Hi!

How’s summer going?

I am in the throes of a revelation. One that was inspired by an embarrassing story that I, against all of my best efforts to refrain from doing, am about to tell you.

A NOTE ON THE VULNERABILITY OF PERSONAL WRITING

So you know how I said that the aforementioned guy in my class could, theoretically, read what I wrote about him? I was walking out of class today when he stopped me to tell me the fatal words I read your blog. I laughed. The moment I accepted the conception of the day I began a personal blog was born.

But here’s the thing. You would think that this would be super embarrassing. And, in a way, it was. But really, it was just refreshing to be so honest. I didn’t expect that. And I definitely didn’t expect the liberation that followed such a funny, clumsy conversation.

I’m used to the not-knowing, to the mysteries and illusions that surround young adulthood like a toxic cloud that I think we all come out the other side of a bit dizzy from inhaling the fumes of. I’m used to not knowing for sure how other people feel. And I’m used to keeping most of my feelings about them, romantic or not, to myself because I, like most girls, grew up being told that a mystery was the most interesting thing that I could be. I’ve been trying to undo that narrative for years. And today, I can’t tell you how brilliant of a feeling it was to actively embody the opposite of it.

This is about that feeling.

TO CREATE REAL THINGS

When I created this blog, this brutally honest, deeply personal blog, I accepted that it would be a vulnerable experience. That seemed obvious. I send my deepest thoughts out into oblivion for complete strangers to sift through at their leisure. But oddly, that’s not the vulnerable part. It’s easy to tell things to strangers. They don’t know you. It’s telling those things to the people who do know you that makes this vulnerable. My friends and family that read this blog are the people I am considering when writing posts. Do I want them to know this? Did I ever tell them about that? Will they be concerned, upset, uncomfortable? It can feel restrictive, especially when writing about people I have dated or been best friends with.

But restriction kills art. It strangles the life out if. I learned that back in middle school when our art projects were graded with a rubric that never should have been written. Or in my high school ceramics class when we were instructed to use a wet sponge to smooth out all of projects until they were perfect. I always got marked down for leaving too much of myself on mine. A fingerprint here, an indentation from my bracelet there. I never understood why this was a bad thing. The only thing that should have mattered was that we created something, not how neatly it turned out. I wish they would have let us make a mess. A mistake. I wish they would have taught us that nothing that we do in this world will ever be perfectly neat and that we will surely leave pieces of ourselves on everything that we touch. That most things will never turn out how we initially wanted them to and that that is not a reason to throw them away and start again. Maybe then we wouldn’t have grown up to believe that we could ever be perfect, or that we should want to be. As a writer, if I have learned anything, it’s that aiming for perfection does nothing but produce a blank page. That’s the only page that will ever be perfect. As soon as you spill your words onto it, it becomes something so much more interesting.

So when I started this blog I had to ask myself, did I want it to be perfect, or did I want it to be interesting. Did I want to sound like every one else, or did I want to share my own experiences and sound like me? I chose the latter. I experience life in a big way. Seemingly small moments will occur that inspire my thoughts for a long time after. I have chosen to share those moments and those thoughts. I have chosen authenticity, and accepted all of the vulnerability that I knew would come with it.

BEING HONEST

So when I wrote about the guy from my Spanish class, I knew that there was a chance he would read it, and he did. And he told me that he did. We kind of just laughed about it and moved on. But the strange thing? It was objectively embarrassing, but it didn’t feel that way. Not like how you would think. It wasn’t the end of me. It actually felt a lot more like the beginning. Why? Because it forced me to learn something that I don’t know if I would have had the courage to learn otherwise. Which is that being painfully honest about how you feel is not actually embarrassing. It’s liberating. Did this guy need to know anything of what he knows now? No. Do I feel exposed? Yes. But I don’t mind. I don’t want to pretend about or hide real things anymore. I’m done being force fed the narrative that we need to be mysterious to be interesting. Mysterious isn’t interesting. It’s that blank page. It’s a blank cover on the never-ending novel that is each one of us. Which is to say, an illusion. A lie. An attempt to make something that is brilliantly messy, neat.

I realized today that I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to conceal myself from the world in an attempt to look neat. I’m not neat. I fall in love with strangers in the grocery store because they are holding my favorite book. I break down when I see my teenage neighbor having the experiences I always wanted and know that I will never have. I get jealous. I get sad. I get really excited over little things. I still think about moments that happened far too long ago. And then I write about it. I can’t not write about it. And that means people are going to read it. People I date, friends I make, employers, family, people I used to know, etc. They all have access to the innermost secrets of my soul. That used to scare me. It doesn’t anymore.

It used to freak me out that someone would know how I feel, about them, about a moment, about anything. But now, it freaks me out more that they wouldn’t, especially if it’s about them. If someone inspires me, I think that they should know. I would want to know. If I made someone feel something, if I inspired them to think or write and create, I would want to know that. I would admire the hell out of that. I want to live that way. I want to show up and be so honest and so real that no one feels the need to hide anything.

TO BE A BEAUTIFUL MESS

Which is to say, the imperfection of my life is what fascinates me these days. In a perfect world, I probably wouldn’t have ever had that clumsy conversation with that guy today after he said the words I read your blog. I don’t know how many of us would choose that experience. But that perfect world is not one that I am interested in living in. It’s one where no one really knows you or how you feel, and what a waste that would be.

It’s funny to me that my response to this situation is to literally do the same thing that got me into it. Believe me, I didn’t want to. But the thing happened. The writer thing. I was processing the whole situation, waiting for the embarrassment to sink in, and when it didn’t, when I felt liberated instead, my first thought was oh shit, I have to write about this now. Which is of course, not ideal. And I could, in theory, choose to write about the sun or my morning coffee or the book that I’m reading instead. These would be safe, neat topics. They would get an A in art class. But this mess? This mess is mine and I love it. It’s covered in my fingerprints and dripping with my own sweat. I am all over it in every way that my ceramics teacher told me to be more careful of next time. I don’t want to be more careful next time. I want to be real. I want to be a beautiful mess, not a shallow attempt at perfection. And today that beautiful mess was spilled at my feet. It pooled around my ankles and rose up past my knees and to to my chin so that I had to decide if I was going to let it drown me, or learn how to swim. So I’m learning how to swim through the clumsy moments of life instead of letting them consume me. They used to feel like mistakes. They used to make me anxious, as if I had veered off course and needed to correct myself. I was ready to feel that way today. But I never did. I just felt like myself. I was seen in a messy, real way. Which is to say, the way that I really am.

Love, m.

JOIN THE FUN

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