I’d very much like to break out of the terrible habit of only writing here once a year (if at all). But the problem is that I never quite know how to do that these days. “Write anything,” one of my university writing professors told me recently. “Travelogues, flash fiction, a short story.” He even offered to edit my work — a great kindness and an even greater honour from a celebrated writer I have always loved and respected.

But my most important journeys have always been inward; my greatest stories so deeply personal that to put them to words in their rawest form would be ill advised. I’m afraid now, to take people to those places with me. I’m afraid that some will turn it into ammunition, because others have before. The most important stories I have to tell still live within me. I don’t know if I will ever allow myself to tell them. I’m a dreadful liar; I don’t have the imagination for fiction. I come from a family of journalists; my trade has always been truth.

When I was young and naïve, I poured all my truth out into the void. Every joy, every hurt, every emotion in between. No filter. There are still people who message me to tell me that they’ve been with me since then. For years, over a decade, perhaps more. “I’ve been following you since Ashtray Girl.” “I’ve been following you since you were on Tumblr.” “I was in high school when I started reading your writing; I’m working now and I still read your writing.” “I grew up reading you. You always seemed to put my feelings into words.” Vulnerability, I think, has always been my hallmark. And maybe that’s why those who read me in their youth and remained have been with me for so long — because they were vulnerable, too, and like me, they’ve stayed that way. We grew up together and we’re still here, fragile and finding our way.

But we no longer live in a world that makes it safe to be too vulnerable, too trusting, too open-hearted. We become a little too easy to break. “You have to temper your desire to believe in the goodness of mankind with a little caution, a sense of self-preservation,” my psychiatrist told me a few weeks ago, when I spent an hour with him processing the heartbreak, fallout, and psychological aftermath of what I felt was the end of a friendship. You have to look out for yourself was the message that came through. With the people you know, yes, but with virtual strangers, especially.

It’s something I’m still not very good at. But I think I’m learning it a little better. Age forces it upon you. Eventually you come to understand that people are capable of great kindness, and equally great unkindness. Even you. Even me.

We all want to be understood. It’s a basic need of humanity. But not everyone will understand us, no matter how hard we try. And that is okay. Some people will refuse to understand us so vehemently so as to hate us — or, not us, but who they believe us to be (which is almost never who we are) — and that is something we must learn to live with. (We are not the fictionalised versions of ourselves that live rent-free in their heads.)

What is it we are looking for, then, when we allow people glimpses into our inner worlds? I have been doing this for 20 years now. In the beginning, words were the space I carved out for myself when I felt I had none. Words are still where I go to feel safe. And at its heart, mine has always been a desire to be understood for who I am, not how I appear on the surface. That’s just a shiny facet. There is so much more.

It’s because I want you to know me. It’s because I want to know me, too.

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My psychiatrist told me to start small. He’s always believed that writing is an intrinsic part of who I am; something inextricable, despite my many attempts to extricate myself from it. He once told me that he thought it was my calling, that when I give of myself through the written word, I give something to others. (I don’t know about that; I just really like to string words together and I’m halfway decent at it.) And so, every time I speak with him, he asks me if I’ve been writing. Sometimes I wonder if he uses it as a gauge of sorts, as yet another way of assessing the state of my mental health. When I spoke with him last, I told him I hadn’t written anything worth reading since before the pandemic, in early 2020. I didn’t know how.

I didn’t know how to write in a world that was so devastated so quickly and so unexpectedly. I didn’t know if I had the right to. I didn’t think I had any business exorcising my depression and anxiety through writing when in the grand scheme of things, I was so lucky to be so comfortable. Halfway through 2020, I fell in love. And yet I felt so guilty for being so happy. I didn’t feel like it was appropriate to wax poetic about my joy when everything around me was so desolate.

My editor asked me to start writing for my column again last year and I said no. “I have nothing of value to say on such a national platform at a time like this. Give the space to someone who will make more of it than I can.” I wouldn’t write for the newspaper. And I felt good about that decision. But I also couldn’t seem to write for me, and I never felt right about that.

I would like to work through that, though. He said to start small, so perhaps I will.

Hello, again.