on being vulnerable online

the risk and rewards of sharing my secrets with strangers

i tell strangers my secrets.

not all of them, of course. but a good portion of them, i share here.

isn’t it weird to be so vulnerable with strangers? my friend bruce asked me other week. like, don’t you feel vulnerable sharing things about yourself with people on the internet? people who don’t even know you?

i don’t, i said in the moment. in some ways, it’s easier to tell them than it is to tell you.

i haven’t stopped thinking about this since.

what is it that compels me to be so open, so brutally honest online? is it a weird compulsion, my desire to share? is it born of a need to be liked, a desire to be told i’m okay, that the way in which i move through this world is acceptable, normal even?

in some ways, i have always been like this. drawn to both writing, and to sharing that writing with others. as a child, i spent hours in the publishing center of ryan road elementary, “writing” books and binding them together with colored tape. as a teenager, i joined livejournal—which is exactly as it sounds, a journal one posts online for all to see. i’ve written and sung songs at open mic nights, i’ve bared my soul in high school creative writing classes, and, of course, i’ve shared my thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams on instagram for the better part of 7 years.

my ego wants to tell you that i write because it is the very best way i know how to process my feelings. often times, i don’t know—not really, anyway—how i feel about something until i write about it. putting my feelings down on proverbial paper helps me understand the how and the why, helps to make real the ways in which my brain interprets the experiences i have out in the real world. in many ways, writing is the thing that has saved me. it has given me a vessel, a place to put my thoughts, mitigating the risk of spewing them out into the world before they’re fully baked and ready.

i have written about some of my most vulnerable experiences online.

most recently, i wrote about why i quit my job. before that, i wrote about the myriad of men i’ve dated, and my complicated relationship with my body and how i date within it. i’ve written about whether or not i can (or should) have kids, and about the time a guy i thought might be my person someday drove 1.5 hours to meet me in a foreign country before telling me about his partner who owned a flower shop in the town they call home. i’ve written about spending two magical, movie-like weeks with a man who was never mine, and the horrible things people have said to me about my body over the years. i’ve written about solo travel, and how hard my first solo month in mexico was at times.

when i posted a link to the newsletter below on instagram, my friend erica sent a screenshot to the group chat, along with a single word: hello. and by that she meant, what the actual fuck, why did i not know about this?

i quit my job

this is a sentiment many friends have said to me over the years. they’ll read a thing i’ve posted online, and say, “why didn’t you tell me?”

in the case of my job, it was a case of too many people to tell—and a situation that was so dire by the end that i was simply attempting to keep my head above water day by day. but in the case of every other person who’s asked me this over the years? well, that answer is a bit more complicated.