What is your mission?
When I come to this site on my phone, it is always a different prompt than what it is when I use my tablet. Very strange. But I’m glad I got on my tablet tonight because this is the first time I’m seeing this question. It literally made me say “Ohhhh….” Seriously. I just got back from a trip to PetSmart and that means time in the car listening to my “Inspirational Playlist” at full volume. The song that got my heart fluttering tonight was “Brave” by Sara Bareilles. That song has been a personal anthem of mine for many years. I’m not good at using my voice, pretty much for the reason in this quote I screenshotted at some point in the past year.
Now that I am free from the last element of my life that was keeping me silent, I want to use my voice now more than ever. People who know why I really left my old job have told me that I should tell more people why I really left. I never did because I didn’t want to burn what I thought was a crucial bridge. But now…
I’m writing a book. It feels very strange to say that and not many people know I am. I feel like if I told people about it they wouldn’t take me seriously. But I have what I believe to be a very good concept for a book and it mostly revolves around telling my story in a novel way. I’ve done research on the publishing process and I’ve got real plans. When I’m successful, and I have my book in my hands, I feel like that will be the ultimate way to make my voice heard. I’m going to use my real name on my book and while other names will be disguised, they’ll know.
But when I was listening to that familiar song tonight. I got an idea. It’s going to take me at least a year to write this book. I’ve already started and I’ve already discovered that this is going to take longer than I thought. I feel like I don’t want to wait that long. I’m still going to write it, but why not use my voice now?
And that’s when I thought about putting the URL to my website on my Facebook page. People need to know. Or do they? I have spent years writing on this site without anybody in my “real life” knowing that I’m doing it. I’ve been careful to avoid using any details that are too identifying. Of course, the few people that I trust and have told about this have told me that it’s obvious it’s me because they know me well. Even if they didn’t know me well, I do share some things here that I’ve shared on Facebook. Consider my recent post about Steve:
My “real life” friends know about Steve because I’ve posted about him. So the real question is, am I ready to give up my anonymity on here? To answer the question in the prompt, my mission is to make my voice heard. People need to know my story. They need to know the truth about me, about what I’ve been through recently, about my battle with mental illness and my mission to end the stigma surrounding it. But once they know, there’s no going back. I can’t be unidentified anymore. Will I write the same way knowing that my audience has changed? Will I still be as honest? I’m not sorry for anything I’ve written on here about anybody. And I will not apologize if they can recognize themselves in what I’ve said and are offended. Am I ready to alienate people with my words? My gut reaction to these questions is: I don’t care what they think! I’m past the point where I’m afraid to say the truth. This entire website is my truth. It is my mission to put my writing out into the world and hopefully make people think, hopefully as deeply as I do about some things.
I’m not going to decide tonight. I’m going to let this marinate for a while. “I want to see you be brave” so the song says. Am I brave enough to break my “history of silence” in order to advance my mission? We’ll see.
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