Quotes About Vulnerability

Because here is the truth: If you want to have a chance at meeting somebody with whom you are genuinely compatible, never put your best foot forward.

We haven't slept together. But we've napped

Most everybody had made at least one bad, drunken decision in their lives. Called an ex at two in the morning. Or perhaps has a little too much to drink on a second date and wept inconsolably while revealing how simply damaged one was, while nonetheless retaining an uncommonly large capacity for love. That kind of thing was, while regrettable, at least comprehensible. But waking up with someone generationally inappropriate, like your grandfather's best buddy?

Should I just sit down, right here at carousel seven, and shake until somebody's arms are around me and they're saying, 'It's okay, I'm here, I'm here, come with me to the institute.

Unscripted, unedited, and wholly authentic people are almost universally admired, especially if they have flaws, are not afraid to make live, red-blooded mistakes, and rather than trying are busy simply being.

There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody.

What I really want is to sit next to someone on an L.L. bean blanket on the beach in the fall and drink coffee from the same mug. I don't want some rusty '73 Ford Pinto with a factory-defective gas tank that causes it to explode when its rear-ended in the parking lot of the supermarket. So why do I keep looking for Pintos?

The most mortifying fact of my life is something that happened when I was fourteen and I have never admitted to anyone: not to friends nor therapists; not even in rehab when we were detailing our own personal spirals of shame did I confess. It is this: I am a graduate of the Barbizon School of Modeling.

Normal people who weren't raised by mentally ill goats probably took the feeling of safety for granted. They only noticed when they suddenly felt unsafe. When the hands reach up for under the bed and grab their ankles, they scream, whereas I'm like "Wait, can you scratch my knee before you kill me?

I'm a sunflower with a cracked petal.

Well, you know, just some old man all alone. God, I hope I don't end up alone like that. Some pathetic old woman with nobody to go on a whale watch with.

And as soon as I thought this, I tried to think of something else quickly. Because we were so close that I felt sometimes like she could read my mind.

I can almost never say what I'm thinking at any given moment. I would have been stabbed to death years ago.

It's okay to like me, because I'm just like you." Everybody feels a bit like a dented can inside. Even the slickest, most polished person you can think of is more aware of their shortcomings and flaws than their talents and gifts.

for me it provided a kaleidoscopic view of everything that was wrong with me. I could already feel it opening all the windows in my hear, giving me a panoramic view of my flaws

And then it hits me. I'm not anxious, I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be so lonely because it seems catastrophic—seeing the car just as it hits you. But then all of a sudden, that feeling is gone and I'm blank. So it's like a door quickly opened, just a crack, to show me what a mess I was inside.

he already knew how horrible I could be, yet he loved me, anyway.

Maybe one of my problems is I never depend upon the kindness of strangers.

I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be so lonely because it seems catastrophic

I could see jabs from his flashlight cutting into the woods on either side of me. He was back there, somewhere. The light beam was like a knife and I didn't want it on my back.

I feel dirty when I visit my mother. I feel that her intimacy is exposed. Her nightgowns are so thin that her flesh shows through them. Her need is like a vagina. And I do not like to see it.

When Group is over, we all pile into the same elevator and nobody says a word. That's the strange thing about elevators, it's like they have this power to silence you. I've just been in group therapy where people will reveal the most intimate details of their lives to complete strangers, yet in the elevator nobody can say a word.

for me it provided a kaleidoscopic view of everything that was wrong with me. I could already feel it opening all the windows in my head, giving me a panoramic view of my flaws

A tear wells in his eye. It wells and then spills down his cheek. And despite being pumped with booze and coke, I can read that one eye as clearly as a billboard for cigarettes. Only instead of saying Alive with Pleasure it says, I Have to Go Now.