I made a commitment to write and post here everyday. Today is day 3 and it is HARD. I sat down trying to think of what to write at first, combing through my day (which had SEVEN meetings by the way) and coming up blank with anything I felt called to write about. Probably because I have SEVEN meetings and my brain is fried. I clicked around the internet thinking inspiration would strike. And then I finally started reading other people’s Medium posts just out of distraction and boredom. I read a beautiful poem from someone who was trying to forget her ex but instead outlining everything she missed about them — a classic theme. I’m going through my own painful separation from an intense, long-term on again, off again situation, so I started writing my own piece.
I started diving into who I was before I met them and the person I became just through knowing them. I wanted to go into my understanding now that the relationship wasn’t healthy and that I was caught in a cycle of letting their needs (fears? whims? tantrums?) define the relationship, but that at the end, I couldn’t be upset I had spent my time this way because the connection I initially felt to them taught me how to believe in god.
Writing that summary now, it wasn’t too hard. I only felt a small prick of vulnerability and the painful memory of being hurt that comes with it — that’s why vulnerability is so painful right? Because we’ve been hurt before? But writing it in full description, as almost a note to them, I realized that I wasn’t ready to be so open with the world.
The question fills my mind though, what is the point of writing without vulnerability? What is the point of this exercise of writing everyday without putting myself out there? Is there ever a way to know what level of vulnerability is the right to proceed with or is that not how art or vulnerability work? Is there a way to know I’m ready or is the not being ready how you know it’s worth sharing? As someone who had never made something I would call art before, I’m truly asking.
Perhaps it’s just a truth of life. That learning to share yourself will always be painful, because you’ll relive every fear you’ve had imparted on you that made you hide in the first place, and you’ll do it every time. So as a new writer, can I ask the club, are all writers masochists or is it just me?
