"Look, 'Feelings,' despite what you may think of it, has always been one of the bright moments of the show, and a consistent crowd-pleaser, and consequently we have an obligation to perform it. If we didn't, the audience would be disappointed."
This month has been… hm. How do I describe this month? I’m not entirely sure. I mean, I went through a period where it felt like this month was hell, but looking back it was hardly the worst I had to go through. I think the big thing was there was a ton of growth packed into a 30 to 40 day time period. It’s nothing I’m really ready to write about just yet – I’m still processing and needing some time to solidify it all. It’s a good thing I’m about to take off again.
With my brain clear of a lot of the nonsense that’s been clouding it over the past little while, I took a moment to ask it a nagging question I’d been having for the last month. Namely, why do I have such anxiety over reading something I’ve written in a public forum? And the answer came back loud and crystal clear:
“Because you’re afraid that people won’t like you, and you’re afraid they won’t like what you have to say.”
Go to hell, brain, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t, because The Brain was right. I am and I am. And I know exactly where it comes from.
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I learned early that there were consequences to being myself. I don’t know how to put it better, and maybe I don’t have to. But I discovered that the times when I would feel comfortable enough to be myself, bad things happened. Things like getting verbally abused. Dumped. Kicked out. Picked on. Put down. And it’s not that I’m trying to be “oh poor me,” it’s just what happened. And after it happened enough it was easy to figure out how to hide behind a shield so that wouldn’t happen anymore. Or at least, that I wouldn’t notice it as much.
One of the ways I was able to hide was behind angry, attacking writing. There was something about expressing rage that felt like I was defending before there was anything to defend against, which made me feel safe, in a way. I was tired of being the one who took the brunt of a bad reaction. Instead, I wanted to scare people off from saying anything to begin with. Words were beautiful weapons, and I’d infuse them with as much bottled up rage as I could to drive the point home. Most times it worked. Sometimes I would come across someone who was even angrier than I and let me have it, and I’d allow myself to get sucked into fights that really had no meaning. But for the most part I was left alone.
Writing that way was incredibly exhausting. Eventually I ran out of things to say, but more than that, it felt inauthentic. The transition really started happening on this blog, actually. I’m embarrassed about some of the things I used to write about here, like when I verbally attacked my next door neighbor for parking too close to me or the time I wrote that What’s Love Got To Do With It was a funny movie. I remember writing those things and thinking, “Why am I saying this when it doesn’t really feel like me anymore? What’s the point?” But I’d become so used to being so angry and having an audience that followed that, that I didn’t know what else to write. On top of that, I knew dropping the anger meant I actually had to be real about who I was and what I wanted to say… which was still an incredibly terrifying proposition to me. And to an extent, it still is.
More and more I’m writing things that I’ve never said in any forum, let alone public. The second book is, in a big way, much more personal than the first… and the first book is pretty damn personal. More and more I’m learning to communicate in a way that I never have, saying things that I’ve been afraid to say, expressing myself in a way that used to make me want to run and hide. I suspect a lot of this has to do with me learning more about my self worth, but that’s a blog post for a different day. (Or maybe not.)
So when I did the reading a month or so ago, I chose something I thought was safe. I chose something that I knew had gotten some laughs on the blog when I wrote it… nearly two years ago, I think. And when I stood up there and read it, it felt so inauthentic. It wasn’t me anymore. Certainly it was a part of me once, but I’m just not in the headspace I was in back when I wrote it. But as I was sifting through my entries debating what to read in the days leading up to the event, I couldn’t find anything I thought would be entertaining enough to be read in front of a crowd. I know we’re all our own worst critics, but by the same token, I kept asking myself, “Does anyone really want to hear about the time I figured out that I seek attention and validation from others? Or how I celebrated a dead guru’s birthday? Or how all this growth has been so freaking painful?”
I don’t know what the answer to that is. But I do know that I copped out. I do know that I chose what I thought people would like to hear instead of what I liked to read. And I think that’s part of the problem.
I don’t know that this is something that needs to be fixed or what – maybe it’s just something that needs to be said for now, and I can figure out the rest later. Maybe I eventually need to take steps – just a little one each day – to remind myself to live my life authentically, for me, without caring so much about what you think. And maybe doing that will allow you to have respect for me, even if you disagree with me. And even if it doesn’t, maybe that’s okay too. Because maybe that will teach me that I don’t have to make everyone happy. Just myself.
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