There are so many posts I’ve written that fit this description. Talking about domestic violence, substance abuse, depression, prostitution, and child sexual abuse experiences are really hard. For the first few years that this blog was open for business, I didn’t talk about most of those topics. It’s only within the last year or two that I’ve really started talking about the things that matter.

The first post that was truly personal, and therefore really difficult to publish, was called A Little String & A Stuffed Donkey. I wrote several drafts of it. One of them was simply called A Little String where I pussied out and left out the part about the voice in my head. It was just about a deep black hole in my center. I never published it. For some reason, it’s still in my drafts folder. The date on the draft for A Little String is 2010.

In A Little String & A Stuffed Donkey, I laid it all out. I talked about Eeyore, the negative voice in my head.

I wrote both drafts at a very dark time. I had been unemployed for months and I was unmedicated. At the time, I didn’t talk about it, because it is embarrassing to admit your own human failings, but I did write about the process of getting medication through the state of California in the post called Crazy. It was over seven months from the time I first sought medication to the time I actually received it. A Little String was written right in the middle.

When I finished the post about Eeyore, I didn’t publish it. A few days later, I reread it and hit publish. I took it down again the next day. That post has been published and unpublished more than any other on this blog.

It’s really difficult to talk about depression, partly because it makes you sound like a total loon when you mention voices in your head, and partly because depression doesn’t want you to talk about it. Eeyore really hated that post. It made me take it down. I’d put it back up. Eeyore would make me take it down again.

When I first wrote it in 2010 and published it in 2011, I didn’t have the support system I have now. I didn’t have all of you, dear readers, to tell me that you can relate, that I’m not alone. Nowadays, I wouldn’t have difficulty publishing that post because I know at least a few of you can relate and will tell me about it. At the time though, I hit publish and nothing happened. No likes, no comments, no support. That was scary as hell. It was terrifying to put it out there.

That post was the beginning of really opening up on this blog. It was the foundation for all the other very personal posts I’ve written here. It is still there. It’s still published and there for the world to see. In the end, that is a total victory.