connection in lieu of shared vulnerability
the complexity of wounds and worldviews
A friend and I recently finalized our parting of ways, a process that had started some time ago and ended with a bittersweet mutual thanking and the memories we’d shared. The biggest issue we ended up at again and again was the disparity in our interpretations of the use of vulnerability.
For her, vulnerability over shared experiences is not the core factor for friendships to endure. I couldn’t grasp that, for all of my close friends and I that have endured over the years often are like soldiers who fought through the same war, and harshly reacted to the world at times similarly. Recently I’ve softened up and seen it differently, and I want to say now that I think she was right about a lot.
At the time, her wounds weren’t clearly visible, and I struggled in our friendship feeling her hesitate with uncertainty constantly when I shared my deep scary thoughts with her, with me resenting that she liked me so much even though I didn’t feel fully seen or like she could handle my darkness. My interpretation was that if she wasn’t in touch with or had mastered her own darkness, mine was relatively inaccessible to her.
When I revealed this was how I felt, she interpreted it as a call to action I did not mean — “you need to “be more traumatized” to deserve to be my friend.” She believed what I needed in general from people was not just full insight into who they are and their life experiences and their deepest fears — but epistemic submission to their own pain and an ability to receive joy from it.
She’s not completely wrong. What I wished to see was signs that I’m safe if I’m around you because you’re not going to judge me for how I am, because you had to learn to not judge yourself for your wounds.
I color my days with intellectualizing my trauma, often trying to shield myself from how intensely it haunts me, often worrying that that’s how I’ll be defined. All my bad experiences have shaped the good parts of me, but I often think if people can’t understand the bad, the good will get lost in the mix. I don’t want to be seen as a complicated manic pixie dream girl. My friend saw (correctly) that it was hard for both of us to relate to each other because our backgrounds were so different, our experiences with our families and friends, but the ultimate difference was also that I couldn’t accept that she loved me anyway even if we were different.
It took a long time of healing to stop taking it personally, that the complexity of my trauma scared her, and to think that someone’s fear automatically means they will hurt you. What I could’ve done better was believe that, even without fully sharing all of ourselves, that I still mattered.
Just because someone doesn’t show their vulnerabilities to you doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Just because someone doesn’t say, “I love you,” doesn’t mean they don’t. Just because someone can’t bare their whole heart and insecurities doesn’t mean they don’t value you.
Many of my current best friends and I sit around a campfire psychoanalyzing ourselves and the world around us. We have a similar wound — feeling unseen by our families, we resorted to the tactics of coping, alone together, and healing with deep self knowledge. They make me feel seen because they go me too. Yet this is not everyone’s paths. Just as valuable are the people that go, this is not me, but I see some of me in you anyway. You are safe.
What matters more than shared experiences? It should not matter whether you are cut from the same bloodstained cloth, yes. What does matter is if you have the capacity in general to make joy out of whatever you have together, anyway.
I don’t want to be only around people that relate to me anymore. I don’t need someone to be someone they’re not to be accepted by me now. I want to be around people that don’t relate to me, but find me endlessly fascinating anyway. People that don’t pedestalize me for our differences, but can grasp that I need them just as much too.
I will ensure this will never happen ever again.