This Could Have Been Another Draft

I think my dedication to publishing my writing was largely of conceit.

Maybe I liked posting pictures of myself. Maybe I enjoyed making author biographies. Maybe I liked the idea of people reading my thoughts. Maybe I wanted those who'd hurt me to stumble across my heartfelt posts, too afraid to confront me and admit they'd looked at my blog.

I'm not sure what writing does for me anymore. That doesn't mean I've stopped. I am always writing: as I walk down the street, pick up my groceries, thrift new sweaters, fill up my water bottle, ward off catcallers, boil water for tea, pluck my eyebrows, climb into bed, turn off the lights. My life is a constant narration. The writer in me never died. It just stopped craving the spotlight.

A part of me hopes this blog has become an abandoned spiderweb never to be crawled again. It's strange to feel soothed that nobody might hear what I'm thinking. Publishing my feelings was an unhealthy addiction, and I grew close to the comfort of writing to be read. I couldn't bring myself to write without the intention of being read. 

Sometimes I attribute this to feeling unheard in my daily life. But writing to be heard could only mean that being published was a form of validation. And without that validation, my writing meant nothing. It was emotionless. It had no meaning beyond its appearance, its anxious rewrites, its value to my repertoire as a poet.

It's hard to differentiate between my poems that were created to be published, and my poems that were written through a catharsis only words could bring me at the time. I don't know how to move on from this besides keeping my recent poems to myself as private representations of what I've survived. I'd like to believe this is a sign that my poetry has evolved into something truly personal. 

It doesn't matter, does it? It never really mattered. Anything I wrote that held meaning wasn't appropriate for the world to see. In this society, that may just be the place of creative writing: softening your heart for the sake of digestible emotion. Emotions so bland, it doesn't matter the taste, anyone can feast on them. I can't tell if it's sad or if that's just the way it is.