The most useless meat of all: The sentence I carried with me (Part 1)
A meditation on the holy discomfort of letting yourself be seen, a homeless prophet, and other dangerous acts of becoming.
Chapter 8
“I’ve deleted more dreams than I’ve shared.
Not because they were bad—but because I thought I was.”
“The Prophecy”
I was probably 13. Maybe 14.
That exact age when everything about you feels like a disruption, your hair, your skin, your walk. Your thoughts are a little too loud, your body draws attention you never asked for, and your values have already begun to shift away from the place that raised you.
You’ve felt it for years now: You don’t quite fit.
It was an ordinary afternoon. I was walking home in my usual teenage armor: my brother’s old military jacket drowning my frame, sleeves too long, attitude even louder.
Underneath it, an oversized flannel that smelled faintly of secondhand smoke and unspoken rebellion. My low-rise jeans barely held on, and my Wehrmacht boots clunked defiantly on the pavement, laces undone…because tying them felt like a metaphor for compliance.
I didn’t have a cause. Just a lot of feelings, a deep suspicion of anything shiny, and the quiet certainty that I didn’t belong to the place I came from.
That’s when I saw him.
Or more accurately, he saw me.
A homeless “prophet”, the kind who looked like he’d fallen out of the cracks in the world. Hair and beard tangled like forgotten yarn, his clothes more like discarded history than fabric, layers of time stitched into silence.
A patchwork blanket hung from his shoulders, the kind you still see almost three decades later on the backs of men camped near subway stations and under bridges.
More symbol than shelter.
He looked like he carried the entire weight of the world’s regret on his back, and maybe a little of mine too.
And then, for reasons I still sometimes believe were the language of the universe, or some karmic glitch I’ve never been able to explain, he stepped in front of me, placed his hands firmly on my arms, looked straight into my eyes with a foggy kind of urgency, and, while gently shaking me, he said this:
“Human flesh is the most useless meat of all.”
That’s it.
No explanation. No follow-up.
Just that one sentence, like a curse or a sermon or a dare, and then he turned and walked away.
I stood there, holding that line like a piece of hot coal I didn’t know how to drop.
I didn’t tell anyone. Who could I tell? I didn’t have the words, just the weight.
I was already speaking a different language. This would’ve been the final nail. So I kept it inside me. Except…not really.
I tucked it into a poem I wrote later that year, the kind you never show anyone. Well, maybe to a therapist, years later. The kind you write when something needs to be exorcised.
Title: The Metabolism of Oblivion Starves My Mistakes. That poem felt like truth wrapped in dirty fingernails and prophecy:
“Hang the tongues I gifted you as sails upon Greece!
‘The most useless flesh is that of man,’ he said,
Slapped the ripples of his blood
For distracting him from my breast.
And the Lord? The one who partakes in nothing.
Blessed are the sick!
They crave birth pains like women.
Become sick—and I, accursed!”
(It’s lived in silence for decades, that poem. But maybe after what’s coming next, I’ll share it. As a gesture. A beginning. A soft exhale of something I once buried. Maybe, I’ll let it speak for that girl…)
I think I understand it now.
The “prophecy.”
I think that was the moment I realized how quickly the world makes you hide your softness. How easy it is to confuse your body with your worth. Your voice with your value. Your failure to shine as a failure to matter.
That sentence didn’t scare me because it was grotesque. It scared me because it echoed something I already feared might be true:
That if you’re not useful, if you’re not beautiful, if you’re not brilliant, you’re disposable. And when you’re 13 and tender and still deciding whether you’re allowed to speak out loud, that line gets under your skin.
It sneaks into your bones and makes a home in your creativity. It becomes the reason you hesitate before raising your hand, the reason you rip out pages from your notebook, the reason you almost auditioned.
We talk a lot about failure in the abstract. But for some of us, failure never felt like something that happened to your work. It felt like something that happened to you.
And the only defense? Never let them see the real you.
Keep it vague.
Keep it cool.
Keep it clever.
Don’t be the girl who cracks jokes to hide the prophecy in her eyes.
Don’t be the kid who wore intuition like a curse and humor like a shield.
Don’t be the child fluent in silence before she could speak her own truth.
Never be the one who wants too much. Don’t make eye contact with strangers who might see straight through you.
But here’s the thing about being seen: Once it happens, once someone looks at you and really sees the soft, terrified, trying part of you, it’s almost impossible to go back to being invisible. That man didn’t mean to give me a life lesson. He probably didn’t even remember the moment ten minutes later. But I did.
Because somewhere in that moment was a collision between two truths:
Vulnerability makes you human.
And this world doesn’t always reward that.
But what it does do, what vulnerability might do, if we let it, is peel back the illusion that we ever needed to be impressive to belong. That we ever had to be useful to be worthy. And that’s where this story begins. Not with a grand triumph. But with a strange, beautiful wound.
One that taught me not to trust my voice, and later dared me to reclaim it.
Because maybe flesh isn’t useless. Maybe it’s holy.
Maybe it’s the only part of us tender enough to feel everything, and still choose to stay open.
What we learn to hide
I used to think vulnerability was like glitter, only beautiful when applied intentionally, and never, ever allowed to spill. Because when it spills? It sticks to everything. It sparkles where it shouldn’t. It tells the truth too loudly.
But the world doesn’t reward your softness unless you’ve already turned it into something polished. Something they can admire. Quote. Applaud.
Otherwise? It’s just a liability. A crack in your armor. A reason not to invite you to the meeting. A mark against your readiness.
Let’s be honest: No one ever explicitly told you to hide.
But they didn’t have to. You felt it the moment someone rolled their eyes at your excitement. Or at your questions. Or the uncomfortable truths you voiced without hesitation, because you were still a child. The moment you cried and someone said, “You’re too sensitive.”
The moment you shared something you were proud of, and they replied, “That’s it?” The moment they threw away your book, because it was shameful for their small, scared selves. Or saw your “scarred face”, and didn’t even flinch. Because it was unfamiliar, and unfamiliar makes people look away.
That’s how the hiding starts. Not with a door slammed shut. But with a thousand tiny exits from your own selfhood. We don’t learn to build walls overnight. We build them brick by brick, each one made of tiny moments that taught us:
“Don’t be too much.”
“Don’t be too open.”
“Don’t be caught without a plan.”
Our emotional scar tissue
Psychologists often call this kind of protection emotional avoidance. But I think a more accurate name might be emotional scar tissue. Scar tissue forms after injury. It’s thick. Resilient. It exists to protect the wound beneath it.
Scar tissue forms after injury. It’s thick. Resilient. It protects the wound beneath it. But it also limits movement. It numbs the sensation. It prevents healing at the root.
Over time, that thick armor of protection does something far more damaging than the original wound, it deadens your emotional responsiveness.
And sensitivity is exactly what vulnerability needs to breathe.
When we live covered in scar tissue, we start responding to life like it’s a threat, even when it’s extending us something beautiful.
We tense up in love. We pull away when someone sees us clearly. We brace for rejection, even in the middle of real connection. This isn’t just a personality trait. It’s not introversion. It’s not “being private.”
It’s a nervous system trained to expect shame as the consequence of exposure. It’s a body that remembers what it felt like to be seen and judged. To open up, and regret it.
Why vulnerability starts to feel unsafe
Brené Brown says it clearly, and often:
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of creativity, belonging, and joy.”
But she also offers the harder truth:
“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome.”
And there it is, the line that explains so much: Why we stop trying. Why we hold back. Why we rewrite, reread, and delete the message before we hit send.
Because control feels like safety. Perfection feels like protection. And certainty becomes an addiction for anyone who’s been hurt by unpredictability.
If you’ve ever loved someone who couldn’t let you in, you’ve seen this in real time.
They don’t pull away because they don’t care. They pull away because they do. But for them, care feels like danger. Closeness feels like exposure. And exposure? Feels like risk. So instead of softening into the moment, they armor up. They build walls and call them boundaries. They withdraw and call it independence. They avoid discomfort and label it maturity, or wisdom, or “just protecting their peace.”
And I get it. I’ve done it too. Avoidance isn’t the absence of desire.
It’s desire + fear + the memory of a pain you never want to feel again.
Perfectionism: Hiding in plain sight
Perfectionism is one of shame’s most successful disguises.
It looks like ambition. It sounds like excellence.
But it’s actually just fear dressed up in strategy. It’s your brain saying, “If I can make it flawless, maybe no one will see I’m scared.”
The problem is, perfection doesn’t create connection. It creates distance. It disconnects us from others, and from ourselves. Because the part of us that needs to be seen isn’t the curated version, it’s the soft one. The real one.
What does this have to do with failure, you ask? Everything.
Because failure isn’t just an outcome, it’s a mirror. It shows us the parts of ourselves we haven’t made peace with. The part that longs for recognition but panics at visibility. The part that carries ambition in one hand and self-doubt in the other. The part that’s still haunted by the idea that being misunderstood means being unworthy.
That’s why failure so often feels disproportionate to the moment, it’s not just the pitch that flopped, the post no one liked, or the idea that didn’t land. It’s the emotional echo.
It pokes the softest places. The ones still sore from that fourth-grade classroom where someone laughed at your poem. Or told you your voice was “weird.” Or raised an eyebrow at your dream before you had the words to defend it.
Failure hurts most when it confirms the story we’re already afraid is true.
For the ones who folded themselves too small
If you learned to close off because someone once made you feel foolish, If you stopped painting, singing, writing, speaking, hoping, because it felt too risky, If you’ve made a career out of being invulnerable…this chapter is your mirror.
You’re not cold. You’re not too sensitive. You’re not unambitious. You’re just protecting something you never got to protect the first time around.
But here’s the gentle truth: You don’t have to keep protecting it forever. It’s not that soft anymore. You’re not that fragile anymore. And maybe, what you’ve been calling self-preservation has been quietly keeping your joy, your voice, and your creativity at arm’s length.
Let’s call it what it is. It’s not about not caring. It’s about caring so much it terrifies you. So here’s what I’m learning, and you need to hear it too:
Walls don’t just keep pain out. They keep everything out. And sooner or later, even the person behind them starts to feel like a stranger.
So what do we do? We try softness again. We name the scar tissue. We tell the truth, even if our voice still shakes. Because real creativity, like real intimacy, doesn’t begin when we’re perfect. It begins when we stop hiding.
And that’s where we’ll pause.
Right here, where the armor starts to crack. Where the page starts to feel a little warmer. Where you begin to remember the part of you that wanted to be seen, not because it was ready, but because it was real.
This was the first step. The naming. The remembering. The slow, quiet unearthing of what we’ve buried.
Next week, we walk right into the ache
Not into theory, but into feeling. I’ll share what it means to live with thin skin in a world built for armor.
What it means to write when your voice still trembles. What it means to love, and risk, and create as someone who feels everything. We’ll explore the science behind vulnerability and sensitivity, read the full “poem” that’s been stitched between every line, and talk about the beauty, and brutality, of being wide open when everyone tells you to shut down.
Apparently, I wanted to experiment this time, with shorter posts. I know they’re usually too long. And I really did try. You’ve told me what works, what doesn’t, what’s too much…and I listened.
So I thought: Let’s do something different. Shorter chapters. Same big truths. More heart. Less overwhelm. Well, spoiler alert (though not really, because if you made it here, you read the whole damn thing, and thank you): I didn’t quite make it.
Not only did I have to split this piece into two parts, but the “short version” I swore I was posting almost hit email character limit.
I’m learning, I promise.
Maybe, vulnerability doesn’t need to yell, but sometimes…I do. :)
Vulnerability needs only somewhere to land.
This is that place.
Call it a soft landing.
Call it home.
Come sit with me.
Until then…
Take off what you can. Breathe a little deeper. Remember: You don’t have to reveal it all.
Just…stop hiding from yourself.
The rest, we’ll uncover together.
And before we meet again, ask yourself gently: What story might begin where you were once hurt?
More soon.
Stay soft. Stay messy. Stay brave.
Gloriously yours,
Eleni
Every Monday at 11:30 CET, the Glorious Fail will meet you where you are, ready to disrupt, challenge, and rebrand failure.
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