I’m Back to the Beginning Again
I have no choice but to tell my stories.
When I was in the hospital last week, waiting to find out whether I needed to have surgery, all I could think about was whether I would die under anesthesia.
I’m terrified of being put to sleep with the idea that I might never wake up again.
The thought of dying in my sleep doesn’t comfort me, as much as I’d like my death to be a painless, lights out scenario like a brain aneurysm or something.
I like to know when things are coming I guess, and what I didn’t see coming was years of anonymity being shattered in an instant, leading me to kill off a part of myself that I had been cultivating and even falling in a sort of love with, because she was a part of me.
But that’s the risk we take when we write about ourselves on the internet.
Sometimes we get outed, and when we get outed we have to just fold up the cards and let go of the hand.
It never once occurred to me to not start over, though.
As soon as this happened, I was already lit with a spark of excitement — I get to be me again, or at least, me with a fake name.
I get to tell my stories again, freely, without anyone looking over my shoulder or judging me for what I am writing.
Well, certainly people will judge me for what I am writing.
I considered writing in my bio:
If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit here by me.
Because I don’t really have anything nice to say right now.
My home life is a hot mess, my relationship is a wreck, my finances are abysmal, I have mental and physical health problems, and I’m a writer who can’t write when she needs to write for a living.
It seem silly to try to start over on Medium now, going from being a top writer and having over 6,000 followers to zero in a day, but that’s what I get for doing a horrible thing — I have to face the consequences.
I have to forge ahead and not look back (much) because I’m a writer, and so therefore I’m compelled to tell my stories.
I don’t necessarily want to shut up about myself, even if what I have to say about myself and the world around me is rather awful sometimes.
Isn’t that why everyone starts a blog in the first place?
Because we are over-sharers, we need to reach out and say “hey, I’m here, I’m doing this thing, pay attention to me!” and hopefully by the things we do and say, we are able to help some people along the way.
I write to feel less alone.
I read other people’s writing to feel less alone, to know that there are other people out there like me in the same(ish) sort of boat.
I write because I hope that by sharing my own vulnerabilities and mistakes, I help someone else overcome theirs.
I am one of those people who believe in the power of the personal essay, but have yet to master the cultivation of it.
So, I want to write every day like I used to.
I know, I know, a person shouldn’t state their goals and intentions for all to see, should they?
That’s what some people say, anyway.
That the pressure gets to be too much if we share what we’re going to do, but I really want to be in that “write every day” club again, because it was good for me, it made me feel good about myself.
I used to make a living writing on Medium, believe it or not.
For a few months there, I was making BANK.
But I also niched myself, and I am not going to make that mistake again.
I have a life.
It’s a regular, boring, repetitive life and the days mostly blur into one another lately, but it’s my life, and I want to be able to write about all of it and not feel like I am letting anyone down.
I suppose there’s a freedom in knowing that if I don’t write here every day, I’ll only be letting myself down.
Even if it’s only a few hundred words of drivel like this.
At least it’s something.
At least I’m trying.
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