Forewarning

I had an interesting shift of perspective this morning while reflecting on my desire to be a writer. It began as I explored the dynamic of vulnerability and shame. The emotional hangover that comes with sharing my writing. The insecurity in it’s worth, the paranoia that other’s positive feedback is placation. 

I have this intense need to share my writing. This desire to scream it from the rooftops and publish it in the New York Times, yet I take no steps to share it- to publish it- to allow it to exist freely open to the public. I keep saying I don’t know how, that I don’t know what steps to take, but the truth is I haven’t tried. I haven’t done anything past talk about it. I tell my friends I want to write and feel my cheeks flush in embarrassment. I don’t believe in my own ability, and it is so much easier to to live in the preceding space where no risk has yet been taken. To never try rather than to try and to fail. Though never trying is not really an option anymore thanks to the fact that I refuse to let fear based decision making rule my life now. I am too aware. 

But I write in such a rush, such a release. I have so much to say and at any given moment I wish to go on three hundred tangents at once. I type and erase and type and erase as I contemplate which avenue to take. The options are endless, they are overwhelming, I feel too much. Which is something I consider  to be a good thing about myself (good without morality attached.) I want to feel too much, and I acknowledge how ok it is, but just because I accept my desire as a fact, it does not make it easier to experience. Just because I invite the darkness in as my teacher, it does not mean I don’t feel the weight in the same way.

 Today, I have been overwhelmed with the feeling of joy and sadness intermixed so intensely it feels as if my throat is closing and my head is bursting and I want to laugh as I play in the river of my falling tears. I think emotions are still such a new experience for me I am in awe of them all the time. I am in the portion where there is no ability to articulate. I think of ribbons intertwining, moving constantly together in a spiral of air. I think of the smoke as it rises in the sunlight after I blow out the candle. Unpredictable, weaving throughout one another in a cadence that is not planned but is not without a relationship. I think of silk being blown in the wind. Does this help clarify? Which is all to say, as I write, I spill out my soul onto the paper as my experience begs to be acknowledged and then by keeping my words to myself I deny her (my soul, my experiences) the connection she so desperately craves. 

The sharing of the human experience, I have come to realize, is the foundation of all the moments that make my skin tingle and my heart hurt and the air around me pick up as if acknowledging my role in the universe. The alignment of the important things. Which is why my latte this morning made me want to cry and the fried eggs and feta I made for breakfast had me laughing alone in the kitchen. This is why I have told myself twelve times before noon today “I am allowed to change my mind” and how sweet and how heart breaking is life once you realize this. How freeing and terrifying. 

And then I think of sharing my writing. To think of taking my words and my thoughts and creating a version of it I deem worthy of asking an audience to read. I fear it would suck all the soul out of it. Am I scared of how people would perceive my writing or who I would become if I was writing for the sake of being perceived? Right now writing is a precious release. There is a purity in knowing that the words are mine and mine alone and while I want to share them in pursuit of creating for others what other’s words have created for me, I am terrified. While I feel called to offer a moment of recognition, a connection born from someone else’s understanding of your experience entirely secular from your actual experience, I hesitate to taint the purity. And I fully acknowledge that I am being selfish. What if every writer before me kept their words to themselves? How lonely this world would be. 

So the thing is, I don’t want to be a writer, I am a writer. A fact made true simply by my existence. By my need to cleanse my soul each morning in this release. In my 2am confessions to strangers about the world that lives within me. Each word a stroke on the canvas. Each sentence a risk taken. Can you understand the complexities that live within my own mind at any given moment? Why nothing is simple but it is most often the simple moments that bring me to tears. I think what I’m feeling is akin to thankful. Overflowing with appreciation, maybe. But I’ll save you an exploration of trying to define the storms that swirl inside me, for trying to dissect this moment alone could fill my first ten novels, and I’ll share with you my writing. 

Please taste my apprehension, my fear, my insecurity, my pride, my joy, my love, my need, my desire, my duality and the dualities of my duality. Please accept my words as an offering, an acknowledgment of already knowing my worth, not asking for your validation. Please know, I am at peace with myself and my words and this peace is a battle I wake up and choose to fight each day. Please note, I am terrified that giving up control will take away all the good parts of my life, but this is a fear I have experienced before, and it has only been proven wrong time and time again. So here I go again, choosing to intentionally follow the feeling of diving head first into the abyss that has preceded every best worst decision I have ever made.