Coming Back to the (Web)Page

I haven’t written here in months. Not because I ran out of things to say, but because I’ve lost my courage to share myself here. Someone close to me called my writing cowardly, self-serving, and indulgent. They accused me of plundering for attention, and of using others’ pain to feed my own self-importance. It stung so bitterly because it lanced something I already knew about myself.

There’s a certain ego required to write about yourself and believe other people will find it worth reading. Is it indulgent? Is it a cry for attention? A ploy to collect the little dopamine hits that come in the form of likes and comments?

Yes. That’s all true.

But it’s also how I make sense of things. It’s how I metabolize joy and grief and absurdity. It’s how I process the weird and the wonderful, the difficult and the dazzling. And I do think I’m funny. I’ve always hoped that people would come for the comedy, stay for the clever writing, and leave with something thought-provoking. This blog has always been a work in progress, just like I am.

And yes, it’s self-indulgent. That’s kind of the point.

I write about myself not because I think my life is uniquely interesting, but because it’s the lab I have access to. It’s where the experiments happen. And like any good experiment, sometimes there are unexpected reactions.

Last year, I lost a long, close friendship. It was painful, public, and the most difficult breakup I’ve ever had. I won’t get into the specifics here—not because I’m protecting the other person, but because I’m protecting myself. This isn’t a public shaming or a salacious tell-all. It’s a reflection. An attempt to reclaim my own voice, not to respond to someone else’s.

What I can say is this: I tried to set boundaries. Reasonable ones. I didn’t know then that the person I was setting them with lives with what I now recognize as borderline personality disorder (BPD). Since then, I have learned that people with BPD often experience boundaries as abandonment. They can respond with rage, with blame, with emotional escalation that feels disproportionate but is very real to them. In my case, that escalation included a barrage of cruel messages, accusations, and personal attacks—including the words that silenced me here.

I stopped posting. I started questioning everything I’d ever written. Was it selfish? Was it shallow? Pointless navel-gazing? Had I been using other people’s lives as raw material and pretending it was wisdom?

And then I realized: that spiral wasn’t mine. That voice in my head? It was never actually mine. It was pain projected at me. And I caught it like a virus.

I know now that those words were not about me. They were about a person who felt hurt, abandoned, and afraid. They were about survival. That doesn’t excuse what was said—but it does explain it. And understanding the difference between those two things is what has finally allowed me to let it go.

The truth is, I don’t miss her. I miss who I thought she was. I miss the role I got to play in her life—the wise one, the calm one, the helper. I miss the version of me who felt useful and needed and central. But that version of me was ego-driven, also. And it came at a cost: I had to downplay my own needs. I had to accept emotional volatility as normal. I had to pretend that getting hurt was just part of the deal.

And then, when I stopped pretending, the deal fell apart.

I don’t share this to invite sympathy. I’m okay. In fact, I’m better than okay. I’m rebuilding my confidence, one word at a time. I’m writing again—quietly, mostly to myself, but steadily. And now I’m ready to start sharing again.

It took time, but this is me, coming back to the page. Not to defend myself. Not to set the record straight. Just to write.

Flannery O’Connor wrote, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” Joan Didion wrote something similar in Let Me Tell You What I Mean. “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”

I make meaning of my life through the process of putting what I’m experiencing into language. It’s a weird kind of magic, but it’s like I don’t really know how I feel until I try to explain it to myself. Writing is how I discern between the voices in my mind that are mine and the ones that have been injected there by others. Writing is how I put down the things I was never meant to carry. Writing is how I return to myself. And sometimes I get a comment about something I wrote that resonated with someone, and that’s meaningful, too. That’s the part where I realize that my work of integrating my thoughts served someone besides myself. And I love that. I’ve missed it.

If you’re here, reading this—thank you. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for being part of my journey. Thank you for giving me a space where my voice still matters, even when it shakes. This blog has always been a labor of love. I don’t promote it. I don’t monetize it. But I know there are people who read it, who enjoy it, who miss it. And to those people: I’m back.

There’s more to come. I don’t know what exactly. Probably something funny. Probably something cringey. Hopefully, something that reminds you that we’re all just trying to make sense of the mess that we’re collectively and individually bumbling through.

And maybe, if I do it right, something that makes you laugh and think at the same time.

That’s always been the goal.

Thanks for sticking around.