The Real Me

When I started this blog I wanted it to be a fresh start. I went public with it to challenge myself and to bring my voice back into the world. The problem is that I seem to have lost my voice. My voice.

Throughout the years I have been told by many different people that I’m too serious or I’m too depressing or I’m difficult or I’m too hard to be friends with. This takes a toll on a person. It has made me stop and question who I am as a person. Needless to say, who I am as a person greatly affects who I am as a writer.

As an IRL person I am not the most outgoing, in-your-face, uber-friendly type. I have a tendency to be more slow to know you and stand-offish. I don’t share much about myself openly. If you ask, I’ll answer openly and honestly, but I don’t just open up and dump my thoughts and feelings all over the place without prompting. I’m not the happy-go-lucky type. I have a tendency to be more serious and introverted and introspective. I hold a lot in. I don’t discuss the things that I enjoy discussing because I worry that others might not like it or might think I’m too… serious, dark, deep, depressing, difficult. (Pick any one of the above)

But when I write…. I am free. I open up and let it all spill out. I write about the things that matter to me and say it how I would if I ever felt comfortable actually talking to another human being in person. I may be serious or deep or even dark and depressing, but I’m me. I’m honest and real. I’m not trying to be something or someone that I’m not. Writing always gave me a way to make a connection with other people; even if it was just one person that resonated with exactly what I was thinking and saying in exactly that moment.

Then I got hurt. And I got lonely. And I got scared. I got scared that if I continued to put myself out there I wouldn’t have anyone left to connect with because even my readers would pull away from me like those IRL have a tendency to do. So I stopped writing.

When I went back to writing I told myself I was going to “write to my audience”. I was going to write about the things that other people might be interested in OR I would write about the things that were important to me, but in a way that would be more palatable. Maybe I would be more lighthearted, less depressing, more funny, less serious. So that’s what I did. Or tried to do. My writing became about them~ you.

That’s when I lost my voice.

Now here I am, starting over~ again.

This blog is my mission. It’s my mission to find myself again. It’s my mission to speak to others through my own voice again; not some watered down, filtered or even rose-colored version of me. Going forward you get the real me. Sometimes I can be fun and funny (not my dominant personality trait, folks), but mostly I’ll probably be serious, down-to-earth, passionate, angry andprobably even difficult.