the price of vulnerability

By Laura Gao • 3 min read
May 2023

background story: vulnerability good, sigil says. how u make actual connection/trust is opening up. sigil would post moments of him in downtimes on his instagram stories for vulnerability. one of tks mindsets of the week was vulnerability.

some of my fav human [connection](atlas er changed me) moments were pog vulnerable human connection moments.

i started using updately in dec 2020, 2.5 years ago. daily updates. i wrote everything. all my thoughts. sometimes, epople would tell me they read my updately and wnat to meet me. dron and samson would give me advice. security by obscurity, they call it. i figured, i am j a boring regular 15 yr old, i'm not famous, people probably don't care about me. i am just writing bullshit. like my shitty ass writing. who wants to read this shit? i have like, no personal sense of privacy.

but then idk being full-on vulnerable has problems

  • jonas thing (accidental oversharing in professional contexts is quite... bad.)
  • sammy tells me he read my consent post and i cringe inside, look at the sidewalk in front of us, till he's like yeah i know it's hard then i dare to make eye contact
  • uli: "that updately about that night i taught u transfomers" and gosh he fucking read the stuff i said about him and i look to the left, take a step, throw my head in my hands, gah "oh no u read that," and he's like "nono i liked it, like your writing made it seem like we're in a movie." @ brennan calling [what'shisname that russian author]'s writing cinematic. and gosh this is such a fucking good writing compliment

/babble/write2 would not have happened if i made my babble, or updately private

  • ugh. all those ^^ "fav human connection moments" links are like. stories. about cool human connection moments w friends. where we wewre vulnerable. and like, by defn, they are abt things that [friends] said that they may not want public. so like smtn feels bad abt writing abt them publically. like if they read it it could be bad and they might feel bad idk fuck my life maybe i shouldnt write them maybe i should show them first but that is AWKWARD esp since havnet talked to some of them in a year, but we had these moments we shared and we were the only two alive and these moments still have a sweet spot in my heart altho we havent talked in a year...

leave a msg for laura

i respect your emotional rawness. keep introspecting, maybe a little less inspirational quote posting...

msgs are anonymous. optionally leave ur name & discord (or other contact info) if u want me to respond