I used to write.
(I want to say, “I used to write a lot,” but I don’t know if that sounds good or better or how people even write anymore.)
Well, I used to write. A lot or kind of a lot.
And then I stopped because I got a career and suddenly my kids grew up and I wasn’t trying to figure out how to be a parent to young kids anymore — I was actually out here parenting like in real time and I just lost the zest for it or the time for it or the bravery for it or the words just didn’t come to me like they used to (yes, that sounds acceptable) and so I stopped writing.
I also got really worried about what people thought about me.
Cancel culture also became a thing.
The insanity of all of it became a thing, like the internet as a whole just turning all of us into these crazy people who can’t use the word crazy without being problematic or can’t say yes or no or maybe or sometimes or anything, really, without being problematic and I just didn’t know how to handle it anymore and so I left.
I left the internet — or at least my blog — and tried to matter in real life.
Which I failed at because what does trying to matter even mean?
I became a crazy shouter on Instagram with the rest of everyone.
I told people what to do.
I got mad when people didn’t do things how I do things and I still do that now sometimes if I’m being honest and I’m really, really trying to be honest both with you and with myself.
I’ve been depressed all winter and am worried this is just How I Am Now.
I’m searching the internet for addictions I might have that will support me in understanding myself in the same way I used to search the internet for religions I could follow that would tell me how to be so I didn’t have to figure out how to be on my own.
It really is wild how none of this ever really seems to change.
How am I asking the same questions FUCKING AGAIN at 45 that I was asking at 25 and 35.
Are they even a little bit different, the questions?
:::
I deleted my Instagram profile recently and it’s a relief, I think.
I miss the easy access to avoidance, obviously, but I have the Tiles game on the NYT app to help with that, as well as the ever-supportive Block Blast, both of which give me the illusion of Doing Something while I’m actually doing not much at all, really, other than avoiding the same stuff I was avoiding while scrolling IG, albeit less self-righteously and with less constant outrage, which is probably a good thing.
:::
(I’m worried I sound like an absolute maniac right now in this writing flow, like someone no one should ever trust or come to for emotional support and that is LITERALLY WHAT I DO FOR A JOB which is part of this moment I’m in, obviously, which is: How can I actually live as a fully-human human and be fully and honestly in the mess of being same WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY being trustworthy as a guide to others who are doing that, too.)
I am a person who outwardly processes — it was always so good for me, writing like this — and then I stopped because I got so worried that people would see my scabs and scars that I literally deleted all of them off of the internet.
A rough-decade of public healing, just deleted.
A button-push.
Not to make this all about me, but, like, are we really supposed to be out here just doing this? Just living our lives in this collective insanity and are we really supposed to be pretending everything is not just absolutely fucking tangled?
Really?
Because I am struggling to do that. Have always struggled to do that. Will likely always struggle to do that.
And when will I learn that the fear of being seen as fully human is the exact thing that keeps killing me slowly and then quickly?
:::
I found about 300 pages of my old blog posts on a pretty cool website called Wayback Machine. I copied and pasted the words of past lifetimes and past versions of who I was and who I thought I was into a Google Doc in my Google Drive and now I’ve created another project for myself (I’m also planning to make sentimental quilts for each of my immediate family members but that’s something we can talk about later if I keep writing about things) in that I need to now sort them somehow and categorize them somehow and figure out how to repost them somehow if it even makes sense to do that.
It probably does because why not.
I will say that I felt high in the moments of finding more and more old words, a rush of I’m pretty sure Dopamine as I copied and pasted and copied and pasted and just kept seeing that I really did used to have a lot to say and that I was funny sometimes and even sometimes sure.
I think I might love to see what it could feel like or look like to go back there or go forward there, to go again forward.
:::
What?
I know, exactly.
*E
PS: And who will even find this if I’m not cross-posting it all over socials (and then looking at the engagement to see if my thoughts are good or not) and obviously that’s the point. To just be here because being here counts, even if I’m only writing curiously to myself. x.