Substack terrifies me

Why substack terrifies me & other secrets.

Writing this substack kind of terrifies me. 

I’ve been contemplating what I want to write here. Sitting in blonde sun on my front step. Eyes watering from lemon light. Wondering why this feels like the death of an old flame. Why breath is caught in my throat. Why fear is staring me down from across the table.

This fear is a strange mix of terror, mourning and self-protection. Everything I feel is a funeral for the armour I’ve grown used to wearing. I archived my books. I’ve been terrorised by change. I’ve plastered it on the internet. And now, I’m starting this thing that reeks of space, rebirth and some goosebump serendipity. 

But to be given so much space to write feels like someone leaning towards you when you talk. Big moon eyes soaking in your whole face. Not looking away, not moving away. Just listening to you as you ramble in the discomfort of being really looked at. Stripped back perceived. It’s that stripped back bareness you experience after sex with someone you might be about to love. Stumbling into the kitchen naked and still entwined in bedroom air. There can be no bullshit. No frills and bells. Only everything you are and could be, on full display.

And that’s how I feel here. Like I’m completely nude in a midnight kitchen. Swinging my legs on a counter. Tits out. Heart out. Right there in front of something that could be love, or could not be, but either way – it’s terrifying. 

I’m terrified of this bareness. I feel stripped back. Naked on his linoleum floor stripped back. Standing in an open field stripped back. I love you stripped back. There is nowhere to hide and that fills me with fear. As someone who has found shadows where I could, found corners where I could, found any way to be seen without really being seen – this bareness is confronting. 

Some people wear their vulnerability so freely, so softly. Like clouds fluffed by a perfect god. Like rain and tears. Like every colour of blue. And it’s beautiful. I see it and love it and I feel it too, way down deep. Past the poppies sprouting from all my graves. Past all of my pretending. I recognise them. But I don’t know how to reach them. I don’t know how to tell them we were probably made from the same shade of star. 

I have no point to this. Other than confession, and something like surrender. Hoping that if I speak it out loud, it’ll soften in the air. Maybe it’ll lose its edge. Maybe I’ll practice it in the bathroom mirror like Spanish. Maybe I’ll really learn it.

Like love after pain, this feels like a second chance,

to be who I’d really like to be.