Anxiety. The ball of tension that simmers in the background, which often no one sees, but it clings to your body like an unwelcome guest. Even when it’s an event you’re supposed to enjoy and have been planning for months to attend, an uncertainty crawls into the nooks and crannies of your heart with fears you have suppressed and kept underneath for so long.
I haven’t been to a writing conference in seven years.
Seven years.
Though I have never stopped creating content, weaving words on the page, even completing two manuscripts (though unpolished) in that time period, it was a part of me that I kept mostly to myself. However, nearly two years ago, I decided I wanted to become a published author, and though I have no idea how to get there, I am on a journey of learning.
And that means running into defensive walls I unknowingly constructed and facing the lies I believe about myself that I didn’t even know about. They are lies I need to reframe in the light of who God says I am rather than what others have said, whether that is my broken perception of who I thought should be (and sometimes still do) or whether it was words unintentionally said that shoved me into a shell and led me to not accept the parts of myself that God designed me to be.
Yet, here comes anxiety. That unpleasant emotion no one likes to feel. That we wish we could simply run away from. Or shut off and feel nothing at all.
But I couldn’t. It trickled in the day before I was to leave for the Write-To-Publish conference, a conference I had excitedly registered for months prior. I knew it wasn’t just jitters from traveling to a new place – that was something I had done plenty of times before. Heck, when I was 20, I flew to the States, without a cellphone, trusting a friend would know where to find me at this airport, with only the anticipation of the adventure that I was about to participate in.
I tried to make sense of it, but couldn’t, and then realized it wasn’t only anxiety I felt. There was dread. There was doubt. There was sadness. There was a brokenness that 33-year-old me felt that 19-year-old me never went through at her first writer’s workshop. Something had broken that enthusiasm and joy, morphing into a version of herself that was proper and acceptable to a society outwardly, but dried and shriveled up inwardly. A person I had constructed that only showed pieces of herself and only revealed my inner heart to those she thought wanted to hear the thrum of what brought her joy or the echoes of what brought her sorrow.
Where was this person who was unafraid to make friends? Jump into new things with excitement? Join conversations without caring about what the other person thought? Now, I was avoiding people, hiding in corners, wishing I were a fly on the wall so I could listen to the interesting conversations, but not wanting anyone to see I was there in return.
Why?
Because I didn’t want people to know my story. I was ashamed – and perhaps am ashamed – of who I was and am. I didn’t want anyone to see the pain of my present or the failures of my past, and if I dared share anything? The danger of being misunderstood and dismissed entirely. But this wasn’t living. This wasn’t who I wanted to be. Or want to be.
So I prayed. For I didn’t know what else to do.
Father, what happened to me? What broke me? Is there any way I can become the bright young woman I once was, but, even a better version?
I asked this, for I know even that 19-year-old carried many unseen burdens, and perhaps it was those burdens that grew, and over time, they crushed me as I was no longer able to carry them. They accumulated as failures mounted, as heartbreaks happened, as dreams were swept away and turned into realities that were unfulfilling in the promises of just do xyz and you’ll succeed, and the years of struggling with waves of depression and doubt and a sense of self-loathing that I buried from the eyes of many.
And I continued to pray as the anxiety continued its ugly, controlling spin.
God, I’ve been so broken and…
I paused. I felt as if God was prompting me to rest while at this conference and to… not hide myself
Gulp.
Don’t pretend to be someone I’m not? Don’t pretend to be happy when I’m not? Ask for help…from strangers? Though, I knew this was a Christian conference, that seemed scary. I don’t know how to do that. How to I take down the layers I have built? How do I be courageous despite the emotional storm raging within that says it’s not safe to share your pain, your hurt, your emotions, your passion? Even among writers, a place where I should feel free to express my love for this amazing craft, resistance pulled in such a heavy way. How…do I be myself again?
I didn’t know the answer to that question, but God did.
Read with me, this week, as I unfold the story of how God answered my prayers in so many ways throughout the Write-to-Publish Conference.
Gettin' Real 