1 | ON VULNERABILITY
I’m sifting through recipe Reels on Instagram — strawberry chia jam bars, miso honey glazed eggplant fries, ooooh, homemade lentil tofu. I’m cataloging other people’s cool tattoos. I’m gnawing my nails, fraying the ends like denim. I’m cleaning out my email inbox. I’m reading about the hurricane I didn’t know just happened in my favorite tiny beach town on the coast of Oaxaca. “Baby?” says Lauren, because I’ve picked up my phone when I should be putting my head down to sleep. “Did you just start scrolling because you’re anxious?” I pause and say yes, but it wasn’t a conscious choice so much as a neurological impulse. My brain’s just trying to do its job, which is to keep me safe and return me to some sort of stasis, though its methods tend to be…questionable.
My nervous system’s on alert for numerous reasons, but one of them is that it’s my turn to have my writing workshopped tonight in the virtual writing class I’ve been in for the past seven weeks. I mean, I’ve shared my words in public so many times, and I’ve put plenty of embarrassing things on the internet. But it’s different to actually talk about the stories out loud, before all of the editing is done; to stare into the screen-flattened faces of a bunch of people who now know the tender secrets you’ve never told your dearest friends, and act cool. I have no idea what anybody is going to say. When they compliment me, I probably won’t believe them all the way. When they critique me, I’ll probably tell myself they’re wrong.
The essay I submitted for workshopping is a new sort of essay for me. I played with voice and structure in ways I haven’t before, and I delved into a lot of gnarly memories from, oh, you know, my whole entire life, dredging up a bunch of stuff I didn’t even know was there. You know when I made the most progress on writing it? A couple of weekends ago, when Lauren and I were away on a quick vacation. I spent hours and hours that Saturday like a raw loaf of bread rising in the sun, remembering how generative rest can be, and then I moved to the shade with my computer and started writing, not because I had to but because I really wanted to, because I had energy, I had ideas. I felt safe. My nervous system was settled enough to know that writing is just writing — that engaging with my memories and putting them on paper does not equal stepping into a cage full of lions or throwing myself at a tsunami. It’s not vulnerable because of real danger; it’s vulnerable because of shame. And I’m brave enough to handle that. I have to be. That’s the writer’s one real job.