Stepping Away from the Ledge

Today I came across the blogs of several classmates. They have come into my life secondary to all the pings they've accumulated between each other as Down's Fellows and through their facebook promoting. They are not at all concerned with anonymity nor do they fear backlash for the words they choose to put to the page. Pictures abound.

The first thing that came to my mind when I started reading was freedom. That's what they have. So much space to write, to think, to feel. Sadness wells up inside my chest.

I miss my blog. I miss what my blog stood for. I miss that feeling of "if nothing else, I am helping the next." I miss having a place to come to where I can dump my thoughts and see them again, where I can claim space without explanation. I am only now realizing the full magnitude of what my own blog means to me. It was like an external brain. Sometimes I wrote in altered consciousness and only realized it when I went back and read something that I didn't remember writing or that I didn't realize I had such strong feelings about until I read my words on the page. I felt empowered by reading my own words. This was a home away from home. I have lost my home.

I had a revelation the other day...I stopped writing here because it no longer felt safe. My home no longer felt safe. But even after making it so private that I have only 3 readers, I still don't write because now my purpose for writing eludes me. It is not as though I need an audience to write...but remember the saying "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" It's like speaking with laryngitis...you can have important stuff to say, but if no one hears it, what did you really say?

To be fair, I understand that it probably won't always be like this. But in the same token...I will never live what I'm living in these present moments again either...they have to be captured as they are, as they happen, before time erodes the emotion behind the words.

When it comes to this blog, I don't know what I'm doing...where I'm going...anymore. It was supposed to be an act of self preservation to privatize, but it doesn't feel like preservation, it feels like death.

I'm trying to back away from the ledge that leads to the abyss that is my life after silencing my voice in this place, but I don't know how...