This blog is a road map written to help a past self I will never meet again, and yet never want to forget. I’m referring to my past self from a year ago, a month ago, a day ago.

When I first moved to Vancouver I felt desperate, discouraged and eager for growth. I wanted/needed a roadmap for success. I didn’t know where to find one. I felt alone in my desperation. I didn’t know how to be; how to live in this world.

I had many flawed beliefs. I thought that success came all at once, I thought that success was achieved alone, and I thought that success – and success alone – would make me happy. I’ve learned a lot since then.

Writing has contributed hugely to my growth as a person over the last several years. It’s helped me to understand my inner world, and though that sometimes makes me uncomfortably introspective, I feel like I’m a much stronger person for all the dissembling and reassembling of my identity that I’ve done over the last several years.

In her book “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal,” Jeanette Winterson says this (all the quotes by Jeanette in this post or from this book):

“It took me a long time to realise that there are two kinds of writing; the one you write and the one that writes you. The one that writes you is dangerous. You go where you don’t want to go. You look where you don’t want to look.”

Everyday I force myself to acknowledge the uncomfortable aspects of who I am. Starring intensely at your faults is really difficult. Looking into the mirror and seeing beauty and the many ways you shine is even harder.

Obviously it’s impossible to actually help my past self in any way (with the exception of perhaps readjusting the ways I perceive my memories), but I’ve learned something through the process of writing in this blog:

Our stories aren’t so different.

“The more I read, the more I felt connected across time to other lives and deeper sympathies. I felt less isolated,” wrote Jeanette Winterson. It’s true.

I think we can learn a lot from each others stories. That is why I write. I write to share my experience in the hopes that my attempts at uncensored honesty might resonate – even help – someone else who is going through a similar difficulty, or who is wrestling with a similar question.

I also write to learn. I write for flow. I write for those moments when I genuinely have no idea what I’m going to express next. I write for the surprising and ‘holy shit’ moments – “a crystal expression of a thought I never expected to write down” said Sylvia Plath once in one of her letters home to her mother. I write for that.

I guess that’s what Jeanette Winterson was referring to when she wrote about the kind of writing that write you.

Our stories are remarkably similar. We all struggle with so many of the same fears.

I read the following passage in Marion Woodman’s book ‘Addiction to Perfection.’ It’s a journal entry from one of her clients:

“I try to stop making so many lists. I try to be less rigid. I am determined to let things happen. I go to my empty apartment at six o’clock, I open the door determined to write, to Be, just for myself. I take one look at the empty space. I hear that silence and I back out and slam the door. Isn’t it terrible? I depend for my being on someone else. I have to be doing something or that terrible voice starts whispering in my ear, “You’re not happy. You’re not achieving anything. All that stuff you’re writing couldn’t matter less…You might as well be dead. And you know what they’ll write on your tombstone? – ‘she was born. She died, she never lived.’”

I read this passage and I stopped. Was I reading my own words? No. This was another life. A life I could relate to, to a ridiculous extent. When I read Sylvia Plath’s letters home to her mother, the thought legitimately crossed my mind that maybe I was actually her in a past life.

We’re all so ridiculously similar. It’s actually a little bit unsettling. It’s scary to consider how closely we could relate to one another if we only shared our experiences in an unguarded way.

That is why I write this blog.

Although it often makes me uncomfortable to share some aspects of my inner world, I write with the hope of helping someone like me a year ago, a month ago, a week ago. This blog is a love letter to those on a journey of growth. This blog is a love letter that pleads for a recognition of this: You are not alone.