On Vulnerability

I'm a reporter. It's a part of my job to ask people questions about themselves, to dig deep and find out their stories. Sometimes, I have to make people uncomfortable.

It's a little bit ironic, then, that when it's me in the hot seat, I just can't handle it.

It's something that I've been thinking about for the past few weeks, as my campus lost one chaplain in favor of another at the end of last semester. Now we have a new priest, someone whom we're all getting to know for the first time. At the same time, my parish at home is in the final stages of a merger process that will shift both the staff and congregation around. Both situations are far from comfortable, and in a way that's almost predictable for me, I find myself setting up walls. I deal with change by being stubborn and refusing to go with it.

As a rule, I am way too chatty and don't listen well enough. But at the same time, there are select few people to whom I actually show my true colors. That's not to say that I'm fake -- I'm about as real and honest as it gets -- but I can count on one hand the number of people that get to see me actually ... vulnerable.

Too often, I'm an open book. That has come back to bite me more than once, and in other circumstances I've given away pieces of myself that I can't take back now (emotionally and otherwise). So I suppose that it's fair to say being distant at first is my defense mechanism.

Opening up is so hard. In a way, if I open up to you, a bond is formed. Showing tiny parts of my heart and soul, that's so intimate and so scary. And more often than not in my life, those bonds have faded through time, distance or trouble. Sometimes, it just seems easier not to open up at all.

God has done so much to teach me humility and to accept that I need people. But it doesn't mean that allowing myself to be vulnerable is any less painful. More than anything else, I hate my neediness. The more I need people, the more I'm going to get hurt in the end.

How do I deal with that?