent by nature. Finding a way back to that balance is hard once the structures have been secured and the keys have been lost.

A place like PC is good training ground I think. At least for me I am finding it more and more liberating and empowering to talk to people here about my stuff and to actually ASK for help. I am hoping it will begin to translate into my real life and I will find a way to ask for help in moderation; in ways that will not overwhelm anyone.

I also think, in my case I have knowingly or unknowingly attracted people who want or need something that I can provide. I have always seemed to invite people to turn to me, rely upon me and ask me for help. I must do it because it makes me feel powerful, useful, valuable and worthy as a member of the human race. Its like I am earning my way. Earning my dad's love by my good works.

If I turn around to ask for support I hear my dad's repremanding voice say, 'Why are you bothering people?' Beyond that I think the people I have attracted into my life are not equipped to support me. It is outside the framework of the relationship as I designed it. As I control it. My request for support can quickly overwhelm them. It is unfamiliar territory and no one quite knows what to do or say or how to support me. They don't know that side of me. It can leave people feeling lost in foreign land because they have never been invited there with me before. It can leave people almost desperate for me to get well so life can get back to normal for them. So they can come to me again for this that or the other. So we can be ourselves with each other again. Its like that I think.

I haven't really been able to let people in. I think I am doing them a favour and perhaps in reality I am doing them a favour by not asking of them what they can not do. Honestly I think I am still doing it just simple to save face. To preserve something of the strong woman I was and am fighting to restore. If people who I have supported in life see me as weak then the whole earth will crumble under my feet. Nothing will make sense to me anymore. I won't know them. They won't know me. Poof!

I have gone outside my comfort zone to attract people who are equipped to support me and hear my stories. I was intimidated by their power. It made me feel vulnerable. In no time I was masking my truth again and trying to flip the tables back to me being the provider and them being the receiver. I returned to my comfort zone with a new set of people.

I have many strong and wise people in my life but I don't fully appreciate what they can bring to our relationship if I were to allow it. I seem to always default back to being the mother, the teacher, the leader, the go to person. That is my comfort zone. That is where I am safe from harm. From heartbreak and disappointment and hopelessness.

Its a risk to let people in. It means we have to hear things we don't like. It means we have to admit we need something, someone besides ourselves. We become vulnerable. When being vulnerable has been costly in the past opening yourself up to vulnerability again is something that has to be pushed into existence.

Here's to pushing vulnerability into existence. EEK!