Quotes About Vulnerability

Corrode, v. I spent all this time building a relationship. Then one night I left the window open, and it started to rust.

The things you love are the things that will destroy you.

If she lets go, it's all over. If I let go, it's all over. And because she is holding on so tight, I hold on so tight.

And again. I kept clicking until the photograph was demolished, until it was no more than a mosaic of gray tiles, adding up to nothing. Nothing. Because wasn't that how I felt that day? If you zoom close—if you really get close to someone, if you really get close to yourself—then you lose the other person, you lose yourself entirely. You get so close you can't see anything anymore. Your mind becomes all these abstract fragments. English becomes math.

And I look at her and she looks at me and it's like everything just opens up.

As soon as Neil is out of the shower, he texts Peter. You up? he asks. And the reply comes instantly: For anything.

She is the weakness you think of as strength while I am the strength you have no idea is there.

In this space, in this moment, we are who we want to be. I am lucky, because for me that doesn't take much courage. But for others, it takes a world of bravery to make it to the clearing.

This is what we don't admit about first kisses: One of the most gratifying things about them is that they are proof, actual proof, that the other person wants to kiss us.

That's what it felt like---that if I let a little of the hurt out, it would keep pouring out until I was a deflated balloon of a person, with a big monster of hurt in front of me.

It's not the easy things that let you get to know a person. Know, and love.

I'm so sorry," I continue. And it's like the last word is a hurdle and I can't leap it, because something in the word snags my voice and suddenly I am giving everything up. I am letting my shoulders fall and I am feeling myself become the absence, feeling myself become that gasp and sob.

Too much. Too fast. Too intense. The glass soul falls to the ground and shatters into a thousand words. The invisible boy becomes visible, and all of a sudden, his emotions blast neon.

me: you know what sucks about love? o.w.g.: what? me: that it's so tied to truth.

I don't want to be the strong one, but I don't want to be the weak one, either.

I want to take back at least half the "I love you"s, because it feels safer that way.

My fear tries to keep my secrets locked down, but my hope keeps slipping you the key.

Het is al te gemakkelijk om te zeggen dat ik me onzichtbaar voel. Dat is ook niet waar. Ik voel me pijnlijk zichtbaar en totaal genegeerd.

We remember what it was like to meet someone new. We remember what it was like to grant someone possibility. You look out from your own world and then you step into his, not really knowing what you'll find there, but hoping it will be something good.

Silence only harms when there are things that aren't being said, or when there's the fear that the well is empty and there's nothing left to say.

If she'd been bleeding in the street, you would've run to get help. It's the same thing! Typical, I could hear you saying back. The whole point is that I wasn't bleeding in the street . I wasn't dying of cancer. You couldn't take an X-ray and see what was wrngsithme. You couldn't make such an easy diagnosis. You had to guess. And everybody guessed wrong. But the things is, I hadn't even made the guess. I trusted that you knew what you were doing. You were very convincing. And I destroyed you.

is that what relationships become? A reduced version of the hurt, nothing else let in.

I have never told anyone the truth. I have never come close.

So I do what I always vowed not to do, and always found myself doing anyway. I throw "I miss you" into the breach. It even feels empty to me. Like I'm not saying it to the right person.