It has been a while. This secret project has been on my mind pretty regularly in the past two years. I still haven’t told anyone about this blog. In hindsight I know why I created it and why I’ve maintained it for over two years, despite letting it be a graveyard of a couple of old reflections. Two years ago I was just starting to ask myself the question “Who would I be if no one was watching?” This blog was an attempt to give myself the space to inquire and practice. I think I’m finally free and unafraid enough to try and figure it out now.

Do I know the answer to that question? There’s a part of me that wants to be coy and cool girl and glib and depressed and answer no. But the reality is that I do, in a roundabout way. I know what I want to do before I die. To write, to make music, to love and be loved in a way that opens and deepens my experience of the world. To be more present, more compassionate, and just more. It’s very risky. The things I want to do require me to undo all the work I’ve done to protect myself from rejection, which is the work of cultivating a fundamental shame about who I am as a person. I have spent the majority of my life believing that I had no redeeming qualities and that no one could ever possibly love me or truly understand me. That feeling comes back every few days because it’s such a well trodden path in my mind that it’s my default response to any discomfort, but at this point I know how to course correct. I really do believe in my own basic goodness. The lows aren’t so low anymore.

I am coming up on the three year anniversary of my thirtieth birthday, which was probably one of the worst days of my life. In the first few months of 2022 I started going to therapy twice a week because I knew it was going to be bad. I asked my therapist questions like “Can you give me some concrete, actionable tips for getting through the day?” and “Can we spend some time brainstorming things that I actually enjoy?” On a cold day in the middle of January I remembered that I liked black tea lattes, even though I never let myself have them because of the extra calories. It was a huge achievement to remember that I could enjoy anything at all. I recited the phrase “I like tea lattes” to myself for months, as a mantra against my misery. I let myself have pleasure where I could, because I was drowning.

The day I entered my thirties started with a couple of weird phone calls from family members. I had been hyping myself up to go to a flower farm with a friend and try to have a not-horrible day, but all hope was gone and it wasn’t even 9AM. I felt hopelessly misunderstood, stuck, unloved, disregarded. I cried all day. I felt like I was dying alone, or at least inexorably moving towards a solitary death. At the time I was obsessed with the death of Bob Saget. I thought I would fall down in the shower and that no one would find me for days. I couldn’t imagine a world where I felt any different than I felt in that moment.

Of course, things did change. I’m here. In many ways I’m happier than I’ve ever been. But I still have this problem of emotional forgetting, where I get triggered or upset by something and can’t conceive how or why I ever felt any differently. Lately when I ask myself the question “Why do I want to write?” the answer is basically I want to remember. Which is to say, I want to be present to everything that anchors me in the world: my dog, my cat, the meta-narrative of my life, roasted vegetables, trees, the endless well of compassion that is within my grasp if I choose to access it. The blanket of atmosphere around the earth that is always touching my skin, quiet and vast as a prayer. I want to write because I want to witness this.

I think that’s the point of this blog—to capture my journey. To be unfiltered. To keep letting go of everything that isn’t mine. The person I want to be is on the other side of all this unlearning. It feels possible, for the first time, to just let go and be awake to all the joy and pain and pleasure and grief of being alive. Now that I’m thinking about it, the phrase “other side” feels wrong. She’s close. She’s right here. She’s a few steps ahead of me on the path to releasing all of the resistance I have to just being who I am and liking what I like.