Blaugust #6: I Don't Blog Right
I don't think I'm blogging correctly.
I know. I see it a ton of places on the small web---there's no wrong way to blog except to blog with hate, write what you know and what makes you happy, your website is for You, your website is your own, and these are all things I very very heavily agree with. But, well..
I'm just gonna get this out of the way now: this post is written by the shameful me. This post is the broken tooth I am spitting out of my mouth. This post is the wrong kind of vulnerability, the kind that comes out more as a complaint than a baring. It's not going to be a pleasant read, though as someone who has primarily written about PTSD in its short time blogging, I don't know if you can call anything I write pleasant to read, nor do I want the emotion my work elicits to be pleasant, necessarily (due to the topic). This post is just, to put it bluntly, going to sound like a long dog whine, except it won't even be pitifully cute like it is when dogs whine. As if all of my other posts somehow don't.
The thing is though that despite my internet pseudonym (Agnes the Alien), I am a human being physically, and I think human beings deserve to be a little bit obnoxious. Everyone is sometimes. It's natural. And most importantly, like I said, the sentiment I often see is "there's no wrong way to blog except to blog with hate, write what you know and what makes you happy, your website is for You, your website is your own", and like I said, I agree with that sentiment, so I have to take my own advice and post whatever the fuck I want to.
So, yeah. No. I don't feel like I'm blogging correctly.
I have to wonder if part of this is being autistic? Like, I struggle to understand most nebulous concepts to their very core. I have been getting much better at seeing the gray recently, but I still think largely in black and white contrasts, either this Or that. I have always rejected “vague” labels such as queer for personal usage because I need specifics to survive, I’ve always hated what we now call “situationships”, and overall I just really really cannot handle it when I struggle to see a clearer path forward with anything, but especially hobbies of mine.
I know, I know, it's something I have to keep working on, and I am continually working on it. But when I hear these sentiments from others about how to run a blog, I always find myself swelling with confusion.
Write what you know...
So I write about what I know, which is, largely, my own pain. For the past twenty two years I have been trapped in a cycle of endless suffering. I recently broke free from some of it, which I'll probably write about in the future, but overall I still ache to my very core over my past experiences, so this is what I write about. It is, admittedly, most of what I have written about since I started writing, also twenty two years ago. I've written a lot in my journal about how sometimes, for me, writing can be a form of self-harm in a way, because when I write I send myself back there. Back to the Phoenix scorch, the mesquite trees, the tiny shoes. Back and back and back. I try to invert myself entirely, reverse up the birth canal and get a do-over. I just keep forcing myself back there and I come running out of the suicide mission with pretty words every time. And honestly, it's not worth it?
I also struggle with psychosis, so I experience the world differently. When I think, I am either catching each thought like a snowflake on my tongue and letting it melt inward, herding the thoughts up like a sheepdog, or excavating them---I do not think in linear words like most others do, I approach thoughts as clusters of actions, like I have to collect or chew on or swallow or do Some Action To my thoughts before I can properly think them. I remember things like going up and down a hotel elevator; each year is a floor, each door a memory. I yearn like a scooping out. So, of course, my writing ends up just as abstract as my thoughts are. Most of my blog posts on here are also living a double life as creative personal essays. But it's not really intentional—it's just how I think. I think in metaphors like this:
I'm not the dog we had to put to sleep because it didn't know how to keep itself safe. I'm not elderly, even if I feel like it at all times, and you can teach me new tricks, I'll even throw in a rolling over and a handshake for a buck fifty extra if you look away from the fact that I'm rambling. I don't know how to slow down but I can learn. I will try to imagine slowing down. I imagine it; I spread Slowing Down out across the table like it is a deck of divination cards and I read Slowing Down like it is prophecy or farce (take your pick). I take Slowing Down on that table, lovingly and romantically and, yes, slowly. I kiss Slowing Down underneath the moonlight. I give Slowing Down the final rose. I wait for Slowing Down to set in, to become real for me, but it takes just a little bit too long, so I start imagining what Slowing Down would look like in a kinder world. "How To slow down"
Or like this:
I believe that God's tears trickle down Their face and sprinkle miracles across Earth as they run, fertilizing the ground so that something greater can grow, and rapidly; I believe God cries revivals-from-death and successful rescue missions and found dog posters so that everything bad meets a beautiful, peaceful transformation instead of an end. "All Caps GOD"
These paragraphs are less of an attempt at me being creative and more of an attempt at being honest, baring my true soul, writing what I know. It's me vomiting all over the place. It's me refusing to censor myself or clean up the blood for others. I am the realest, most tangible version of myself when I write this way. Abstract is the only state I know how to exist in. But I find myself struggling to fit in with other bloggers when I am consistently only writing about the same horrific things in the same incomprehensible ways, over and over and over again. There's the sad reality, though, that it circles back to the topic—that most of my writing is about the abuse I experienced. I struggle to see other people enjoying my work, even if some people have told me they do. I think in a way I'm chasing something I shouldn't be, but I don't know how to describe what it is I want.
It's probably triggering for a lot of people, especially when I don't wrap it in sugar. I include the nasty, grotesque reality of child trafficking and the trauma it causes, making harsh comparisons, violent metaphors:
And I overshare, admittedly:
I wish I didn't care, but I always wonder how this makes me look as a blogger. Another thing I often see from different areas of the blogging sphere is that you should find a niche (and stick to it). A niche implies a readership, however eventual. And what I want is not readership for attention's sake; I want to impact others! I know I just need to wait, but as I dream of my writing reaching another trafficking victim and making them feel seen, I also realize that my psychosis and the way it affects my writing may be a huge obstacle in that. I don't think I've seen many writers who write like I do. I don't know how you make it in the world enough to touch someone if your writing is so abstract it's purple, because the way you experience the world is, well, purple. And I don't know if what I do can even be considered blogging? There's that vagueness again.
Merriam-Webster defines blogging in two ways:
"1: computers : a website that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks, videos, and photographs provided by the writer also : the contents of such a site
2: a regular feature appearing as part of an online publication that typically relates to a particular topic and consists of articles and personal commentary by one or more authors"
Personal reflections, check. Comments, yep. Hyperlinks, I could do more of them. No photos or videos… I do relate most of my posts to a particular topic, but unwillingly so, and most of my posts, as I said earlier, could be considered articles, and are definitely personal commentary (and sadly, because of what happened, I am one and more authors.) Am I a hybrid of these categories? I don't know where I fit. I don't know what my particular topic is, or how to find personal reflections that aren't utterly depressing. I don't really know how to blog in a way that feels true to myself and feels like actual blogging at the same time.
I also know though: I'm new here. I have been blogging since I was very young, but I never wanted to really stick with it until now. I never had the drive to write anything personal about myself that was both a) regular and b) public. I had a monthly personal zine a few years ago, that showcased all of my creations for each month, but I eventually stopped keeping up with it. I found Blaugust last year and wrote a few posts on my old blog but didn't stick with it. I'm only starting to blog seriously now. I think there is a space for me here, or at least I see the possibility of one, the outline, but I'm not sure because of how different my writing feels from others'.
I am also a serious perfectionist. I was talking to my therapist recently about how I can't write for myself, not really; I always have to publish what I write at least somewhere, or it feels like I didn't write it at all. And I can only write if I feel like I'm in a mood to write something that could be good. Friends of mine talk about how they write without publishing, just keeping it to their documents, and I wish so desperately I could do that, but instead I stress over the placement of each word like a floral arrangement for a royal wedding. I can't write things that are just basic overviews of my days, or random thoughts, or things that don't feel like they have a purpose or poetic quality or any reason to exist—and I rarely feel this way about myself or anything I do. Still, I have standards for what I publish.
I only publish what I feel is exceptionally well written (for me and to me, anyway), and I feel like despite my aforementioned essays being just how my brain works, I do feel proud of what I've written there and view it as creative nonfiction in some marginal way. But I know I could reach more people if I relaxed a bit. If I allowed myself to write something mediocre. Or conversely I might even feel better about blogging and wouldn't even worry about blogging Correctly, if I allowed myself to just write without trying to make it Something—if I just wrote about anything regardless of perceived importance, if I just wrote without trying to make it sound meaningful or trying to make it pristine and articulate and comprehensible. I tried with the post before this one to make it sound less abstract and it took me two hours to edit the first draft; the published version is the third. If I could just find a comfortable way of engaging with my writing and the act of writing in general--if I could just find that balance I need between seeking impact and confidence—I'd be happier, and I'd write more. My therapist gave me the homework of writing one "bad thing" and I had a panic attack when I tried. When I even imagined it.
THEN I wonder: is this the right reason to write? Is writing with the goal of helping others a noble cause, or is it merely performative? Does it sound self-centered to even think I can help others? Do other writers even have a reason for writing, or do they just write? I've been writing since I was four and I write because it's what I have to do in order to survive; otherwise the words just build up in my arteries and threaten to end it all if I'm not careful. But I do consider this to be my main goal with writing, the reason why I keep getting up in the morning. I couldn't stop writing if I tried, and attempting to help others is how I channel that impulse. I just sometimes wonder if my writing being so odd is counterproductive to that goal, but I don't think I can write in any other way.
But with this post I'm trying that homework. This post is just a pathetic ramble and not an attempt at being serious or Making A Change. This post is my one bad thing. Except I don't think other people's writing is bad unless it is born from bigotry—if I see writing I feel is amateur I simply know the writer will evolve with practice as all do and encourage them. I find in the age of AI amateur writing is refreshing and carries its own poetic beauty. So why can't I take my own advice and find the worth and the beauty in what I already create?
I don't know. I might be overthinking this.
But I do have a question:
Since I'm new to the blogosphere, I am putting out a call for recommendations. I have two questions: What blogs do you read that write both as creative nonfiction and blogging? Do any exist? and What blogs do you read about the experience of psychosis, either in general or as a creative person specifically? I'd really, really like to know.