We’ve returned from visiting my in-laws, who are 82 and 80. They are very spry. So alive though slowing. I admire them. They’ve traveled the world together. They’ve had such curiosity, such courage.

When did I become so afraid? Life’s beat the courage out of me without a doubt. The deaths. My mother’s physical pain and suffering. My headaches. The mental health challenges in myself and my family.

Sobriety taught me not to trust myself. Or was it alcoholism? My family’s unraveling after our parent’s deaths. My sister who chose not to have me as a part of her life. The ultimate failure to be quite honest when your own flesh and blood rejects you. That pain is insufferable, on the daily, sometimes.

I’ve raised the white flag. I surrender to loneliness. Fear has me in a chokehold. I’ve been hiding out. I have never felt more alone in all the years of my life.

My therapist is frequently telling me that’s not who I am. I owe it to myself to be courageous, to be curious, to be learning, and to create. That I have something to say. That my creativity matters. The world is worse off for my muteness. What I see in the world is unique. I used to believe that. My father conveyed an idea that we all have something unique to offer the world, our mark. I’m just no longer convinced that we’re all special.

When you are quiet for such a long time, you don’t trust your voice. Clearing my throat before speaking startles me. It better be worth it. Fraught with doubt. Frequently, I think never mind. Who cares?

I have a partner that creates no matter what, no matter if no one’s listening. That’s bold. That’s brave. That’s also ridiculous to me at times. You wouldn’t believe how much time he spends toiling away alone in his studio with no clue as to what’s happening in real life, in my kitchen, with the kids, with me.

Everything in me, how I was raised, says that’s selfish. Perhaps the answer is somewhere in the middle. My therapist says I need my own space. Where I can shut the door and be. I’m finally making it.

“You must not fear, hold back, count, or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings. It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself, and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave, which then carries you, sweeps you into experience, and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, and instabilities, and it always balances them.” The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 4

Here’s to reading. Here’s to travel. Here’s to curiosity. Here’s to creating. I’m hoping for it all.

I’m just scratching the surface of being alive.