{"id":265,"date":"2006-02-23T10:45:04","date_gmt":"2006-02-23T14:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2006\/02\/23\/im-a-contradiction-in-vulnerability\/"},"modified":"2006-02-23T10:45:04","modified_gmt":"2006-02-23T14:45:04","slug":"im-a-contradiction-in-vulnerability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2006\/02\/23\/im-a-contradiction-in-vulnerability\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m a Contradiction in Vulnerability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a4160'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><P>I&#8217;m realizing more and more each and every day why I need&nbsp;therapy. Yeah, yeah, yeah &#8211; I&#8217;ve got self-esteem issues. So what? I&#8217;ve got minor social anxiety, too.&nbsp;Nothing new&nbsp;there. I could have told you those things 20 years ago.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>But I&#8217;m realizing that even after acknowledging mistakes I made in my 10-year relationship with Matt and promising never to be that person again, I&#8217;m still doing the same things.&nbsp; I guess the key issue I&#8217;m referring to is communication. With Matt, I bottled up my opinions and issues&nbsp;for years. I know it all boils down to the self-esteeem: I never want to upset other people or have them think less of me. I do everything I can to avoid confrontation &#8211; and that never leads to good things.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>That was one of my major faults in my relationship with Matt. It was one of my major faults in my relationship with Rich. Notice a pattern here? <\/P><br \/>\n<P>Yet, at the same time, I seem to have no problem expressing things through text. I feel less vulnerable discussing things through email, instant messaging or this blog. I can understand why &#8211; it&#8217;s much easier to talk when you can&#8217;t see the reaction in somebody&#8217;s face or hear hurt and anger in their voice.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>For example, unless it was with an incredibly close friend, I would most likely not share my bar experience from the other night. Yet I had no reservations about posting it here for the world to see. And just recently a friend of mine, Will (of designerblog), connected me with a friend of his who is also an employee of Harvard.&nbsp;Once again, &nbsp;I&#8217;m much more comfortable planning to get together for lunch with him by email than I am by calling him&#8230;and he&#8217;s just a 5-digit telephone extension away.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Ironically, although I feel less vulnerable by expressing myself in writing, it actually makes me <EM>more<\/EM>&nbsp;vulnerable since what I say can come back to haunt me (there&#8217;s proof!).&nbsp; Well, believe it or not, I do show restraint on here. I mean, I&#8217;ve not blogged about the orgy I had while participating in a bank robbery with key local Republicans (while high on Oxycontin). <\/P><br \/>\n<P>Though, I do suspect my pizza, sauerkraut and turkey hot dog dinner will live in infamy. I guess I do have some regrets.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>Anyway, enough drama. I&#8217;ve got therapy tonight (that works out well) and then I&#8217;m off to Cape Cod tomorrow for the weekend to celebrate my Dad&#8217;s 77th birthday. He wants to go to Newport, Rhode Island on Saturday. Not to see the mansions. Not to shop in the charming downtown. Nope &#8211; he wants to go to the slot-machine casino down there. I guess I should plan to lose a bit of money.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m realizing more and more each and every day why I need&nbsp;therapy. Yeah, yeah, yeah &#8211; I&#8217;ve got self-esteem issues. So what? I&#8217;ve got minor social anxiety, too.&nbsp;Nothing new&nbsp;there. I could have told you those things 20 years ago. But I&#8217;m realizing that even after acknowledging mistakes I made in my 10-year relationship with Matt [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}