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I’m often told I’m too open, and this makes me vulnerable.
I’m told there’s no end to me, no hard borders or boundaries that contain all that’s inside, that hold it like others are held. I’m told vulnerability is weakness, that it leaves you exposed, and what’s exposed tends to get hurt first. Hurt worst.
They’re wrong.
I’m just open, wide open—not a window, for windows can close. I’m the hole where a window once rested, the chasm where there could have once been a door. I’m wallless and roofless and floorless and the remains of whatever structure may have been built there in lifetimes past. I am the empty valley that holds those stones. I am the wind that whistles and makes ghost songs as it howls.
I am open. I am openness itself. I have always been this way.
It’s not all a choice, and I know this. So much of this inherent accessibility comes because of being autistic, comes with me being born with what I only know to describe as a lack of ego, nearly a lack of self. I look into mirrors and I do not see “me,” as you see me, I do not recognize the face as mine, though I am told it is. I feel like an egg cracked miles below the ocean’s surface, or miles and miles above it. I am liquid contained only by the pressure around me. I keep shape without the shell, for there was never a shell here, not really.
I have come to realize, over these nearly 44 years of existence, that every thing I have, everything I know, everything I have seen or been defined as, everything that somehow associates itself with me, have all come from this place, from this lack of walls. The absence of my boundaries have changed everything in my life.
I can remember times where this openness unnerved others. I can remember walking down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh with
, , and and stumbling into a very disgruntled, very confused Glaswegian unhoused man. Normal instinct is to keep your distance, and after the events unfolded those I was with told me they were worried he could have had a knife, but for reasons I’ll never understand, I always just approach people like this.I am open.
We ended up having a fantastic, if somewhat challenging conversation, and it all ended with him calming down, giving him some money, and him playing us a Bob Dylan cover on his broken and out-of-tune guitar. Everyone left feeling better, and it was a story we all have never forgotten.
Openness and vulnerability are two sides of the same coin, and I have always believed this. Vulnerability is so often framed as an inherent weakness, as those that display it are exposing so many parts of themselves that might be subject to judgement, to rejection, to hurt. Openness is the defiance against the fear that can come with the vulnerability that follows it. Openness is an act of courage, not fragility, and the vulnerability that comes from it isn’t really vulnerable at all, but strong, but connected, but tied with strong knots to the great humming, thumping pulse of this universe.
Openness is the view that comes, the miles and miles of wide open view, when the walls we’ve built are knocked down. It’s the vista when somehow, you were never born with walls at all. I am lucky to be this way, I am lucky my brain is “broken” in the ways society defines normality.
I am lucky to experience the world as I do, differently from almost all I know save a few. Without the filters or walls that others instinctually put up to protect themselves, I am able to bypass so many of the initial stages that most people must travel through to truly get to know people. Somehow, this strange autistic openness allows me to almost instantly feel like we’ve known one another two dozen years, perhaps another dozen more.
I like to joke, when meeting people for the first time, that we’re really just best friends already that hadn’t met yet. This lack of boundary wall, this borderless existence, most generally makes that true.
There’s no end to me, and this scares many.
I’ve been told, and this poem above speaks to this, that for some, I can come across as intimidating. This confused me, upon first hearing it, as I don’t know if I can imagine a less intimidating person than myself. When I asked for clarification, they told me it was because I genuinely don’t notice, don’t care, and am in no way truly affected if someone judges me, if someone doesn’t like being around me, or if I come across as being this open, this vulnerable. When you’re exactly what you present yourself as, to the core of you, it’s hard to know how to handle this, I was told.
I remember as a kid, being told that I’d outgrow this degree of openness. It was called precocious then, it was called a strange quirk to an already strange brain. No one know quite how to deal with the complete lack of filter, the innate sense that I already knew everyone I was meeting, that all the pretense and gamesmanship, the posturing and politeness was unnecessary. More than unnecessary, I saw it as a hindrance to truly getting to know the real person behind the mask, the truth behind the carefully curated costume.
I still haven’t. I won’t. I can’t.
When you’re open, completely and totally transparent with what you love, how you love, what you fear, what scares you, elates you, worries you, turns you on, makes you sad, or fascinates you, everything changes. Everything, in turn, opens up to you.
If you’re open, the world opens in response.
I know this to be true, I have these nearly 44 years of proof. Every single thing I’ve done, experienced, loved, endured, it’s all come from being wide open in every way to what’s coming.
This openness too, creates a strange cocoon of kindness. It spreads out and encompasses all those who come into your life. It accepts them, all of them, as they are, because they are what they are. It creates a world of human beings, rather than billions of monumentally different and divided people. It creates a family, out of everyone you meet.
Does it leave you open for getting hurt? Probably yes. Is this vulnerability? Maybe, but dammit, what’s the point if we’re not all giving out what we’ve got, freely, openly, to everyone. Do this, and you’ll attract who you’re meant to attract, repel who probably shouldn’t be near anyway. You’ll bypass months and months of bullshit, leaving so much time for truly getting to know the people you’re with.
To the heart of all things, this openness will bring you, to the center where everything good can happen.
I am open, and if you’re not, you can be. I promise. This is something you can practice, this is something you can become. We don’t have to play the silly games, we don’t have to spend so much of our precious energy worrying about what others think of us, worrying about what we’re presenting to the world outside. We can be, just be, and call it enough. We can hear the song the wind sings as it blows through the walls we once built, we can be the hole where a window once lived, the roofless stones that let all that wild grass grow around it, atop it, through it. We can. I promise.
I am open, and I hope you are too.
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