Writing Is All I Have

I am beginning to filter what I write, to be cautious about what I say here in these entries. I've started to keep some of the darker thoughts, the more challenging realities, out of my content. I am worried about this.

The why behind this troubling development is simple. People near me, physically and emotionally, are reading my blog. When I write something difficult, if I tell of something challenging, they assume it means they should be doing something to help me, checking up on me, finding out if I am okay. Lately I have begun to worry about what I say, what response it might trigger, how it might cause them to worry, to think I am crying out for help or need some sort of response or action on their part.

The problem is that their desire to care for me is taking away my ability to be honest, to be frank about how I feel and what this journey entails. I write because it is therapy, because it helps me. If I have to curtail what I write, to limit my thoughts and words because I am concerned about the response of others, then I can no longer write. In the perversity of this disease process, to try to help me, to respond to what I write as if it is a clarion call, is probably the worst thing to do.

Some of my friends and family living both near and far seem to know this already. They read, I know they read. They comment to me in our social meetings about what I have written. They ask how I am doing. They confirm that I am still alive and well, that the dark spots are just that, spots. Then we get to go on with our lives as normally as possible. I truly appreciate these people; these are the same ones I call when I need help with something. They are there when I need them. They know that helping me does not always mean helping me, that sometimes the best help for me is to be able to vomit out my feelings in text, to let them fall away from me like poison, healing me in the process.

I understand how difficult this disease is for people who love and care about me. It is the most difficult thing to imagine, the pain that they are going through. As one of my friends once said, "This is our disease too." The best therapy for me is to write, to tell my story, day to day, in my own words. This is my cure, my defeat of illness. If I have to self-censor, the cure weakens. Writing is all I have; don't take it away from me.