It amazes me (in a non-incredulous, knowing way) how many pieces I have written here that I did not publish.
I thought for the longest time that I don’t have what it takes, the proclivity for prolificness, if I may be annoying in my words. I thought I didn’t have what it takes to write the kind of things I like reading.
Looking at this page, I’ve realized it’s not that. It’s that I thought the page had a power over me, and I was afraid. I thought I was not worthy. I now understand why writers say you just need to show up and do the work. It’s not about the quality of your work, but just doing it, that makes one a writer.
There are so many things a person can say to us, but inside it is a puzzle, that needs to be solved, a lock that needs a key, a key we must find on our own. A person can give away their secret, but it’s learning the meaning behind it that takes so much work, and one’s own personal journey.
For so long, I have held myself back with an axe over my head, a burden on my shoulder. A burden to have a complete thought. To have figured it all out before I open my mouth.
As I sit back and look at what my life has revealed to me, what I have explored and gotten to know from it, I see that there is no such thing as a complete thought, a final answer.
My writing has always been a conversation with myself. A healing antidote… I relate to the phrase “suck out the poison.” For me, when things, words, thoughts, ideas, stay in me too long, when I suppress them, I am poisoned by myself, suffocated by my own ideas. I need to let it out, and let it be and do its own thing. In that way, I am very okay with being a vulnerable and imperfect being. I know that I am responsible for my actions, and the effects of my words. And I know also that I am a mirror for my own humanity.
I have been afraid that the things that I so hate about people are within me, and that means that if I am to reveal myself, I am to reveal hateable things, and thus I will be hated. I increasingly find that love is not like that. Love exists as a whole. Love embraces, accepts, appreciates, loves. And it requires a surrender, to even the things we don’t like about ourselves. To surrender and accept our fallibility. Our inevitable shortcomings.
I read a line in my own journal from 2016:
Sometimes we spend so long listening
We don’t realize we have a voice