No, really, tell us.

I hate the phrase “Tell us how you really feel.” This phrase, always spoken in response to a passionate statement, is just a douchey response to actual emotion. You think you’re maintaining a cool, detached demeanor when in reality you sound like a passionless motherfucker whose primary concern is remaining disengaged. You know what you’re doing? You’re telling us how you really feel.

 

And you feel afraid. You’re afraid of letting people know that you have feelings. That you might care about something. Because you do care, and you know that caring makes you vulnerable. You think vulnerability makes you weak (it actually makes you strong) and feeling weak terrifies you.

In fact, someone just did display a moment of passion, a moment of vulnerability, and it reminds you – some people in this world can be brave. Some even do it reflexively. They hold little back.

And that makes you feel weaker, even more scared than you usually do. So to re-assert your control over that situation, your life, your delicately inflated self-image, you smirk, lean back, and utter a detached, “Tell us how you really feel.”

 

You know what? I would like to know how you really feel. Tell me what lights you up inside, what you dream of, what you’d fucking die for.

Be brave. I know you have it in you.

Tell us how you really feel.

We’re waiting.