Relearning Vulnerability

Getting to know people in college is hard. Where in high school, we made friends; in college, we “network.” People project versions of themselves that — while certainly impressive — often ignore the characteristics that are most interesting. When meeting new people, adults tend to reduce themselves to their resumes and 30-second speeches, regurgitating the same points and characteristics over and over again. If you listen really hard, sometimes you can hear the elevator music.

Regarding this approach, I’m cynical at best. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a small town, where I rarely had to introduce myself. Or maybe it’s because I have the Midwestern tendency to “overshare” — I am willing to answer just about any personal question, and when people ask me how I am, I usually don’t resort to “I’m fine.” Why? Because it’s important to be honest with yourself and others about something as basic as your overall well-being. And I’m rarely just “fine.” (C'mon, have you seen what’s going on out there? None of us are fine!) More personally, though, it’s because this kind of dishonesty actively contributed to my mental illness when I needed help most.

I was nine years old the first time I had an anxiety attack. I was a third grader and my dog ran away while I was getting ready for school. I had several subsequent moments with anxiety throughout my adolescence — once I stood outside a friend’s house for a half hour, pacing, because I was too nervous to open the door; another time I panicked during a test for a college class and forgot what class I was in, never mind all of the answers. Over time, my chronic nervousness caused me to seek out less and less contact with my peers.

By the time I was treated for anxiety, it was eight years after my dog ran away. I was a junior in high school. My stress level made me physically ill on a regular basis. I rarely slept through the night or ate healthy quantities of food. I engaged in few interpersonal relationships, and the ones I did were often shallow or toxic. For about six months of 2016, I was working a combined 120 hours a week for my job, schoolwork and extracurricular activities.

I hid my mental illness from nearly everyone I knew. I was a straight-A student at the top of my high school class; I was not popular, but I was respected by my peers. I cultivated a reputation of strength, togetherness and success. It’s not to say that I don’t have those characteristics to some extent, but to be known as someone who was “smart” and “confident” while I struggled with constant, debilitating doubt and self-loathing illustrated just how far what people thought about me was from how I saw myself. You make it look so easy, a girl in my pre-calculus class told me once.

It wasn’t easy. I should have told her that it wasn’t, but I wasn’t at a point where I was able to admit to the world how difficult it could be for me to function normally, how I was constantly running on empty because I barely had the energy to take a shower, let alone accomplish the overwhelming workload I set for myself. For me, acknowledging anxiety publicly was to acknowledge a chink in the comfortable armor I lived in. It was easier to hide behind a persona than form genuine relationships based on what I really thought, felt and experienced. In trying to protect myself from my anxiety, I spent most of my life isolating myself from the relationships that would have lessened it.

I graduated high school at almost 19 realizing that I had formed few relationships with people who really knew the extent of the trauma I encountered due to my mental illness and the toxic relationships that fueled it. I take ownership of that loneliness. It was not my peers’ fault that I struggled so much to relate to them, that I isolated myself, and that I chose reputation over vulnerability.

But I’m not willing to make that exchange anymore. It’s not healthy to feel like I’m shedding a second skin when I come home for the evening, so I don’t want to feel like that. I’m simply not comfortable acting like a completely different person in every situation I’m in, because that’s not just adaptability — it’s dishonesty.

Young people desperately want emotional intimacy, but we reduce ourselves to our least intimate characteristics to avoid getting hurt. We engage in these brief, inauthentic introductions over and over at parties, in class and online instead of navigating the more difficult task of forming relationships that matter. Forming lasting, close relationships requires knowing the ugly parts of other people, the things that they don’t add to their elevator speeches and keep far, far away from their resumes. Forming real relationships requires taking risks.

Right now, I’m relearning how to be vulnerable. I’m learning that shallow relationships are often the result of shallow effort. Six months ago, I wouldn’t have imagined myself asking my friends for help or emotional support. I probably wouldn’t have even asked someone to dinner or coffee on my own. This semester, I did all of those things more than once.

So, please — actually tell people about your day. Choose to be vulnerable about just this.