A Response to "How Honest is Too Honest?"

So last week I wrote a post about balancing how openly I talk publicly about a struggle with anxiety and depression. Since writing that post I've received countless emails and facebook messages from some of you who read it, not to mention a comment or two on the blog itself. The reactions were all identical. "Thank you for your honesty," "You are not alone," "I struggle the same way." Each email or message was an encouragement to me personally in this very difficult time of unemployment and lack of purpose or place in the world. It is such a gift to know that other people see my plight and acknowledge the discomfort of it. So thank you for holding me up during this time and this past year as I've come forward on this blog with my struggle. Thank you.

I'm still torn, even after all those unanimous messages, as to what exactly is appropriate to share publicly. I hear people telling me how much they appreciate my honesty and writing and what a benefit it has been to them and still I wonder about what or how much to say. As much as I want to validate the struggle for myself and apparently so many others who have stumbled across my blog, I also do not want to play the victim any longer (as I've been known to do). I really do want to write from a perspective of living in spite of anxiety instead of at the mercy of it. It's easier to write about how crummy I feel some days than it is to write about how successful I am being in the midst of my struggle.

To write about my victory over the struggle means I have to really dig in and beat this thing by managing these emotions each and every day, which is perhaps the hardest to do while dealing with the identity and motivation issues that accompany unemployment. I don't know that there's anything that causes me as much anxiety as the fear of the dark abyss of nothingness.

As I continue to dream and seek out vision for my future, the love of writing remains. You wouldn't know it based on the low caliber of the writing on the blog over the past few months. I don't know what it would look like to write full time. I don't know what I would write and what medium to pursue, but I'm leaving that option open. Out of all the ways I've "put myself out there" this past year, the one thing people have responded to the most frequently has been my writing. I'm not sure if it's been more my commentary about anxiety and depression or the writing itself that people have responded to. It's just kind of funny to me that I built an entire website dedicated to showcasing my event planning portfolio and it's this blog that has received more feedback than anything else. Interesting. Not sure what it all means though.

So my conclusion from all the responses is to just keep writing. I don't think I'm ready to take the blog super public again yet, but I'll keep writing honestly. I'm living in an extremely uncomfortable tension in almost all areas of my life, the writing on this blog being just one of many areas. But who isn't? Maybe it's the honesty about this tension that people are responding to, the fact that I can't end every post with a moral lesson or tied up with a bow, but rather just hanging as a loose end, a to be continued. So for now I guess all I can say is what most of us feel at some point in our lives: to be continued.