Here's My Achilles Heel

(Handy Reference Post)

"I'm standing guard, I'm falling apart

And all I want is to trust you

Show me how to lay my sword down

For long enough to let you through.

Here I am, pry me open.

What do you want to know?

I'm just a kid who grew up scared enough

To hold the door shut

And bury my innocence

But here's a map, here's a shovel.

Here's my Achilles' heel."

~"Eight" by Sleeping At Last

Can we just take a moment and appreciate how hauntingly beautiful this verse is?
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All Eights stand guard. Eights who have been burned by love stand guard with an extra sword.

For Eights, this is fine. This is how we are. This is how we prefer to be.

But then sometimes, someone comes along that we actually want to let in, and we realize in horror that we are less in control of that decision than we thought.

The beginning of being with Gabe was me standing guard, falling apart. All I wanted was to trust him. I had decided that he was (relatively, probably) safe and I wanted to trust him, to let him in. But I didn't even know how to do that.

For a long time, I would let him through only to stab him with my sword, then look down at it in horror and wonder why I had done that.

Show me how, I asked him. To lay my sword down for long enough to let you through.

He showed me inhuman patience, unconditional love, and fierce protectiveness for a long time. Eventually, slowly, I began to believe him. I was able to lay my sword down. (Not throw it a way, mind you. I'm not sure Eights can ever throw their swords away—nor do you want them to. We'll get to that in a later post.)

Even after I let him through, I didn't really "open up"; I just didn't stab him. There was a lot of—very welcome—prying open of my heart and mind.

The next line made Gabe laugh out loud when we heard the song a few months ago: "Here's a map, here's a shovel." He told me that was what I had done to him when I finally started to trust him. I had finally invited him to know me, but he was going to have to make the journey himself. I wasn't able to plop the treasure chest of Real Me in front of him. He'd have to follow a map and dig it up himself.

"Here's my Achilles heel."

The moment an Eight lets someone know the things that can hurt her is a strange one. If the Eight is anything like me, she will feel both totally exposed and ready to grab her sword again at the slightest twitch.

My Achilles heel isn't one specific thing, but sort of a state of my mind and heart, I suppose. However, even if I could narrow my Achilles heel down to one specific thing, I still wouldn't tell you here.

When an Eight reveals her Achilles heel and you don't shoot an arrow through it, everything changes.

~Stephanie