Vulnerable
April 30th, 2011 § 5 Comments
I teeter in this place. Never sure. Never totally at ease. I open up such intimate parts of my life to the world. In writing, online and on stage. My rough upbringing, having had a mentally ill mother, homelessness, my history as a sex worker, pieces of my sexuality… to name a few. For the most part, when I do share, I wait until a vast amount of time has past and then find that distance gives me the freedom. (Hopefully any parties involved in the story are dead and/or unrecognizable due to that distance.)
But with as much as I share about my history, I am at the same to so deeply private about most of my life. Especially what I may be going through in the immediate. When I see people expounding on their immediate life issues in (blogs and on facebook) they so often seem off the handle or down right insane to me. Blasting their life out into the world as it unfolds. I’m never sure how much I should share and who I should share it with. Sometimes I wonder why I even have the compulsion to share.
I do know why. I just question it at times.
I do it because I love the moments when I get off stage and someone steps up to tell me I have had an impact on their life. They ask for hugs. They hand me little handmade tokens of affection. They give me lovely words. And the love letters that come into my email box are astoundingly beautiful. People relate to pieces of my story. They feel they are less alone in their experience. It’s deeply touching.
But other times people will step up to me, after being exposed to my work, and behave as though they believe they know me. Really know me. They think because they have seen one little window into who I am or what my experiences has been – that they know me. And they don’t. It’s confusing and almost hurtful at times. To think they are so enamored by the vision they have created in their head that they can’t see that I am a whole soul that exists beyond and despite what they might know of me.
This thing, to be even slightly well known, is a baffling affair. When giving me words of advice on how to write my memoir, Augusten Burroughs (of Running with Scissors fame) said, “Just write as though no one is ever going to read it.” Not as easy as it sounds.
“What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.” ~Brene Brown
Well said, D.
Thank you.
Exposure sometimes leads to false familiarity. “People” (the great masses) breathe life into what they see on paper, or on the small LED screen, to make the story meaningful to them in a personal way. They take owndership of your words and, by extension, of you, in some visceral way that is not always positive. It is the double edged sword of being a writer of very personal and highly-charged material. You can make such a huge impact on those who you reach in a positive, healing way or in an obsessive, desperate one. Hopefully, there are more of the former and few of the latter. Keep writing.
This compact little beauty had me searching for it again days later for a re-read. Compelling questions that resonate in my own life as a writer and artist. I’ve given a lot of thought to the balance of honesty and public image- When, and how much can be a tricky line to walk for a person longing for authenticity and living in a fish bowl.
It’s a thin line, that balance. If there is a line at all? Thanks.