Vulnerability.

Sharing personal experiences, private thoughts with the Internet makes me vulnerable. Sharing the blog in posts on Facebook where new friends, old friends, family members, basic strangers and even people I've dated can see quite deeply into my thoughts - it is an act of vulnerability.

The play I wrote recently and performed in front of strangers and close family and friends, it was also deeply personal. Perhaps more so than I allow this to become. I was there, my face was there, and as much as I was performing and putting on a show, I was adding another dimension to the expression of myself and thoughts. I was so vulnerable. I will be vulnerable when I perform it again, in a new way, to another audience (less forgiving, perhaps, than one at the Edinburgh fringe).

But I do not mind being vulnerable. I think, even, that I seek vulnerability. Maybe I thrive on it. Erinn Gilson says this: "in seeking invulnerability we specifically ignore the constitutive aspect of vulnerability, the way in which we become who we are through openness to others."

I found this quotation whilst working on my dissertation, which, unsurprisingly, is a project that is personal to me. I stopped and thought, "is this what I do?". Not seeking "invulnerability", but the opposite.

I become who I am through my openness to others. Whether that be in writing, in performing, in the friendships I form.

I find that I need to be open in order to connect. Not in a perverse way, not in making my material open to some sort of voyeurism. I mean, in the most honest way I can. Always sharing, always being honest. It brings openness and closeness to people every single time.

I have become, and continue to become who I am in this way. In being vulnerable, in the best way.