The Daring and Baring of my Heart and Soul

To open a new document can be intimidating. Staring at a blank page, cursor blinking, is a bit like looking at my beating heart and knowing I’m about to unlock it and all its secrets.

May 14th. 20 weeks ago. Five months ago. Almost a half year ago. That was the last time I opened a blank document to write. I’ve been scared. I am scared. To write. Even though it is the very thing that gives me life and makes me breathe deeper breaths. It centers me. It grounds me.

Unraveling can happen. Layers peeled back. Writing is like watering. It gives life and opens me up like a flower’s bloom, which has closed upon itself when rooted in dry and barren soil. And although the revealing is the place I am most comfortable residing, it is also the place that strips me of my armor and leaves me standing there, naked. My soul. Exposed. Vulnerable. Feeling every single emotion. The exquisiteness of the bloom, the pain in the baring. All of it, freedom.

It is the very thing that makes me feel deeper than anything else. And that is the beauty, yet the very threat of it all.

What if I’m not ready to feel that which I bare? What if it hurts? What if doesn’t?

What if?

What if you write something and it goes viral? What if you write something and no one reads it? Write even when you don’t want to. Don’t write. Say it all. Shhh. You shouldn’t share that. The world needs to hear your story. You shared too much. You haven’t shared enough. Someone may think you’re full of shit. Someone may think you ARE the shit.

All of it takes courage. Daring. Vulnerability.

Sometimes all that courage and daring and vulnerability leave you feeling wrecked. And whole. All at the same time.

There’s a reason they ask you to apply pressure to a wound. Perhaps I was starting to feel weak. Maybe I was tired. I can only feel and share so much, for so long, before I need rest. And quiet. And a certain sense of solitude.

And maybe, these last six months, that was exactly what I needed. Rest. Silence. Solitude. Bringing in the circle with which I share my life. My heart. My pain. My joy.

I always know I’ll come back to the words. That the circle will open back up again, as it is now. But sometimes, when you live your life in the wide open spaces, you need a little time in the quiet forest of your own heart. To feel quietly and solely. To regain yourself, that which you so freely share and often give to others.

I’m still scared to write. But I feel more rested now. Ready again to take on the daring and baring of my heart and soul.