Tonight I finally closed the page on the last chapter. I filled a jar with symbols of beautiful endings, the brevity of life, letting go of the illusion of control, and some other things I don’t need to go into here. I made it to the other side of this. I never have to learn those lessons again, as Nico says. I did it. BUT I’ve been camped out in this liminal space for a while now. I overcame the things I needed to overcome so I could come out of the shadows as an artist and stop hiding. Because that’s what I’ve been doing. (The idea of a [[Shadow Artist]] is explored in [[The Artist's Way]]) The point is that I’m here now and I can’t keep standing between chapters or worlds or storylines. I’m ready to show up as myself. I’m ready to be seen. I’m ready to flow. I’m ready to stop hiding in the shadows and allow myself to shine. Because when I’m being myself - my actual regulated, supported, and safe self - when I’m not fawning or people pleasing or masking or otherwise trying to make myself small, I do shine (I think everyone does when they’re being their most authentic selves). And I’m safe to do that now. I’m safe to be seen and I’m safe to receive. I’m not worried about where it goes from here because my job is just to show up and do the work. My art always finds its audience; whether that's comedy, deeply vulnerable and intimate writing, or literal smut. My audience always finds me. And that’s the scary part; when it affects my brain on a chemical level and my art on an integral level and my real life in very real ways (re: judgement and conflict from friends and family who feel strongly about it or are triggered by what they read or see). The moves I make there are very public and that’s a really daunting undertaking when you’re afraid of being truly seen. So I had to overcome that. It took a year and a half of daily exposure therapy, multiple therapists and other mental health professionals, hours of testing and months of trying to dial in the right cocktail of behavioral meds to help me function in my day to day life. It was a process. Fixing one area meant addressing several others because it’s all connected. Mental health informs physical health and those things affect how we interact with the world and our work and relationships. I went on a journey to get here. I fought the hardest battle of my life to get here; to reach a place where I can live well and do my work. and I’m so very grateful to have done that. But it’s time to actually do the work and stop talking about doing the work so I’m gonna go do that. (This is me doing that, by the way - building this site, learning new mediums and modalities, stepping out in a small, safe place to start the process of writing as a career, living my life and making my art - which may never blow up or be widely known but my goodness, who cares? I get to witness it, I get to live it, I get to show up as this version of myself for the rest of my life and that's the reward. That’s success for me🤍)