Beyond the walls

We get up every morning and we put on our clothes as well as an invisible layer of armor to protect us from emotional scars. We want to hide the fact that we are all very fragile, vulnerable beings with fears and insecurities. It takes less than an ounce of pressure to pierce human skin and sometimes less than that to hurt our feelings. We walk out the door guarded with our masks and walls and daring to face the world.

I've seen a lot of women with their clothes off. Well, Maybe not a lot, maybe a few. But I have only seen one trully naked. I found that when I had let my walls crumble and trully allowed someone to come in and see me as a fragile creature, she revealed herself to me as she trully was. It couldn't have been easy for her. She is a strong woman with a job in the military, a leader in many ways. She is loving, caring and tough. Or so she appears. But what I saw was a woman that had traveled a path of high expectations and mediocre results. She had loved and lost and was reluctant to do it again. She was fragile, vulnerable, scared and beautiful. I did not, for one second, view this as a weakness. This was pure bravery, and absolute trust in another person. This was love in its purest form. To allow someone unrestricted access into your world and trust them not to break anything is an act of sheer bravery. Maybe she just needed that, needed to feel like someone knew her for who she really is. Sometimes, necessity does the work of bravery. But don't we all feel like we need to be understood?