Welcome to me.

TJK;

I doubt y’alls are actually reading this, but if you are, hey – welcome to me.

I have been a writer only in the most technical sense – that words are tipsily tapped out from beneath my thumbs in a tangle of thoughts, all of it me. But I am not a writer in the Camus-ian fashion – I have not undertaken my ant’s share of the duty of all self-proclaimed artists to ‘create dangerously’. My truth are my own, cathartic, trivial, and self-indulgent.

It is nevertheless the most authentic side of me, the side that I cherish and shelter from the world because to be me is to be vulnerable, and I am never vulnerable if I’m never myself.

But Writer Me is in disarray. I had revealed him – in earnest but also on impulse. Overeager and inopportune. It was the most profound, sincere, complete expression of love of which I’m capable, because I had felt certain that in all my life writing in silence, was so that one day she would be here to read them.

I don’t know if I regret it. I have been feeling embarrassed, ashamed even, like an exposed cluster of nerve pulsating in the cold air, with a screwdriver plunged into the middle. Now I am exposed. Now you see me.

Somethings you can lose once… like virginity, and you better lose it to right person. I don’t know if I did make the right call. I’m grateful that the person did not trivialize it, and that she liked it. And I’m glad that Writer Peter was exposed in a celebration of romance – I had originally intended for him to eulogize my suicide.

It seems only fair that I share this side of me with you, my closest friends. Your fidelity is my anchor.

And now that he’s out, perhaps he will center himself and move forward, to create, not to hide.