Diary of a Wimpy Storyteller

3, 2, 1, let’s go.

I’m a human-fleshed work in progress sign.

There are topics and experiences I’d like to write about on here at some point, but I’m just not sure how to do it (yet). You see, the thing is, it’s not that I don’t have stories to tell. FAR FROM IT. In fact, I have three-digit long snippets of what I want to write typed on my notes app and saved as screenshots on my camera roll. Some are also engrained in my wrinkly brain. (I have already booked an appointment to get ‘storyteller’ tattooed on my left butt cheek in comic sans.) My dilemma is that lately, I am not sure how to string them all together. (lol same with my master’s thesis rn but that’s another topic.) I keep asking myself, how should I articulate my thoughts? Like, what’s the right amount of comedy for this? How much deprecating humor is too much? How many lol’s are one too many? Is there such a thing as too personal? Why do I think there are any rules to storytelling? (I make the rules.) Shouldn’t I just write however I want? (The answer is yes.)

Yes I do. I made this blog, ffs.

Don’t laugh but, sometimes I’m scared of writing. It’s intimidating! Words are intimidating. The kind of writing I engage in the most (because I can’t help but feel passionate about exposing my inner self to the world apparently) faces me to confront my own demons. YIKES, I HATE THAT PHRASE, IT MAKES ME CRINGE SO MUCH. But I can’t think of a better one! If you got some less cringey alternatives, be so kind and provide them in the comment section below. 2 or 3 years ago, when I used to write in my diary/journal/whatever you wanna call it (the ones nobody gets to see beside me) I would very often skirt around the real topic I wanted to address. Hilarious, right? I remember a few instances where I was in a dark place. (mostly the usual teen angst stuff, nothing exciting.) If I imagine someone were to read my journals from that time, they would have little to zero idea that I was in a dark place! They might think I was in a dim-lit place at best. It’s so funny to me that I avoided topics in the first place. It’s not like anyone got to read any of that stuff. Nobody ever has so far. And nobody ever will in the future. I will make sure of that.

It was ALL for me. (and still is, for the most part.) So why did I refuse to actually write what I had in mind?! After all, I knew what it was I had wanted to talk about. It was obviously present in my life. It was sitting in my head, waiting to be verbalized. BUT I WOULD NEVER NAME IT IN MY JOURNAL. Maybe I thought I could make the issue go away, make it less real by avoiding it? Whatever my logic was behind this behavior, it is interesting to observe for me in hindsight for sure. Eventually I stopped doing it. Hooray. Nowadays I am brutally honest with myself in those journals! My bigger issue today is how to write something on HERE.

Like I said there’s stuff I wanna discuss, it’s in the back of my head, lingering. Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool and all shooting some b-ball.

It’s in my body. Giving me aches and tensions. But I am wimpy, I guess. Wimpy to confront it with words and without humor as a shield to protect myself. Oh hi there, I process things with humor, I told you before. But I suppose you can tell by now on your own anyway. You know what else I have realized? I like doing the same with art! With art, I can explain if I want, or not. I can be cryptic if I want, or not. I know I can do the same with words. I know I sometimes DO the same with words. But lately I’m not sure how to figure out how to do that RIGHT. (but there’s no right or wrong, I know.) The stuff I have in mind is too serious, too bleak! It’s a dark place! And I don’t want to hide or skirt around. I don’t want to make it a super bright place. But for the sake of my blogposts, I want to at least add a small lightbulb to it. For a brief moment, I actually thought about poetry. WHAAAT. But then I was like, fuck that I suck at those, no poems from me, ever. I was born to overshare as explicitly as possible in other ways. That’s my thing. I will remain loyal to that.

I am about to drift off like Huck Finn’s canoe.

You are strong. You got this. You don’t need help. So much pressure. I can’t show weakness. If I do, I feel minimized by others. They take my words and shrug them off. This discourages me from opening up and outright saying that I am INDEED struggling with something.

You are strong. You got this. You don’t need help. I know these are meant to lift me up. That people don’t mean any harm by them. But my stomach still twists, and those words just make me puke my brains out. (haha fun fact, a doctor once told me my intestines are shaped in a weird way. But it’s nothing to be concerned about so yay.) Ok clearly I am being overly dramatic, it’s not to THAT extreme, but still. I feel dismissed when I hear stuff like that. Like my troubles are no troubles. I think I have internalized that a bit too much. This is where my humor kicks in as a form of coping mechanism. I love and hate it at the same time. I tend to say (and used to think) I don’t have any troubles. X doesn’t bother me, Y does not affect me at all, Z does not make me feel like utter shit about myself. You know what, Karen, I am doing great!!!! Then over the last, what, months, or last year maybe, I would still continue to say all of that but in the same train of thought, now I am also like:

Stop saying this. You are not doing great. X still bothers you. Y has affected you. Z makes you feel like utter shit about yourself. I talked about this already, didn’t I? Allowing myself to feel shit. I am doing this more and more! But it’s for myself. I should do that with people who should hear it too!

This blogpost was a post about nothing, wasn’t it? I once again just skirted around what I had in mind! Oh well. I’m trying. Can’t you tell?

PS. Holy crapola, what a hell of a ride this post was. Not only incoherent, cryptic and weird. But also fast-paced, exciting, and chaotic! Did you feel the same rush reading this as I did writing it? A braindump basically. A diary entry actually. I felt super pumped writing this. And super relieved afterwards! 

PPS: Also lots of  exclamation marks in this one. I  am aware.