Sometimes people mistake vulnerability for weakness, because while others build walls up to prevent anyone from coming in, you bring walls down to let yourself be free.
But it takes more strength to free yourself than it does to stay caged in.
And while those who consider themselves strong, or tough, or hard, carry on as though nothing bothers them, as though nothing can break them or make them waver, you wear it on your face that you’re no stranger to being broken. And although you let others see the fact that you’ve been hurt before, you still carry on.
Because you don’t let vulnerability defeat you or define you, you let it guide you.
And you’re in a place where you’re susceptible to be hurt again, because that’s the position you put yourself in when you acknowledge that your head and your heart are of equal importance, but the benefit of being vulnerable is that you don’t allow the fear of how others will respond to prevent you from showing them a part of who you are.
Vulnerability is such a fragile term, but while those who are vulnerable are easily broken, they are also fearless. Because it takes a tremendous amount of courage to put yourself out there. Vulnerability involves taking chances. It means you’re willing to risk destruction for something greater.
You’re aware that everything could fall apart, but you do it for love, you do it for life itself, because you’d rather be fragile if pretending to be strong means constantly wondering, ‘what if?’
But being vulnerable is being strong, because if everything does fall apart, you realize there’s nothing left to do but clean up and start over. It takes strength to admit you’re not indestructible.
Being strong isn’t being fearless, it’s admitting fear’s presence and allowing it to push you forward rather than hold you back.
Vulnerability uses fear as fuel because you sacrifice hurt for haven. And in acknowledging your fears you’re acknowledging a part of who you are that maybe you’re reluctant to express.
Because all the times you wish you could convey the things you’re feeling and say the thoughts you’re thinking, vulnerability comes in and gives those thoughts the voice they didn’t have. Vulnerability is insecurity’s microphone.
Vulnerability is accepting the part of yourself that you buried the deepest, and it’s an attempt to share that part with someone else. The benefit of being vulnerable is that you finally begin to realize no one expects you to be perfect, and you begin to understand that you don’t have to be. 
