0005 | Letter to my cousin, the writer

Jeffrey shared with me read a deeply personal and wildly beautiful essay that he isn't ready to publish, and sent this note:

I don't know whether I will publish the essay I wrote or not—there are upsides and downsides. I've spent a bunch of time revising and rewriting this weekend. Probably it's fear that inhibits me most. Ugh. xox

In typical fashion, I sent back a metric boat ton of words. Sometimes it is absolutely mortifying being me. 

Lucky you--I'm not very good with consistently writing, so you'll not have missed anything if you check in every six months or so. Besides, knowing there is an audience is very inhibiting for me. You and Ben are the only ones, and you terrify me (in the good way that makes me use the spell-check function).

On fear: you published a book about being a gay Christian before telling the family you're gay. You underestimate your own courage. I think the inhibiting factor this time is that you are an editor and a storyteller, and this story is incomplete. To me, this feels like the beginning of something, as though you have chipped the surface of something extraordinary inside yourself. This essay feels like an announcement that you are breaking new ground on some ongoing archaeological dig, but you haven't really uncovered the treasures beneath all the dirt. Excavate! There is so much to uncover in there. It will be filthy and unintelligible at first, but there really are remarkable treasures and entire civilizations just waiting beneath. If you fear that this essay is what it appears to be--a start--and that you will be committed to further exploration of these raw pieces of yourself, you are rightly afraid. 

This shit is not for the faint of heart. You will either find that you are unworthy of love (terrible, and terribly unlikely), or you will find that you are as rare and wonderful as everyone who knows you believes you to be, in which case you will recognize the weight of your own responsibility in this world (terrifying, but in a powerful, change yourself and your world sort of way). What you won't find is that there is nothing in there worth looking at. You will come across ugly things that you can choose to ignore, transform, or destroy. You will come across beautiful things that you can choose to honor and cultivate or let atrophy. That's the scariest thing, taking responsibility for choosing, the idea that the person you end up becoming is the one you chose to become. Yikes! Did I just write a letter to myself and squeeze it into your email? Oopsie.

Not that you asked, but I have absolutely no opinion on whether or not you should publish (swallow your shock!). My guess is that you will publish at some point, in part because you already know the power of reading your own voice into being. Not suggesting that it is your responsibility to write so that other people who do not have the words to voice their own truths can learn the words from you, but I don't think there is a much better reason to do work than to help people.That said, it's your inner life. I just feel lucky to have had a peek; it's lovely.

Okay, time for a pedicure!
xo