I’m trying to make a shift in my life. How is it going? Not so great. Half the time it’s like—what am I even doing? Why am I here? How did this baby capybara end up in my house and where did I put my will to do anything resembling “meeting adult responsibilities”?

Change is hard, baby, but paying rent is even harder. Nevertheless, she bought a scooter (this is true, unfortunately).

I’ve been writing a bit about writing and how fucking terrifying it can be to write, or more accurately, to put yourself out there in writing.

I think almost every single job I’ve had over the past 8 years, I’ve had this fear of “I hope they don’t find my blog.” I’ve worked very, very, very hard to hide. And that makes a ton of sense, given what I tend to write about.

But I guess the truth is that when you hide from the people who turn out to be unsafe, you give up something in the process.

Because the truth is, all the things that I’ve done to stay safe haven’t actually kept me safe at all. That shit DOESN’T WORK—not the hyper-vigilance, not the avoidance, not the crawling under a rock, not the being perfect so I can be loved, not the loading the dishwasher perfectly so I won’t be criticized, rejected or abandoned—

It would be easy to say that I’m tired of hiding, but I’m not. I don’t know if I ever will be. There is a part of me that will always feel safer in the darkness, in the dim light of the closet, pulling blankets over me and around me, trying to drown out the sound of something terrible happening outside.

The people who are unsafe—those people would’ve hurt me with or without my writing—I didn’t bring it on myself by being vulnerable and honest about who I am. I didn’t make them abusive or shitty. That was all on them.

I think one of the greatest lies of trauma is that you caused it or you could’ve controlled it—that you were able to change the outcome. So maybe next time, if I just do things differently—

But none of that is true. There is no safety. There never was and there never will be.

Hyper-vigilance is a fucking lie.

And so I’m trying to make a shift.