Glass Rabbit

I am probably the most emotional person I know.

Anything from a particularly pink sunset to a specific arrangement of clouds can get me feeling some kind of way.

I also have this weird notion that everything is permanent. I fall in love with everything from shades of blue to the Lumineers on a record player. I think I’m too young to think entirely practically yet.

But I realize that my emotional tendencies stem from a long series of events that have unfolded this way and that, many times in ways that I wish could have unfolded differently.

Why am I telling you this? Because I want to talk about the idea of vulnerability.

I break easily; I was born delicate, I guess.

My freshman year of college, I sat in the dark in the courtyard of my dorm and cried into my best friend’s shoulder. He looked at me and called me “glass rabbit” for the first time.

He told me about a small glass rabbit his mother owns that sits at the edge of her desk. It’s fragile and if it fell, it would shatter into a million pieces. He told me that I was fragile and that I should be protected from shattering, too. And then he told me that, that was okay.

Hearing that only made me cry more.

That night seems like a long time ago, but it has really only been two years since then. So much has changed, but I’m still that same glass rabbit.

Vulnerability is terrifying in today’s world. No one’s life is private, and secrets have almost become obsolete, especially with the rise of social media.

An easy metaphor for vulnerability and acceptability is undergarments and bathing suits, cheesy as that may be. One is socially acceptable to be seen in and the other is taboo; the only differentiating factor is that someone decided that it would be that way.

It took me a long time to blur the barriers between what is deemed socially acceptable and what is not. It took even longer to fully accept my emotionality and, beyond that, to embrace it. I leaned into it and discovered a community to belong in. I found other glass rabbits. I found my best friends.

And that’s not to say I didn’t shatter a few times. I did. But I had people to glue me back together when I couldn’t do it myself.

I had people who taught the glass rabbit how to bend and not break.

I had people who taught me how to rebuild.

I spent so much time taking care of myself and convincing myself I needed to do things alone because being vulnerable meant being susceptible to getting hurt. To heartbreak. To pain.

I forgot that being vulnerable also means being able to connect deeply, find solidarity and create meaningful relationships.

I was always a glass rabbit. I just needed to be told that I didn’t need to do everything on my own.

I needed to embrace my own vulnerability and stop living in my socially acceptable, metaphorical bathing suit. I needed to embrace my undergarments, my underneath, my deeper layers.

So this is me, (metaphorically) standing in front of you, stripped of any facade that I have built over the last twenty years (and on a very public platform...yikes).

I am making myself uncomfortable in hopes that maybe baring my heart will be more comfortable someday. Until then, I will continue to romanticize everything and live emotionally.

And I hope that maybe you’ll live emotionally too.

By Bella Townsend

UC Berkeley student, poetry enthusiast and firm believer in Taco Tuesday