Send. Delete. Send. Delete.

I have been writing on this quiet corner of Substack almost everyday. I don't know, but here it feels like a place where I can pour my heart out with no pressure. The environment feels more like a journal where I can be vulnerable, honest and loose like a sort of diary entry with nowhere to be.

Three days ago, I didn't have much to write so I decided to go through notes. For the first time my feed was not full of writers with the usual "writers with less than 500 subscribers, drop your work so we can support you" type of posts. My feed was full of people talking about how they have been writing for a while. Some had two published books others had just published their first ones.

For some reason it had not occurred to me that writing is a whole world with its own architecture, citizens, government and systems. So I decided to go online and check on that world.

I found out about essay submissions. I read one call that I thought looked like something I could do and I sat there for a while, lingering. I thought about whether I was ready for people to have an opinion on my words. I write down my thoughts for ease, but deep down words have meaning even if the author doesn't intend for the themes to be glaring. For one reader an essay about losing housing may be about releasing a traumatic experience, coping or a testimony of survival while for others it may be a report on the lived experience of homeless people and failures of the housing system. The same essay could mean ten different things to ten different people and I wouldn't have any control over what meaning they would find in mine.

So was I ready?

I guess not. So I closed that tab and decided to stay in the safe cocoon that is Substack. My mind however couldn't let it go. The observer was not letting me slide into hiding and kept pointing out that I was just making excuses to protect myself.

I went back.

This time I was serious. I read the submission call properly. I sat on the balcony thinking about a topic but all I could think about was just the balcony, how it was quiet outside and there were no people outside. It was so peaceful and the weather was so perfect but it was so still. I was ruminating on the magnanimousness of the journal and thinking about it over and over again was giving me a weird paralysis. I became verbally constipated.

Literary non fiction in this journal with these writers….. sounds serious… it needs a serious story…. I typed in some serious words but they sounded so dry. Ugh, I just gave up and decided to go with the flow. I wrote about the balcony, and it morphed into something intense and went all the way down and became a whole essay standing on its own two feet.

I spent the next day editing and when I felt confident sent it to my brother and my husband. I was expecting something like "it doesn't really fit the journal" but they said it was okay. After a long internal war with myself, I finally decided to submit before I changed my mind and submit I did.

I was so excited. Finally. My first submission. I was so drunk on the possibility of winning the prize that I forgot I had spent the last hour talking myself out of submitting.

I got the submission confirmation email and my spiral started and I decided to do what I have been exceptionally good at for the most part of my life. Self comparison and talking myself out of things.

How many submissions did the journal receive last year?

I could only imagine.

What do the other writers look like? Who won last year?

I found her. Credentials from one of the biggest schools. Then another one, a PhD in creative writing.

I felt my stomach turning and a strong bout of nausea hit me like a sudden slap. A dull headache hit but I continued scrolling anyway.

One of the winners had a published book and a fellowship. Meanwhile I am a stay at home mom writing on her phone, raising kids without an MFA. What made me think I stood a chance against people like that?

I spent the whole day reading my own essay over and over. Finding new things wrong with it even though it was already submitted. This sentence is too long. That one is convoluted. I kept on editing and editing it in my head like I could reach through the screen and pull it back. I hovered around the withdraw button but somehow my thumb felt heavy like a ton of rocks. I couldn't do it but my mind wanted to so badly. I looked at the time, my husband was at work so he wasn't picking up. My brother and mum were asleep… different time zones. I called my husband again to get support for my sensible self. He picked up and told me to leave it alone and sleep on it. If by morning I still wanted to withdraw I still could, and I had until the 31st to do so so no worries. There was time. That advice was solid but my insecure self wouldn't listen. I opened a message to my brother.

I am withdrawing.

Deleted it.

Typed it again.

Deleted it again.

The observer kept showing up — "Stop! your thoughts are self-defeating, you know this spiral, you have been here before." I heard her but the other part of me kept winning anyway.

Send. Delete. Send. Delete.

Eventually I just went to sleep.

Now as I am typing this, I am laughing, because, WHAT?

When I was fifteen, I familiarized myself with the Johari window, the open self, the hidden self and the blind spots. I use it over and over to date trying to find something new about myself. I don't like surprises so you can understand that I know about self-comparison, where it comes from and what it is trying to protect very well. I know that the spiral does not reflect the truth, but it's just my fears amplified. I have done the work. I have been here before and I have walked out the other side and I was still doing it. It was so annoying watching myself do it while doing it and not being able to stop despite the awareness and multiple pep talks. That's one of the things about self-awareness that I find quite disappointing.

I thought that working through the Johari window multiple times and knowing myself was the destination. I was wrong. This tool just helped me get the blueprint to my whole being and still not know which room was which. I am yet to decide what I am going to do with the gap between knowing and being.