I have a confession to make.
Okay, this entire blog is my personal confessional so I guess I should say I have a new confession to make.
Many of you are probably wondering where I’ve dissappeared to. If you follow my Insta, you know I’ve been somewhat active but very few of my posts there have packed the same punch that they usually do. And as for here, I’ve been quiet since August. That’s not normal.
Maybe there are theories? Maybe I’m busy with studies and work? Maybe I lost interest? Maybe I’ve shifted careers?
I assure you it’s none of the above.
I told myself I was just busy. I kept pushing the posts I wanted to write. Procrastinating. This was the one thing I didn’t procrastinate on. If I was capable of creating a post a day and sometimes multiple a day in Fall 2021 while taking ten classes and balancing them with three part-time jobs then I sure as hell wasn’t so busy that I couldn’t manage at least a post once a week with seven classes (most of them English which means nothing but reading and writing) and one part-time job that I only recently joined.
No, I wasn’t busy.
It took me a minute to psychoanalyze myself and figure out what was wrong but now that I know, I can’t keep quiet.
After being told multiple times that someone didn’t like what I was posting because it was about them or someone they knew, I lost it.
I lost the will to write my heart out for the world to hear. Because everytime I came up with a new thought or knew of a story that I had to tell, I found myself self-censoring. Thinking about the opinions of ten thousand other people. And it’s not the strangers. Not the people who barely know me save for what I tell them. I’m talking about my friends, close relatives, employers, professors. People who are supposed to know me. People who are supposed to support me and my desire to tell my story. People who aren’t supposed to censor me.
And being afraid of their judgement, because theirs is the one that matters, is a thousand times worse.
I can’t tell you how many countless times in my early years I felt like screaming at the top of my lungs about something and felt like I couldn’t so instead I silently cried myself to sleep. For good things and for bad.
MML was supposed to be my way of breaking that cycle.
But terrified of what I might do to my personal relationships, I shut down.
And that’s not okay.
I realized something: whether or not I am actually sorry for what I write (and I guarantee you I never am), I deserve better than to be told not to speak, than to be told to appologize for telling the world my story.
A few weeks ago, I spoke to author Kathy Fagan who visited my campus. During the Q&A session after her poetry reading, I told her about my dilemma, about how I’ve been told more than once that people are upset when I write because some of my stories include them. The first question she asked me was if any of it was slanderous, and none of it is. Besides that, it’s all anonymous. Unless you’ve got nothing better to do than decode all the code names I give every single one of my characters, how the fuck could you know? Why should you care? Because that’s not the point.
So she told me something and it took this long for it to finally sync in but now that it has, I’m not going backwards.
She said that as long as it’s not slander or mean, it’s okay if we say things and write things that the world is unhappy with. That our stories open up a dialogue. We’re not telling anyone not to yell at us or disagree with us nor are we telling anyone that we’re the only voices meant to be heard. But are a voice meant to be heard.
I’m a voice meant to be heard.
I’m also sick and tired of constantly finding myself appologize when others (obviously not naming names but if it’s you, I don’t have to tell you because I’m pretty sure by now you’re well-versed enough in my stories that you’ll figure it out and you’ll reach out to bite my head off) are the ones incapable of really listening and of understanding and reaching out when they’re hurt and talking to me instead of abandonning me or threatening to abandon me or misunderstanding me and hating me.
And anyone who acts this way, why should I be afraid of upsetting them and losing them anyway?
Here’s my request for change. My desire that you talk to me instead of shutting me out. And my demand that you never tell me to shut up again.
Because Samhi C. is back.
And I’m here to stay.
