“You must be vulnerable to be sensitive to reality. And to me being vulnerable is just another way of saying that one has nothing more to lose. I don’t have anything but darkness to lose. I’m way beyond that.” — Bob Dylan in an interview with Rolling Stone
I’m trying to be the kind of person who knows what they want. I’m trying to name feelings, even when they’re not entirely legible. It’s hard to know how you feel when you’re a sponge. When you spent most of your life relying on the feelings of others to determine your own.
I think about Hanoi and how, when we first got there, time didn’t feel real, like it wasn’t happening at the same time as the rest of the world. I should’ve been scared. I had no job, barely any money in my bank account, we didn’t know where we would live, but it felt like a vacation. I wasn’t afraid because Joff wasn’t. Sometimes codependency can feel like a superpower.
Sometimes I don’t know how I feel until I start writing, a process of chipping away at the surface, ferreting out feelings I didn’t even know were there. Until my mid-twenties, I couldn’t write anything without a heavy dose of stimulants. Some of my first published pieces were written under the influence of class A drugs. When they got glowing feedback, I convinced myself it was the only way I could write. To say that I had trouble accessing my feelings and writing uninhibitedly would be an understatement. To me, writing felt like opening a vein. Every naked word exposing me in some way. There was nowhere to hide, and the thought of having to do that over and over again felt impossible.
I keep going back to this one memory.
I’m 26, writing features for a local lifestyle magazine. I had been assigned to cover Sinulog, a massive religious and cultural festival in Cebu, similar to Mardi Gras or Carnival in spirit and in lore. A festival of merrymaking and excess and parades of people in elaborate costumes.
It was a weird time for me. I’d just gotten out of a relationship with someone I knew didn’t want to be with me anymore but didn’t have the guts to say it. The breakup, though anticlimactic, was a relief. So when my best friend at the time suggested we go to Cebu, and work saying I could cover it, I jumped at the chance, thinking that at the very least it would be a fun, debaucherous weekend.
The trip ended up being a train wreck. I spent most of it either on the verge of blacking out or chasing around (and cockblocking) a guy I had a crush on. By the end of it, my friend and I were reeling from the whiplash of one-too-many bad decisions. Dejected and having already missed our first flight, we were only too happy to go home.
Back at the office, I felt paralyzed by the task at hand. I didn’t know how to write about the weekend without being mired in the messiness of it all. Somewhere along the way—between my own self-absorption and one-too-many drunken nights—I’d forgotten I wasn’t some gonzo journalist writing for the Rolling Stone. When I shared this with my editor, she rightfully reminded me of where I worked and that, to my surprise, I wasn’t actually Hunter S. Thompson. It was the kick in the head that I needed.
Though I know I’ve come a long way since then, shades of that person still emerge every now and then. It’s why this newsletter sat dormant for more than two years. My inability (or unwillingness) to compartmentalize and parse ugly feelings rendered me immobile, believing that naming my fears would make them more real. But just as writing is a process of chipping away, time has also helped me slowly chip away at that belief. And now we’re here.
This newsletter is as much an exercise in vulnerability as it is one of trust. Trusting myself and my capabilities as a writer after years of second-guessing it, of not believing I had anything worthwhile to say, and of being paralyzed by the enormity of it all. Because what I’ve realized is, why be afraid? I don’t have anything but darkness to lose.
As always, thanks for being here. 🖤
I had somehow unsubscribed and just redound you and then found this and it is so beautiful and somehow very related to my very different life and now I feel like I’m on drugs and also very proud and excited to read everything you write ever
You’ve opened up a new world in your life Chiars. Enjoy the ride and fear not .