"To be vulnerable is needed most of all"

So anyway that title is a lyric from a song. It really got me to thinking about letting my guard down and maybe trying to actually feel. To actually feel!
It's not as though I have no feelings. They just seem muted or that I have been so desensitised as to not notice the full range that others , like my wife can experience for example.
I know she feels things differently than I do,being a woman but she seems so connected. I've been kind of envious. She has actually had to explain things to me so I could understand what I was feeling was real and that it was actually an emotion I really paid no attention to before so could not identify it myself. It was being vulnerable and hurt because of it.
But since the experience I have purposely tried to be kinder, patient,caring, which has also made me more vulnerable to things that could hurt. The flip side is the reward of when it goes good I can get the full range from it,without it feeling muted.
I grew up in a tough town in a tough household being sick since the age of three. I made myself in an image to show how tough I was. Being sick when I was so young till I was seventeen made me able to tolerate extreme pain. I portrayed an image that was borderline hostile. Unapproachable even.
It was the way I grew up that made me feel I had to be this way. Getting picked on because I was different made me shut down emotionally. Being so sick I didn't even care. And that my friends is where I think it all went down hill after that. I got in a couple fights and was actually pretty good. Mostly because I could take a pretty good whooping and still dole it out. So I went with it.
Been working in a prison now for sixteen years. That is a dark place that can really desensitise you. Being tough in there is a good thing to have. But I don't live there. I have to come home and get into family mode. It's a hard transition sometimes. I know that I have been hard to be around because of that place. So this new path of being vulnerable is challenging but also rewarding.
I just wanted to put this out there so people who feel that being tough is the only way could see that there is way more to life. And allowing yourself to actually feel is a power unto itself.
So don't give up on it. If you feel something , think about it , acknowledge it but also be open to it. It takes time to retrain yourself to not look at things the same way you always have. It is rewarding though, and does get easier.
Anyways that was my first blog ever. Hope it could help at least one person.
Good luck out there!