What keeps me from publicly sharing my writing is the fear of being wrong. The only type of writing that I’m really interested in is completely honest writing. Words that express what’s really on the inside. I share to connect, to maybe help someone feel less alone, to feel less alone myself, and to explore my curiosities.
But this kind of sharing is incredibly vulnerable and thus scary for me.
The same issues I have in my personal life bleed all over every part of my life, of course. I want so badly to get it right, to be right, to be good, to be doing good and leaving people better than how I found them. I want to tell the truth.
The problem is that I’m limited. I make mistakes. I’ve been hurt and disappointed and harmed and misunderstood and muffled and manipulated, and I’m still working to heal those wounds. Like you. Like all of us. I have limitations, blind spots. There are things I haven’t learned yet, there are experiences I haven’t yet had that will greatly shape me, there’s wisdom I haven’t yet earned.
This is true for all of us, but some of us were convinced a long time ago that being imperfect was bad. So bad that some peace-loving man from the Middle East, a poor Jewish carpenter who only treated people with kindness and acceptance and love and radical inclusion, had to be flayed and tortured and crucified for my sake- that’s how bad I was. That’s how bad all people are, I was told.
The sort of American Christianity that I was immersed in for the first twenty-five years of my life instilled shame and fear and judgement that I’m still un-teasing to this day. Coupled with the accomodating-people-pleasing sickness that almost all women I know inherited to some degree or another, and there’s no wonder any of us are skittish to share what’s really on our insides, on the outside. Tripled with the addition of social media to our everyday routines and consciousness with its built-in metrics of comparison and opportunity for public shaming, and it’s easy to understand why our words may stay in our throats and on the pages of our notebooks. It’s the same with love. It’s the same with trying anything that you have no control over, which is everything.
Listen, the thing is, we all have to start somewhere, with whoever we are. Because that is all we have. We have now. We have ourselves and now. That is it. We don’t have who we used to be, we don’t have who we’d like to be, we don’t have a future version of us.. All of those may exist on some plane, but not right now, and right now is all we have.
I’m already 37 years old. I don’t want to spend any more of this precious life on planet Earth holding back what I am, what I have to offer right now, just because it’s imperfect.
I am imperfect. There, I said it, and there’s no date in the future when I’ll be less imperfect. Perfection is missing the point and is also a completely nebulous concept. I’m no longer striving for perfection or even goodness, because I believe in my inherent goodness, divinity, and worthiness and I believe in yours.
I’m flawed and I swear a lot and I have trust issues for lots and lots of really good reasons and for just about the majority of my life up until recently I’ve been holding back. I’ve held back for at least a dozen reasons. Most of them have to do with fear and oppression. That’s why one’s life falling apart is such a damn gift. The worst went ahead and happened. And God is it awful. But there’s a freedom to it as well. It’s honest.
And I’m ok. I was really not ok, for a really long time, which is ok too. Day after day after day I couldn’t imagine ever being ok- like it was unfathomable, which was so scary. But I am ok. I’m alive. You are too. And I guess I’m here to say, dear reader, that I’m still scared and nervous, but I also have no will left for sharing anything from this body, this life, this heart and mind of mine, that isn’t honest and true. What is honest and true for me may not be well-received, may be clumsy, and will likely be verbose because I have a complex about being misunderstood so overcompensate by being long-winded. I’m working on it.
On that note, I will commence writing, and sharing. I’m not going to ask anything of you, my reader. It is a gift to have your attention and consideration, and I hope what I offer here is of some value to you.
Jaclyn Edds Konczal | January 2022