I want to tell you a secret so that it’s not a secret anymore. I want to share it with you, so you can see that I feel it too. I want you to know that you are not alone.

I self censor in my journals. I know I tell you not to. I don’t want to.

The critic that lives in my head tells me in soft whispered tones, “No one wants to hear that. No one cares. No one wants to know.” Or he’ll* say, “If you die tomorrow, won’t you be embarrassed by that?”

Sometimes I tell him to eff  off and work the way I want in my journal. I don’t always show those images to you. Some things must be private. My internal struggles can’t all be shared.

Some of my older work is overtly sexual, I’ve never shown much of it online, and never any of it on my blog.  Why? I’m not sure. I remember doing some of the nudes I used to work on and my roommate at the time used to refer to them as scary vagina pictures. He found them creepy and unsettling. That always bothered me, but I suppose that watching someone explore their interior thoughts and sexuality could be difficult to someone who wasn’t doing that in a visual manner.**

Anyway, my point here is that self censorship sucks. I do it because of, for lack of a better word: FEAR.

Yeah I’ve got it, just like you. I fear what people will say, what people will think.

I question how do I live fearless? How do I explore the dark stuff in my head?

I’ve got a journal. It’s a small thin journal; I’m going to start to fill it with dark stuff. Dark writings, stuff from the deep dark recesses of my head. I’m going to force myself to get comfortable with that part of me. After all the dark stuff, the stuff we keep hidden is part of us too.

Try to beat down the inner critic with me, conquer that fear.

*Yes, my internal critic is male. An authoritative male voice telling me all those things.

The discomfort my friend felt is a whole other post that I suppose I'll share with you at some point but it's not the point of today's post…