Police-Report Vulnerability

I have had to learn the difference between vulnerability and merely informing others of the hard things that happened. I was a self-proclaimed master at the latter, willing and ready to tell others, even those whom I did not know well at all, about my abusive childhood and dead parents. This eagerness fooled me into believing that I was an expert at vulnerability. If I were telling people that my dad murdered my mom, then I had to be practicing the tenderness that healing demanded!

So, I could (and sure would) recite the gory details of the night she died, stoic and straight to the point, no strain in my voice or tension in my jaw to be found, telling of the blood stains in the car, the elusive texts, and the storage unit brimming with firearms and pointy bullets. I told and told and told, anyone and everyone, but never encountered relief. This was “police-report vulnerability,” my therapist so kindly pointed out to me, almost four years later, and not actual vulnerability. Telling what happened was not the same as expressing, feeling, and showing how the murder-suicide (and decades of abuse prior) affected my sense of self, belief in the world, and hope for the future (or lack thereof).

I had locked away all of my rage, devastation, tension, solace, distress, and grief behind really outstanding, but emotionless storytelling. It was a clever guise, really, to articulate the affairs without actually feeling the weight of what occurred. I sharpened my story to something blunt, tidy, and respectable, retaining complete control over what was said and how it was told. This storytelling, the regurgitating of the police report, became my default after seeing comments at the bottom of published stories on News outlets, speaking ill of my mom and offering my dad the benefit of the doubt he did not deserve, speculating about her delusion, that my dad did what he did for a good reason. I had to tell what really happened; I could not live with myself if I did not use my voice to speak of the cruelty, her innocence, and his evil. As I bluntly told the things he had done and said, I was able to control the narrative and foster a public sense of despair about the father I had, not in a woe-is-me way, but in a “you better not doubt the character of my mom for a single second” way. It was never for me and always for her—no wonder I was not encountering any bit of reduction in pain! Vulnerability is for you, not for anyone else.

Regardless, I gained admiration for my “strength” as others were awed that I could even speak about the events, and, as a result, I was showered with praise for my openness, and in a twisted way, this made me feel accomplished. They said I was brave, so I had to be strong, resilient, vulnerable, right!? I was quickly fooled into believing that vulnerability was a tool to control a narrative, no emotion required. So, the more I retold the story, the more I thought I had it under my command.

I have since come to understand that vulnerability, the kind that truly fosters healing, is not simply recounting what happened externally, telling of the events in order, with excruciating detail, but about recognizing and engaging with the ways it rearranged, vandalized, and spoiled the innermost parts of me. As I released control and abandoned my attempts to maintain both a narrative that ensured my mom’s innocence and an outward perception of remarkable composure, I began to practice real vulnerability and quit the police-report vulnerability.

I use the word practice with intent; actual vulnerability is not an intrinsic force we are given and can effortlessly express, nor is it something that can be mastered in a handful of cracks. It is work—something that must be intentionally pursued each day, something that must be prioritized, believed in, and surrendered to. This is the form of vulnerability that is fundamental for healing, the one that is HARD to do, to maintain. This vulnerability is the only vessel through which truth can move freely in the body. And truth must be allowed in—welcomed, even—as it threads itself through our insides before it can ever be carried, claimed, or quieted into something we can work with.

Emotion becomes usable—transformative, even—only when it’s given the space, nuance, and slack it demands. I didn’t begin to brush against real healing until I tore off the protective shell of police-report vulnerability and let the whole, unruly weight of genuine vulnerability press into me—releasing my grip on the narrative and trusting, however reluctantly, that this raw, unhindered vulnerability was working in my favor.

Vulnerability, the unfiltered, unbridled form, is the indisputable foundation for healing. Let it do what it must. It is on your side.

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