You’re Vulnerable Even if You Think You’re Not
A story of a sudden weakness that turned out to be normal.
I like the feeling of wholeness. Generally speaking, this is the feeling of unpleasant and strange things happening around, while you deflect them with your invisible armor. For instance, your management sharply criticizes you, but you keep smiling and working on nevertheless, since this is not the end of life. I have been working on my armor for quite a while, having achieved certain success. However, it suddenly fell apart, notably on my birthday.
I turned 26 a while ago. That birthday was an absolutely quiet event, unlike my 20th one. Before, I found it important to get best wishes from my friends and acquaintances. When somebody called me somewhere towards the evening time, I thought that my exceptional day was not a big deal for them, which made me upset. I got upset even if I knew that they had been busy all day long at work and only now found time to give me a call.
I don’t care about it now. Thanks to the feeling of wholeness, all rancor and worries are in the past, which is why I find it now easier to live. My ex-schoolmate did not call? Perfect. I will now delete his birthday notification from my phone. Next time I won’t need to call him. Why bother do something for those who will never appreciate it, right?
Some people might find my approach too harsh. I like it, though. At the bare minimum now I find it fair.
Hence, the latest birthday was going alright. I was happy to receive calls from those who decided to send their best wishes, and I did not care about those who did not have time, forgot the date or failed to do so for any other reason. I did not need that, since I had that armor.
Towards evening this attitude of mine changed. My brain could not help noticing, in quite a treacherous way, that my blood brother had forgotten to call me. He lived in another town, so the only thing I could be hoping for was only a phone call. Nevertheless, I did not get one. I tried not to think about it, but I failed every time. The thought of the forgotten call drove all the others out of my mind: I kept glancing at my phone during my work that took me longer than expected to complete, while playing a festive-mood game of Counter-Strike, even while absent-mindedly fingering a glass of light Pinot Noir from New Zealand. There were no notifications appearing on my phone. My brother neither called nor dropped a line. The day was over.
On the following day I felt completely perplexed. I could not understand how my brother could have forgotten to call me on my birthday. I kept thinking about it for a long time. For some reason I even came to a conclusion that I would have never done that myself. Secretly I promised myself that I would call my brother on his birthday as soon as possible, to remind him about his memory lapse and make him feel embarrassed.
These were absurd thoughts, but they did cross my mind. It’s funny that my wholeness did not help me back then at all.
My brother called me in the evening. I was playing an online-game wearing big headphones, so I could not pick up the phone. One might have thought that I felt offended and did not reply only for this reason. As a matter of fact, I did feel offended. Not too much, but rancor stayed with me nevertheless. I had this unpleasant feeling about my brother not having called me on my birthday. I had the unpleasant feeling about this whole situation evoking emotions in me that I had been trying to distance myself from for so long. I had the unpleasant feeling, because he understood this, especially after I did not take the call.
The following minute he set about texting me on messenger. His wishes were interspersed with apologies, which made the whole thing even more sentimental. I read it, feeling even ashamed.
I finished the game after 10 minutes and called him back. It is funny now, but back then my tone of voice was quite angry. At first I did not feel like talking at all. The unconscious rancor was that deep.
After a couple of minutes I felt better. We had a good talk. However, it still rankled with me a while. Not because of the belated birthday greetings, but because of my childish reaction. I was not happy about my not being able to pull myself together and giving my emotions some sort of free rein. But that’s how it was. I was also angry about the fact that my wholeness that normally works just fine with acquaintances, had disappeared. I came to realize that there could possibly be no armor whatsoever to protect me from my nearest and dearest. This simply does not work.
People crave love, attention and care. Even if you try hard to convince yourself of the opposite, you will sooner or later find out the obvious truth. I will no longer try to convince myself of it.
