The Gut-Wrenching Peace of Pressing Publish
Write, Edit, Edit, Edit, Understand, Share — a Poem
I open my mouth —
No words, just static
A break in the electrical circuit
Between my heart and my voice
In therapy, they ask,
“How are you?”
“How does that make you feel?”
How can you expect me to know that?
I struggle to transform
The swirling emotions
I don’t understand what they mean
So I bury them
I messily draft the concepts in my mind
And convert them into phrases
I splutter like spices in hot oil
My words vibrate with hesitancy
My brain can’t keep up with all the sounds
Their meanings
Did I already say that?
I need to see it to make sense of it
Instead, give me a pen
Or a keyboard
A blank page
I will fill it
I process my thoughts
The way you print colors
Cyan. Magenta. Yellow. Black.
In stages, the image appearing like a puzzle being solved
I can write
About life
My deepest secrets
The things that bring me shame.
I go back
And read my words
Wow, I didn’t know that was inside me
What else is there?
So much of my life
Has felt like
Sliding face first down an enormous cheese grater
Into a vat of salt
The traumas locked inside
Were acid
Eroding me
Leaving me empty
Writing
Created an escape valve
What was struggling to be released
Set free
It is here
That I finally make
Sense
Of my inner world
I can take the tornado-ravaged mess
And organize it into neat boxes
Edit, edit, edit
Until I understand me
But now I share it
Into the universe
My private parts
Open to judgment
How do you see me?
Once I remove the shiny lacquer
The mask I wear
I tremble from exposure
There is so much pain in the vulnerability
More than being naked
I feel like I removed all my skin
Nothing to protect me
Turns out
The fragile bits
Were holding me together
Forming my infrastructure
Pressing publish
Toppled me
Like removing one critical piece
In a game of Jenga
I can no longer stand
Or breathe
I am desperate
To fill that space
What meaning do my words have
If they live on a page
Without a reader
To consume them?
But I finally know
There is so much peace
In sharing it
With you.
