Though I’ve had this blog for a few months now, I’ve only given one person – my partner – the link to it.
Truthfully, it’s because I’m nervous to put my writing – something so raw and unpolished and grotesquely personal – out into the world.
Ironic, isn’t it?
I tell my loved ones, “I want to be known!” in the same breath as I hide this little corner of the internet from them.
This corner, where I am more honest than I often am out loud.
And I guess that’s one of the most bizarre parts of being an artist.
You lay yourself bare for the world.
You make meaning, maybe first for yourself, but eventually, your art belongs to the world. It’s theirs to consume and critique.
I think being an artist is scary because you also give yourself up to interpretation.
And I am nothing if not a bit of a control freak.
Yeah, that’s a truth about myself I don’t like to divulge either… though it’s one that I suppose should be easier to share, given that I’m sure that all of my friends and family know this about me already. They’ve (mostly) just been kind enough not to mention it (frequently) to my face.
I digress.
It’s hard to relinquish control over something that I pour bits of myself into. To know that there is room for it to be critiqued and interpreted in different ways.
And it sounds bizarre, even to my own ears, that I am still so funny about vulnerability now as someone who graduated from social work school and was asked to be vulnerable in damn near every single assignment I was given while trying to obtain that very degree.
But, it’s this very same fear of being known a little too well, or misunderstood while I’m laying part of me bare, or mocked for it that has kept me from posting – my art, my music, my photos of the Philippines – on social media.
Mostly the last one.
It’s funny.
I know other Fil-Ams who post pictures of the Philippines without a second thought. But I always find myself so petrified by what-ifs that I ultimately never hit post.
What if people make a judgement of the Philippines based on my pictures?
What if what they see reinforces negative stereotypes about myself, my family, and my heritage?
What if by only posting “the pretty parts” I depict a crude and incomplete image of the Philippines? What if they think those are the only parts of the Philippines I ever see and enjoy and consider worth posting?
What if people fail to see that I love and am made up of all of it, in a way, even the parts that may come across as “less nice” by Western standards?
I love the Philippines so much, and it feels so personal to me, that I am terrified of putting it within others’ reach.
(Can you see why my mantra in therapy for the last several months has been “Other people’s opinions of you (and things you consider to be extensions of you) are none of your business?”)
Yet, even as I hold back from putting this blog within reach of people who know me in real life, there is still something freeing about releasing my innermost thoughts, the ones that don’t leave me alone, the ones that I’m stuck puzzling over from 2pm to 2am until they finally come flowing out my fingertips onto this page, where I will publish them, and presumably, strangers can read my writing.
My cousin has told all of us that he is pursuing a career in writing.
I admire that.
I have been writing in quiet.
I guess it’s never been for the world anyways.
Maybe someday I’ll finally share this page with even just one more other person I know.
But until then, there’s nothing I really hope to achieve by writing, and truthfully, that’s what keeps it fun.
Writing without goal or clear purpose or intended audience means I can just release the knots of my soul into the universe.
I think, if I knew people were reading my writing, it would be harder for me to be vulnerable.
I would be more inclined to write as the person I wish I was or want to be perceived as, not necessarily the person I already am.
This way, without the eyes of people I know in real life, I allow myself to be more vulnerable. More honest.
Maybe one day, I’ll be a real artist.
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