I Just Stopped, and A Year Went By

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

So I have this idea to unearth one of my dozens of journals, pick a quote, and share it here. Theoretically, I believe that healing comes from our acceptance of ourselves at whatever stage we find ourselves. I can show kindness to myself, both ten years ago and now, by sharing a quote and looking at it in a different light.

I’ve been thinking about this for several days. I reread some stuff. But I don’t know.

I miss blogging. I miss writing as if someone might read it. But I don’t know.

“Release the Story” is the flag I fly. It’s my standard-bearer. I got a lot of story to release. How can it be my rally cry unless I do it, too?

That’s what The Raw Jaw was supposed to be about.

But so much got in the way. No one blogs anymore. It’s all about building a business/image with filtered pictures or witty stories. Facebook, where I built some semblance of an audience, is a dumpster fire now. Nothing of substance is there, so why would I add my value? All this and more has kept me from writing here.

The more? Someone…the voice that viscerally grabs that space behind my breastbone and throttles me said, “Why? WHY would you do this? You have so much to offer that’s beautiful. WHY write about shameful things?” I just stopped, and a year went by.

A whole year of not releasing my story and staying safe. Even though person after person in my life comes through with the message, “You are a writer. Write!”

Dozens of journals on the shelf.

Decades of already writing The Raw Jaw to myself and a god I believed was listening.

But if I write here, I will have to write about “the shameful things” because that’s my story. My story is that I looked at and lived my life through a narrow moral compass, with the standard for holiness getting higher and higher every time I almost reached it. My story is that I carried anger and lived frenetically for decades until I just couldn’t, and the earth started to slide underneath me. I need to tell the story that letting it ALL go…and I mean all of it…is the only way I’m not lying alone in a pool of my own vomit.

But why? Why would you do this?

Because unless I can look at my story and bring it to you without that narrow moral framework squeezing it, I will not be free. And I’ve needed to be free for a really (really) long time.

Do I dare try this? Again?.