I don't think I've fully come to terms with my relationship with my writing and my desire to share it with others. "You just want attention," some part of me declares. And well, yeah, it has a point. I think some part of me really does just want attention. I don't know where that leaves the other parts though: the parts that want to give, the parts that want to commune, to bond, to hold hands with the world, to move forwards, together. Usually it leaves them by the wayside. Usually it has me withholding myself, my ideas, my creativity, my crazy experiments, and, well, my writing. And so there's a lot of stuff I've felt urges to share that I haven't. You know why not, the usual reasons: fear of 'rejection', fear of being seen as someone who thinks too highly of themselves, fear of being T.M.I., too much, and so on.
It's not a natural perspective for me to hold, but what if I could see what I want to share with others as (potentially) a gift? As something that's (potentially) of benefit? That could be helpful or useful? It's so unnatural that I cringe as I pose these questions. But, well, I benefit from what people share with me all the freakin time. Why is it so hard, so unnatural, to consider that what I want to share could likewise be beneficial?
So there's a lot going on. A lot of parts and a lot of voices. So how do I honor everything (all these parts, all these voices), all at once, while I carry the whole thing forwards? Well I don't know; it seems like a hard problem 😃 But it seems like I've long erred on the side of withholding, and so perhaps we're due for an overcorrection. Perhaps …
I’ve had a powerful last week. On Thursday I participated in my first public open mic night. It was spontaneous, and I prepared for a bit beforehand, but when I got up to share, I flowed and improvised more than I didn’t. And afterwards, I got a lot of feedback from people who were in the audience that it was a powerful experience for them. It’s cool to get this data, and at the same time, you should see me when I receive feedback like this. I smile and I thank, but inside, I’m frozen and locked. The words are going in my ears but not my heart. There’s a refusal of the world and reality I’m being offered. I don’t believe them; and I don’t believe you. But little by little, from receiving this again and again, offhand from strangers and patiently from friends, it feels like something is beginning to budge open up in my life. A growing confidence around what I have to offer to others. Perhaps a growing ego too, and I’m not yet quite sure how to manage letting myself expand into a confidence as a unique individual with a unique offering to the world, without fueling the fire of specialness and superiority. But yeah, it’s been cool. And it’s been a long, painstaking, slow process, spanning the last many many months.
There’s a weird thing I feel writing this. It’s like a doubt of the goodness of my motivations. Why am I sharing this, any of this, with you? What’s my motive? What am I trying to get out of this? Am I trying to get something from you? I don’t know; I really I don’t know, and I’m confused. There’s a way the world doesn’t make sense in this patch of the landscape. But the scientist in me has noticed that good things more often than not happen when I share; the world gets brighter, bigger, and more magical. People flow into my life. The people already in my life have and know more of me. So I want to continue, and perhaps even press my foot on the gas pedal even more than I have. At least for a bit. I might overcorrect yet too far; I probably will, actually. I think that’s how it usually works, right?
So there’s an interesting thing here. The way I originally wanted to end this was with a bold declaration of an intent that from here on out I will be open and non-withholding in all the ways I’d like to be. And well, that’s kind of the intention still. But that feels disingenuous, too. It betrays the fact that that this is still very hard. Still often excruciating. That the fears are still there, the worries, the neuroses. Locked in the prison of my mind, sometimes it’s hard to see and feel the way out. Incidentally, when I do share, when I do take those small steps into the shatter, it’s wretched, it’s contorted, it’s uncomfortable; I can feel my body knot and twist, clench and refuse. But on the other side, there’s often grace. The world responded differently than I thought it would. And there’s a lightness and an ease that carries me down the river, for a bit, at least. And then, well, it fades, and I’m back where I started. It’s a humbling process (when I let it be…), to be back where I started again. The jump may be marginally less terrifying next time, but it’s still a heck of a high jump, and it’s a long way down, and we don’t really know if we’re gonna be ok sometimes until we step off. And so we go, and go, and go, and go… One ‘brave’ step at a time, ‘brave’ in quotes because often they're as brave as they feel puny and fragile from the inside.
Lest this sound more glorious than it is, I want to say something quickly albeit slightly tangential about how abstract descriptions of paths and journeys often whitewash the experience of the human carrying them out. When people talk about the path, about these processes of stumbling and picking ourselves up again, of these journeys, and so on, they can seem so abstract as to almost appear glorious. “HELLLL YEAH, THE PATHHH BABY” “STUMBLING AND PICKING OURSELVES BACK UP AGAIN, SHYEAHH.”
But I want us to talk more about what these processes feel like on the inside. How fraught, scary, uncertain, daunting, and precarious they are. What they look like concretely: the anxious showers, the long nights trying to fall and stay asleep, the episodes of despair and doubt that can last hours to days to months, the being paralyzed by fear, frozen from action, even when things were flowing so smoothly the day or hour before. The feeling of being overwhelmed by the world, like you’re totally and utterly vulnerable and exposed to the elements, like you could be wiped out by these waves, and you’re not even sure what they are but they’re dark and looming and all around you. Or that you’re totally alone. That it’s just you and everyone else has figured it all out and they know your secret: they know you’re not one of them. And you’re falling behind, way way behind. And all of a sudden it feels like I’m a confused child again, except I’m supposed to be an adult, right? I'm in a room and I’m not exactly sure what’s happening around me or why, and it’s all happening too fast, moving too quickly for me to process in real-time. Or the more mundane but harrowing all-the-same: staring at that message for 15 minutes waiting to press send because you're not sure if this will finally be the one that scares them off for good; barely gargling out how you really feel in conversation. And the times I said the wrong thing and oh jeez I really screwed that up and will I ever have a chance to recover and they’re gonna think I suck now and I should really try to forgive myself because that’s important but it’s hard to forgive myself so I guess I better try even harder to forgive myself; oh man you can’t even forgive yourself? you’re such an undeveloped spiritual noob, oh maybe I need to forgive myself for not being able to forgive myself………………… And soooooo yeah, I think, this is what paths are. They’re not flowery and lofty. They can be this imperfect, this wretched, this unglorious. These gnarled and twisted things. These human things, I guess.
And then there’s writing posts like these. I forgot to share X, and I misspelled Y, and shit that sentence really could have been better, that metaphor was weird and overwrought. Or that thing I just wrote, that just felt like the most fresh and alive thing I’ve ever written, already feels fake, stale, and not-me. And you’re trying way way too hard. And I didn’t really put my whole self out there. I shrunk. I took the easy way out. I didn’t say what was really on my mind, especially that one thing that would have reaallly made a difference. Or conversely and simultaneously that I shared way too much. And why are you putting so much of your neuroticism on display? Why are you being so hard on yourself in public? Do you just want people to validate you and tell you you’re OK? Idk, stop asking me all these questions. Just let me do my thing and get on with it. And then an exhale, and some flow, surrender, & release. *clicks ‘post’ button before it’s too late, to be followed by staring into the abyss and eating some chocolate*
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