The Hangover: Vulnerability Edition.

I drank a bottle of last night and watched movies until 3:00 am.

I did this because I had a hangover, not from the alcohol. I had a vulnerability hangover and all I wanted was to shut down the world, the feelings. I wanted time to stop.

Going through a process of opening up and digging in the depths of myself is a tricky business. I have not been doing this as a form of therapy or to look at old emotional debts. I am doing it because I am learning.

Learning.

The practice of studying, developing new skills, and identifying my own “raw materials” I have to work with sounded fun, like an adventure. What I did not anticipate was the walls I had built up around aspects of what I believed I could and could not do. The notions of this coping tactic was to keep me safe from feeling like a failure. I couldn’t fail at something I didn’t like or didn’t care about, even though there was a little voice itching inside begging me to try.

Trying was risky. Trying meant I could fail. Safe bet- Don’t try. Don’t fail.

As I learn I am forced to try new things, to step outside of my comfort zone. I have genuinely surprised myself. The majority of things that I have given a shot at have turned out to be really quite amazing! There have been a few flops, but, these flops were only practice for work that was good a day or two later.

Guess what happened when I opened up to learning? I opened up to trying. I found out I wasn’t a failure.

Insert vulnerability hangover here.

I was not a failure.

Along my life path, I had started to associate particular ideas with being successful, being a failure- Not doing something that was successful, or something that had failed. I was defining my quality of person, who I was, by these very small tasks. The dialect of my inner voice at some point had shifted away from an failure of task, to a failure of my person.

This is why it kicked me in the shins, and forced me to have a time out on the bench with 4 movies and a bottle of wine- If I was successful and felt pride overcoming what I had told my self I could not do, and actually did those things good, what else had I been limiting myself with? What else can am I capable of?

Down they rabbit hole I went.

I felt such a deep sense of loss. I had limited myself in my developmental years, enabling my fear based coping mechanisms to flourish. The self-carpentry I was having to do to un-do them was a serious undertaking.

Staring out the window with a merlot moustache and watery eyes from the sappy Nicolas Sparks movie credits playing in the background, an overwhelming wave of self compassion washed over me.

“… The day came when the risk of remaining a tight bud was more painful then the risk it too to blossom.”~Anais Nin.

The garden of what I can not do has been a cumbersome burden to keep and maintain, bringing no joy at all. I want to nuture a new garden, I want to bloom. I deserve to.

Jennifer Quinlan

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