Vulnerability is a funny thing. Everyday people urge us to be authentic- with ourselves, our peers, our passions. Yet when we cut ourselves open for the world to see, they run from us as if we are violent rip currents waiting to take them under. When in reality we are nothing but individual tide pools sometimes puddled into something so much bigger than what others want to openly accept.

But I refuse to not live a life of authenticity. So many souls become comfortable with safety, causing them to become deeply implanted in solely just the soil in which they have resided their entire time of growing. Genuine love for something other than yourself has become nothing but a fossil of a feeling. Streams of emotions have dissipated and turned into desert lands.

As for me, I took the time to disappear within myself. I discovered my flatlands and made them curved. Those rip currents everyone always runs from are big, but so am I. A vulnerable soul may be looked at as someone made up of only dainty fallen petals, but the truth is they're looking past someone with roots dug deeper than sunken teeth into bitten skin.

What's authentic to those who shelter themselves like boarded windows in the midst of a storm might as well be forgery to me. I urge you to not be afraid to put your innermost self into another pair of shaky hands. To not hesitate to whisper your deepest ridden thoughts into caverns of a mind that's not your own. To not second guess putting you're ragged edged heart into someone else's hollow chest.

Vulnerability and authenticity meet at an intersection that you must come to terms with stopping at. I hope to see you there.