What can I say?

Is it really okay to just be myself here? How much is "too much" to share? Is it enough to just put some feelings on a page?

Writing today felt like writing most days for me - like pulling the plug out of a sink drain and watching as everything spews out of me in an uncontained fashion for me to make sense of. Except this time, I’m sharing it with you. It’s new to me to want to share something raw, to not have something planned that I intended to share but am stuck endlessly fiddling with to make the words arrange themselves in a way that makes sense outside of my head…so consider this an experiment in getting past my own BS and the perfectionist barriers in my brain that are really just disguising how insecure I am.

This is just me and some raw feelings. (please be gentle)

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Is it really ok to share things in multiple spaces? Can I share things on here and in a book? (I mean publish here and then quite literally copy/paste republish in a printed form compiled with other things)

Because I’ve always wanted to publish a book and yet I’ve spent years of my life starting and stopping and getting distracted with other things to the point that I worry it’s not something that will happen, and that maybe I ought to just share here instead, in the moment, in little chunks while I remember to - and maybe, just maybe, I’ll eventually have something I like enough to piece together and see in print. I also seem to go back and forth endlessly on what goes where based on themes and intentions.

“why not?” says some curiously brave part of me - not sure where they come from, but it sounds like a child shrugging their shoulders with a glint of mischief in their eyes. It’s clear they’ve yet to be crushed by the weight of impossible and ridiculous rules without real consequences (just social disapproval) and schooled in all of the ways we “should” be or “should” do things.

“There are no rules” I remind myself gently, and then shake my head as I realize that every attempt to create a persona or lock myself into a specific way of showing up (even on substack) is both one step away from being my authentic self and an attempt to catch your attention, entice you, make you want to visit. (*cough* to prove myself worthy *cough*) It’s a strategy employed to increase the chances of being liked, stemming from the belief that I am not enough and must do more.

But I don’t want to be someone else - I don’t want to curate an experience for you to have to increase the likelihood of you staying around. I’ve done that for enough empty friendships in my life, and I change my mind so often anyway that it’s unlikely that I’ll stick to (or won’t get bored of) an idea or intention I set for how to show up and what to write about.

I yearn to create because I feel like it, not because I think it’s something someone else might approve of or because I think it's something that I “should” do. Yet I catch my ideas being so often hijacked by my desire for approval right before I lose interest and try to start my 5th project that week.

Is it okay to continually strip down my substack, making drastic changes to simplify each time I catch myself trying to start something I have no intentions of seeing through, or doing something to win your attention/affection?

I want everything I do to be true to me, a reflection of who I am, not who I hope to be or what I hope you’ll see. I’ve spent so much of my life hiding away the parts I was made to feel were too weird or unsightly and unworthy of bringing to the table. I’m done being ashamed of those parts, and refuse to lock them away any longer.

Is it okay to write outside the margins I create for myself with a substack bio instead of constantly changing how I describe myself to encompass all that I might want to say?

Because there is so much I want to share - and so much I’m afraid to.

Is it really okay to just build courage over time, like in a tender new friendship, revealing bite-sized pieces of myself with each correspondence? That’s what I think of these as… letters, to someone I don’t know, hoping that maybe I won’t be speaking into an echo chamber while also feeling terrified of being perceived.

When I imagine myself writing (which I seem to do more than actually writing) I imagine it’s with the hopes of reaching someone in the dark, of my words saying “you’re not alone”, just as much as I secretly (well, not so secretly now) wish to have that feeling reciperocated.

I also want to write to say “look at this cool rock I found” - Sometimes the “rock” is deep reflections on lived experiences, sometimes it’s me regurgitating something I just learned because I cannot contain my excitement or fascination, and sometimes it’s literally just a cool rock. (because I think rocks are neat)

I want to be my whole self with you, is that okay?

I write tenderly now, with the hopes of something special budding, and breathing through the fear of chasing you away with my sometimes too revealing, too excitable, or unexpectedly pricky ways of being.

I’m autistic, disabled, and gay, and I’ve got a LOT to say - and that’s good enough. (right?)