I would never go back to being 19, 20, 21…but I miss that girl sometimes.

That wasn’t some supreme version of myself. In fact, she was far worse. She had such little hope and wore a mask to hide it, but every small thing broke her. She didn’t know yet what was “wrong” with her, but she was in a constant state of trying. She was ambitious despite an innate exhaustion. Passionate beyond her means. Naïve in a world of not-so-common-to-her common sense, with no idea how to change it.

Despite being full of fear about “getting it wrong” (and unfortunately, “getting it wrong” so very often), she never held back in matters of expression. Love and art and all those things. It spilled out of her whether she wanted it to or not. She was misguided and so unfulfilled…and all that gave her an intense desire to prove something. To explain herself. To see the world in colors she couldn’t yet see. Had never seen, but had been told about. To say the things she could not express verbally. Didn’t have the safe place to do so. Didn’t have the understanding to handle it. So she lacked fear in art because it seemed safe. It was hers. It was self-controlled expression. Expression that was patient with her. It was worth something. No, it wasn’t always quality but there was something worthwhile about the unabashed excitement about it.

I didn’t care how or when or where or what I made – I just had to do it. I had to write, had to use my hands, had to take pictures of every mildly interesting thing, try my hand at every art form and be proud of it even when it kind of sucked. I posted everything everywhere just because it was fun. Because I wanted to. Because I could.

But I didn’t stay that age forever. I stopped being 19, and 20, and 21, and big things changed me. I collected all of my negative thoughts, all the negative things I’d been told, all the worst ways I failed at being a normal functioning member of society, and ran. In turn, I’ve found myself flung to the farthest end of the spectrum.

I still create because I have the innate desire to – need to – but nearly all of it is private (I recognize the irony, but it’s taken me months just to post this much). Everything gets worked to death because God forbid I put out something mediocre again…if I ever get brave enough to put anything substantial into the world at all. Am I still a good writer, if no one else knows it?

Of course I’ll do something with all of these unseen words because it’s always been the plan to be published, and I’ll keep the crafts along with everything else that’s less intrinsic to who I am close to the chest (because some hobbies simply don’t need to be monetized or even known to anyone else), but writing matters to me in a way nothing else ever will. And in spite of that deep-seated love for it, I experience an almost premature embarrassment about it no matter how proud of the actual work I am. No matter how much I genuinely think “This is exactly what I wanted it to be and I’ve given it the appropriate care in editing,” there is so much hesitation when it comes to letting anyone know a thing about me, to see any part of me, fictional or otherwise. Again, I’m aware of the irony…but as hard as sharing this is, somehow it’s less difficult than sharing the things I am truly proud of.

I have shared so much of myself and come up short, come out of it with less than what I started with, that the idea of trying again…I don’t know if I can keep trying to be seen and still end up misunderstood. Because therein lies the root of the issue: I am much less afraid to share my words than I am terrified to say something and then be seen as someone I am not. Or, someone I don’t see myself as.

So I’ve Rapunzel’ed myself, so to speak – locked far away to create and speak in solitude, because I have seen the outside world and I am terrified of it. Terrified of how I interact with it in what too-often seems to be all the wrong ways. Terrified of putting all my best efforts into something that is so important to me for it to be read in ways I could’ve never anticipated, like the many times my best efforts in other forms of communication elicited the same result. Terrified of how publicly mediocre I once was and believing I will be perceived that way forever.

I was once a 19 year old girl trying so damned hard, and it showed. Now I envy the communities she built out of that effort, minus the lackluster work that got her there.

I miss – crave – the online community I once had with other writers. I miss the ones I interacted with daily on WordPress. I miss Starbucks and writing every week with my longtime friend who always exchanged ideas with me. I miss my real-life blogging buddy who doesn’t write anymore. I miss all the things I’ll never get to experience in the same way again, because the world has changed. My world has changed. Friendships changed, the internet changed, so on and so forth. And so much of me has been shared, so much of me has gone missing over time, so much of me misunderstood or simply left a bad taste in my mouth, that every time I remember that I have to actually do something with my novels and my poetry books and my blog, I go on pretending that that part isn’t important. That it never will be.

And there’s this. This is so hard to write, because I don’t have a point. I don’t have a cute zinger planned for the end and a lesson to take away. I just have fears and feelings and a whole lot of words I don’t know what to do with. While she may have been too much, I’ll never truly be ashamed of my past self because I could use a little piece of her now.

I know a fear of being perceived is common among other creative people. Maybe my reasons and the experiences that got me here are hyper-specific, but I cannot imagine that oversharing shitty work and having long-held regrets about it is a unique problem. I just hope when I do get brave enough to publish, I won’t look back on this work with the same level of disdain. I hope that my efforts will be crafted carefully enough to be meaningful no matter how much time progresses.