Not Particularly Brave, Not Particularly Not Brave

I don’t ever really think of myself as particularly brave or courageous. But I don’t really think of myself as not brave either. Actually, it’s not something I think about on a regular basis. Or at all really. But I read a lot of books. All different kinds of books, and memoirs are often my favorite. And every time I read someone’s memoir, I think about how brave they are.

It takes a lot of guts to write down your own story. To revisit your darkest, loneliest places long enough to put words to the memories. To face your own past and the pieces of you that you typically keep hidden away. Buried not just from the rest of the world, but from yourself too. It’s hard to bring yourself back to those places. They were enough to experience the first time.

But then, after the hard work of getting it all on paper, you’re not even close to done with it. You have to read everything you wrote, living it all again and again. Whether it’s more good or bad depends on your story. Then you have to edit and rearrange, deleting and rewriting while you decide which pieces need to stay. And it’s probably going to be the parts of your story that make you feel your most vulnerable that you’ll realize need to be the ones filling the pages.

Everything up to this point has been brave. But it doesn’t compare to what comes next. 

For me to be reading someone’s memoir, that means they had to make the decision to share it. Everything that comes before that decision is facing only yourself. Until you let the first person read it, you’ve held onto the option of keeping your story to yourself. And the option of facing yourself alone. Even then, you could stop there, letting only one or two people in.

Before they submitted the final draft for printing, there was always still time to change their mind. So many moments when they could have hesitated, turned around, and decided they couldn’t do it. Those are feelings I understand. But the choice to put it out there, published, where other people can read it? That’s a bravery I don’t yet know. I just know that it’s big. Beautiful. Gutsy in a way that I hope I can be one day.

Publishing a book, especially a memoir, is very different from the writing I share here. Yes, every week I share my ideas and these short anecdotes from my life. I share my observations of the world and these tiny moments. Most weeks I press publish almost instantly. Zero hesitation. And then there are times when it takes me days, weeks, to share a particular piece I’ve written.

Sometimes on a Tuesday, I share a small sliver of my much longer story. The story I hope I feel brave enough to tell eventually, because I think it’s a story that would make a difference. The story I’ve never shared before. Because it’s hard to go back there. It’s a lot to live there again, even through memories, and examine all the pieces. I mean, it’s hard enough diving in and bringing it to the surface, one piece at a time. Told all together though, it’s one hell of a story.

It’s those slivers that I hesitate to publish. Not only for the reasons you would think though. Writing them down, choosing what needs to be shared is hard. But that’s the less hard part. It’s the putting it in someone else’s hands that gets me. Because once they know the story, they can’t ever go back to not knowing it. And I’ve seen enough people squirm in discomfort when I’ve shared glimpses of my story over the years to know that not knowing it is easier.

It’s easier not knowing what it feels like to slide a ring onto a cold, rigid finger while you say goodbye. Or what the first scoop of dirt sounds like when it thuds onto a coffin. Or just how hard it is accept when you’ve made the decision to stay. Especially if those aren’t moments in your own story. But they’re moments in my mine. And they’re the kind of things you can’t unread when I’ve decided to share them. Once published, I don’t get to take them back.

I know that my words are only echoes of what came before. But I’ve watched these echoes cause enough tears to know that it’s easier to leave them unsaid. Easier, but less beautiful.