I have started to think I must subconsciously look for ways to make people wonder what I will do or say next. As aware as I am of my propensity for a vulnerability hangover, I still choose to disclose more. My friend Shelly would hold this for me and call it creative courage…walking the talk with what she called her publishing house, Creative Courage Press. I see you.
Julia Cameron says that honesty is essential for good writing,
“As we attempt to enter the writer’s world, only one quality is necessary, and that is honesty. If we take to the page with honesty, we will take to the page with success. Honesty requires a desire for our writing to be of service. This posture brings humility, and humility is inviting. The reader responds to our open heart.”
My cronies, a group chat of three with enough hang-ups between us to start a laundromat or a zip-line franchise, would defend me without faltering to a public hanging for my audacious, risky, bare-all stories. At the very least, they would stand guard as I got pelted in the stocks, taking to people with brooms and wiping the hurled nastiness from my face. It doesn’t happen, though. When we are excruciatingly honest in our writing, people soften. When I read work and think, “Me too!” the writing is unfettered by guardedness. It opens my heart, as Julia describes, and I feel less alone and more universally connected to our raw, flawed humanity. The more honest I am, the more love I receive. The more honest other writers are, the more love I feel.
So why is it a formula that is so difficult to accept? Why do we keep the walls up and attempt to espouse wisdom through didactic diatribes?
I dropped into the cronies’ text conversation tonight and told them I thought I had just made a terrible mistake. Jess asked if it had something to do with the pilot. It didn’t, not that, not yet (soon enough, that will be a giddy mess and probably another Substack post). It was seemingly something far less indulgent. Or was it?
I told them I had looked at my subscriber list, and people who knew me were reading my writing. Gulp. People I had forgotten had subscribed. I thought it was just strangers and my besties to whom I was telling my deepest and darkest secrets, offering a platform for relating to those who felt like the world could never accept their fumbling and stumbling.
Part of the reason I have started writing this way is that I want people to sigh with relief that they’re not the only ones who have fucked up. We all do. All the time. For some reason, we have this compulsion to turn up like some expert at life, presenting a facade of “never fucked up”, “no fuck-ups to see here”, “I worked all this shit out without fucking up.” And we do this more with people we know. I’m not talking about those closest to us who know all the gruesome bits, but those we’ve crossed paths with socially or professionally over the years. The people who have known us since we were kids. The people who have possibly gossiped about us more than they have talked to us, and vice versa.
Why is it easier to let strangers see us?
When I came out in my early forties, I felt this was my only allocated public direction change. It was the one polarising action I was allowed for this lifetime. People would have an opinion and think it was okay to say what that opinion was. It came with a begrudging acceptance dependent on a “no more curve balls” clause. The truth was it was about the third time I had come out during my life, but because I would follow it up with a quick retreat back into heterosexuality, it didn’t count. It did count; of course, it counted. Our lives are wondrous, and every single thing should be counted. But we’re forever trying to force ourselves into boxes, back into boxes, into the shape of boxes.
When I did come out, though, I had to have a label; people needed to classify me. “So, are you a lesbian or bisexual?” I often got asked. “I guess I’m a lesbian…at the moment”, I would reply, watching the “…at the moment” part make them jumpy.
The truth is that what I wake up feeling in the morning can be wildly different from what I think when I go to bed at night. I feel fluid in everything…sexuality, gender, relationships, vocation, purpose, likes, hopes, dreams, goals, desires…everything, really. Nothing is ‘fixed’ for me. I heard my daughter describe my sexuality to one of her friends the other day as “age fluid” to explain my very broad dating age range. My life choices reflect this fluidity, and I have arrived at the word ‘queer’ to describe that.
We are living at a time when it is possible in many places on this planet to live diversely. But I was born into a generation where exploring who I was and what I liked wasn’t encouraged, so it was better to choose an acceptable lane and stay in it. I changed lanes often and took on a heretical hue. Unfortunately, these choices invited shame, unsolicited judgment, and much angst. I couldn’t help it. My truth overrode societal norms, and, as a result, I lurched from one controversial choice to another. I led with honesty but ended up in therapy repeatedly. Writing about it helps. On the page in black and white, my colourful stories take on a healing, nourishing flavour, albeit with a side of “…omfg…what have I just told the world?”
I have told them, the world, my family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, that I am human. I have bared my underbelly covered in scars. They are my badges of honour, a psychospiritual montage, a collage of fuck ups so glorious they have produced the magical version of me now.
I understand if people would rather stay where they feel safe. The paradox for me is that the more I reveal through my writing, the less there is to hide, and the safer I feel. Tomorrow, I will wonder why on earth I thought I had to share all this, but hopefully, this time, I will remind myself that vulnerability is simply part of the process and the reward.
Keep on coming out Melissa!
I love your queerness, your authentic true self that I love reading through your words and seeing in reality.