Vulnerability: The Importance of Mental Health

What is vulnerability? The ability to cry? Feeling things intensely? I would say it’s simply being a human being. All of us have vulnerability, most of us have been conditioned to hide it myself included. We’re trained to smile when we don’t feel like smiling, to always sell ourselves and our lives as successful. We’re not human beings, we’re a brand: Jane Smith. Woman with a career. Loves being a mother. See pictures of her vacation and baking things and trying that new restaurant everyone is talking about, in every photo she is smiling. The smile may not be coming within a hundred miles of her eyes, but she is technically smiling. What is Jane really feeling? I’m doing great. Jane will say that because she is conditioned to always be positive….and smile. She is programmed to always portray a life of success, to conceal whatever vulnerability she possesses. She is an actress, surrounded by other actors and actresses, all the world is a stage, or at least America is.

In the United States, weakness is derided. You have a job for ten years and get laid off you are not allowed to grieve, to be vulnerable. We’ll spend over a trillion dollars on a war that does fuck all but if you need a month to just go out in the woods and cry or whatever you need to do some people will say, “Get a job, deadbeat.” I was lucky: When I lost my job and my marriage ended I was able to just travel around and sort things out; few people have that luxury. So many human beings are struggling in this country, every paycheck is crucial and there is this stressful cycle of juggling bills and other expenses. Can you just take a couple of weeks to breathe and sort things out and decompress? Are you serious?? Do you think you’ll get two weeks off your job when you’re responsible for the work of three people? No, you can’t be vulnerable. You need to get back out there and succeed, be a winner. And smile.

The three American Outback books I published are an examination of how this American life is not for all of us, the importance of being able to just slow down and breathe, to be vulnerable. Being vulnerable is not about oversharing, about crying in the middle of Target or anything like that, it’s about facing what you really feel and understanding what you need. Not what you want, what you need. We need a tribe, people who we can trust with our kids when we need to just go to the ocean or the desert for a few days and do nothing but fucking watch birds or something. Do it for me and I’ll do it for you. There was another shooting today and there was one the day before I think—this pace of life, this denial of our vulnerability is literally killing us.

I was born in the United States and have lived here my entire life. My goal is to move to another country and disappear into their culture. If I move to Mexico I don’t want to be in one of the big expat towns, I want to live with Mexicans and speak Spanish. If I move to Portugal or wherever same thing. If the United States works for you I respect that but it doesn’t work for me. I look around at my fellow countrymen and they are, mostly, alien to me.

Well, Izaak, like you said, that is just their masks, the armor they wear around other people.

I get that, it’s like the country is the set of a sitcom or a violent cartoon and everyone is acting and I don’t want that, I can’t be a part of that anymore. I am not okay with the fact that children go hungry and old people freeze in winter because they can’t pay their gas bill in the wealthiest country on Earth. Everyone is so wrapped up in hating the Blue folks or the Red folks that they don’t stop and realize, “Hey, my senator, who works for me and is paid by my taxes has the best healthcare in the world and I have a thousand dollar deductable.”

This is me being vulnerable, I have no idea how to fix this country, I mean I do but it ain’t gonna happen, and it breaks my heart. It really does. It breaks my heart enough that I can’t be a part of it anymore.

What they threw a civilization and nobody came?

That is line from the first American Outback book. I was being pithy or maybe attempting to be clever but, yeah, I have utopian ideals like any other fool—maybe you have them, too. Mine would be living out in the sticks with a bunch of like minded people, having some sort of sustainable off the grid thing. Or, a bunch of us forming an LLC and buying a dead town somewhere, some little village on a river. Somewhere it is quiet at night and you see the stars, hear the river in motion and see the moon reflected off it. We’d live life at natural pace, raise animals, be a tribe and not a collection of strangers living in a beige wasteland where we don’t know most of our neighbors. Sometimes vulnerability means allowing yourself to get lost in dreams or ideals, and that’s not a bad thing...

You can find my books here:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Izaak-Diggs/author/B00EG7OKUY?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true