Quotes About Vulnerability

felt abandoned by her when she drank, but as long as I wasn't hurt and she was accounted for and alive, I could justify that everything was all right. Never really knowing what I was going to come home to established a constant underlying sense of anxiety in my gut. I remained unrealistically optimistic that every day would be different. Mom would keep her promise and not get drunk at that birthday or that particular function.

I had to let myself show, warts and all.

We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell.

Am I just a pussy Ramona? Well... you could be less of one, I guess.

Over all this lay Hoppie's dictum: First with the head and then with the heart. Winning was something you worked at intellectually, emotion clouds the mind and is its natural enemy. This made for a loneliness which often let me aching to share an emotion but equally afraid that if I did so I would reveal a weakness which could later be used against me.

It's who you is when folks knocks at the door of your heart what counts. Hide the past and it gives them what's jealous of you the power to bring you undone.

All children are flotsam driven by the ebb and flow of adult lives.

Better not to sit on a hedgehog if you are naked.

Whenever one person in a relationship is unwilling or unable to contact his or her vulnerability in the interaction, there is a simultaneous movement into judgement: self-attack, attack of the other, or both. This is a chicken-or-the-egg situation: Do you resort to judgment for protection because you don't feel safe, or are you not feeling safe because of the presence of judgment? This is a fundamental question in dealing with the judge.

When you act like a teacher, it's usually because you're afraid to be the student.

Writing is a risk and a trust. The best of it lies yonder.

Morrison was treading on very thin ice, the words strained, and the only reason he was doing it was for me. I looked at him and wondered what he'd do if I curled myself against his chest and held on. I didn't even think I had it in me to cry. I just wanted to be somewhere safe for a little while, and Captain Michael Morrison's arms seemed like the safest place in the world right then.

Love cannot thrive simply by being offered. Sooner or later it must be accepted and reciprocated. It must be seen for what it is and nourished according to its needs, or it will die.

All of us show many faces to the world. No one shows her true face all of the time. To do that would be dangerous, for what is seen can also be known.

In order to know someone who is at some level unknowable, you must leave yourself wide open. If you don't, you foreclose the possibility of learning something critical about this person you need, your parent, the person upon whom your survival depends. It's like time-lapse photography; your lens at maximum aperture in order to capture something fleeting and elusive. The problem becomes one of calibration. How to protect yourself in the process. How to capture something without going blind.

Because,if you didn't allow yourself to love, you would risk losing everything.

Su ingenuidad y su bondad parecían convertirlo en un imán irresistible para mujeres que devoraban hombres para desayunar y después escupían los restos

Porque quien no ama, tampoco se arriesga a perder.

Urinary tract infections were nothing to play around with; that was the last thing she needed right now.

I adore him, she said. I feel compassion for him because he's totally fucked up.

It's hard to be careful, though, when you feel indestructible.

It was the first honest emotional connection I'd had in a while. So I immediately panicked and had to leave.

Yow. Guys can be so insecure.

There was all the time in the world now – plenty of time for self-analysis, for self-doubts, for regrets. Being part of a couple meant you fit somewhere, that your cracks and erosions were hidden to the rest of the world. When you suddenly had that ripped apart, the hidden blemishes were exposed like cross-sections of a log.