it’s been one whole month of this project. i’ve stuck to my commitment to post an excerpt from my personal journal on the internet for four weeks now, and somehow i’ve done it every day. the biggest takeaway so far is:

i have a lot of trouble being perceived. 

there were many moments i wanted to take down this whole thing and go back to being reclusive. but i didn’t. i didn’t because i knew this anxiety around being seen has held me back for a very long time. it has done enough damage and it doesn’t need to dictate my future. my desire to let go of that fear has somehow grown bigger than the fear itself. so i intend to remain in this weird, vulnerable project until it becomes easy.

i spent this weekend tracing back my fear of being perceived. it makes a lot of sense within my life’s context: i have been in so many situations where being seen meant violence. i am not in any of those situations now (a triumph to say that, honestly) but the repetitive violations have conditioned me to strive for smallness, for quietness, for unobtrusiveness. especially when it comes to something as personal as my writing and unusual worldviews. for the longest time, i didn’t even want to send out a newsletter to subscribers because i was afraid of bothering them. like, that’s no way to live. 

here’s to finding out who i am when the fear of being perceived no longer holds me back.