10 Ways You Can Overcome Your Fear of Vulnerability (In Relationships - Part One)

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1. Create a group chat on Facebook Messenger with good friends to hash out the harsh realities of love on the go. Tell them everything.
2. Use an abundance of emoticons and stickers in said chat. Your emotions should get out somehow.
3. Now that the modern tell-all fix is out of your system, put away the phone.
4. Sit in your office for over four hours and write the person you want to talk to a letter. Stop everything. Say everything.
5. Leave the office and find a stamp. Pray that it gets to that person before the storm. Mail it without regret.
6. If you are braver, pick up the phone. Dial, don't text. "Do you have some time?" is one of the hardest things to say and wait for.
7. Go all in if they want to talk about it.
8. If they don't, find your peace in your letter, in picking up the phone, in sitting on a Subway bench and asking, "Are you done with this?", fighting back tears.
9. Throw yourself into things that give back: projects, careers, friends who are willing to watch you pull the back of your hands before gently pulling you back on track. Give your love to something willing to open up for you.
10. Change your "Today I Feel" chart everyday. Say it out loud to the picture taped to your printer. Say it to your friends, in your half attempt at poems, and to the bottom of your homemade glass of frozen margaritas. It's better than texting your weakness at 2 AM "Hi". 

Realize that with ten steps, there's twenty more to go.

10 Ways You Can Overcome is a weekly blog series that I will be writing as I confront who I am as a person, a writer, and a creative entity in life. I hope my path will be able to help someone out there as they confront some of these issues in their own lives, personally and professionally.