“Well, why do you think you can’t write?”

This is a question both my best friend and my therapist asked recently, and I couldn’t think of an answer.

“I don’t know, honestly. I know I’ve been stressed, and my apartment could stand to be tidied up a bit, so maybe that’s it.” “Maybe I need to focus on some other project in order to get my juices flowing…”

Maybe...

So, in true Monica fashion, I ran tests on myself… I tidied both my office and apartment. I tried to lessen my stress, and I even played a game to beat writer’s block and rediscovered old hobbies.

Still—nothing.

Then I prayed, sat with that prayer for a while…and listened. And this was my answer:

“You’ve been so confused and jumbled because you are no longer allowing yourself to be honest.”

And I couldn’t argue. I haven’t been honest—or actually, I’ve been afraid to allow myself the same vulnerability I showed just a month prior.

And I realized why. I let a conversation I had earlier last month get into my head. As I write this, I currently have 5 posts that will likely never see the light of day. One is incredibly personal, the others are only slightly so. What they share in common is a line of demarcation, a detour. In each piece, as I wrote, I became concerned with how it would be received, whose feelings “may” (and I’m using that term loosely—I take pride in handling the identity of others with care) be hurt, or what someone may infer from a sentence of a post, and would edit. I’d edit so much, that I’d edit the soul and passion right out of the piece.

...and therein lies the problem.

Writing, for me, is therapeutic. And if that means that I have to get bare-assed naked in front of the world in order for me to feel peace, then I will. Yes, sometimes my private and personal become public, yet there are many things I keep to myself, so if I am sharing, then I have processed enough to be comfortable. If I am not allowed the freedom and the space to be vulnerable and honest, then I’ll be who I was for the last month: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually ill.

Writing is also my way of helping others. If just one person can relate to something I’ve written or experienced, then it is worth the speculation and misinterpretation of others. What I won’t do again, however, is allow those speculations and questions to censor me or my work. It's too important. My sanity is at risk.

So I'm course-correcting. I'm returning to the vulnerable, sometimes uncomfortable, yet always honest art of writing your truth.

I don’t believe in revisionist history.