photo by Sky
If you are feeling muddled
or if you are feeling new things,
if you feel the urge to write your way out of something, or you want to see the facts marked down and the characters printed in front of you, try writing a journal. Online. I mean it. There’s something to letting it all flow out and snake itself into rivers, and the immediacy of Substack is seductive. When you write it all out in public, you will surely discover that many folks have similar sentiments. You are sure to find your people, too. So many of us are breaking apart in the same old beautiful ways. So many of us are born of the same ruin. I like to write in the public sphere in this shifting journal to learn more about what I carry, mapping the points on the body that ache at the end of the god-given day. People write to me, saying, ‘How could you know what I feel?’ Even though we are miles apart, perhaps the wars that are coming for you are coming for me. I love this about the written word: how it joins and connects us, how we are bound together by intimacy and truth. I have been thinking a lot about how our stories increase our value, no matter how damning or complex. For me, writing a sort-of-journal in public is what freedom feels like. I am actively choosing to quiet the fear of ‘saying it wrong.’ For me, in this place, there is no wrong.
i’m not quite what i hoped; i’m larger
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to the utter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.