There is no mercy for vulnerability. Stand naked and weaponless in front of a man - or in front of the world, and one and the other alike will touch you more roughly than you can bear it. Let it happen once, don’t resist, and they will continue.
They won’t be soft or caring. They will squeeze you to death or deal a swinging blow, leaving you with marks that will turn into ugly, ragged scars. Turn your back and they’ll whisper and gossip, or worse - a knife will be drawn which was hidden in somebody’s sleeve. Open your soul - and a swarm will run through, annihilating everything fragile in its very first shy attempts to bloom. Tell a secret - and it will certainly be used against you. Give your body to someone, and it will be thrown away when they fall in love with another one or just get bored or busy.
Scary, isn’t it? ) This sort of thing can make anyone NOT want to open up at all. And when it comes to femininity, it’s an even scarier story because it seems that there are only two options in this world: 1) you become a sensitive, sensual, feminine creature in tune with your nature and risk a total annihilation as a being 2) you toughen up and survive.
But of course there are always more than two options, let’s not limit ourselves. I have found that a woman can be tough AND feminine (true to her physical nature) at the same time. She can be sensitive and strong at the same time. The only problem is - this often means taking a rather lonely path and going through incredibly hard transformations in terms of one’s mental state, physiology, and behavior.
I won’t go into the male/female thing in this post though. I’ll go back to vulnerability and opening up.
Despite all I have written in the beginning of this post, I know that it is worth to open up and stand naked in front of the world. It is worth it even if it kills you on the inside. It’s the only way to find out certain things about life and yourself.
Now, what happens in the process and afterwards and what we do with the things we learn... I guess that depends on how good and strong a human we are.