Day 159: Can a Silent Keyboard Equal a Healthy Mind?

I forgot to write my blog yesterday – or today, because I’m going to cheat and make this day 159 and write another one later for today, day 160. It’s not so much that I totally forgot, I mean I remembered that I needed to write it and I was planning on it, but I just never did it. Also, I had a solid night’s sleep (with the aid of Nyquil), which is rare for me. The only conclusion I can draw from this unprecedented lapse in blogging after 158 days of consistency despite depression, drunkenness, vacation and illness is that I’m in a better place. Which sounds stupid even to me, but possibly true nonetheless.

I started this blog because I felt lost. Lost in my personal relationships, lost in my career, lost in the world. Writing centers me in a way. I allow myself to confide intimate details of my life and emotional health to a public forum and in that way it is like releasing a bit of the burden I keep lugging around. You are my very own 12 step program, except I am far from helpless, I don’t believe in a higher power and it has 365 steps instead of 12. Even so, I feel like this is my safe place and that rather than the accompanying anonymity necessary for a typical 12-step, it is the very public nature of this forum that gives me my anonymity.

Sounds contradictory, I know, but such is my nature. I moved to New York City to get lost and feel anonymous and this blog is my replacement Manhattan. Only in a truly public forum can you give your inner self flight. A typical program like AA allows you to bare yourself in front of your peers and the comfort in that, is the fact that because they are your peers, they cannot judge you. The addict remains secreted away, safe in the knowledge that no one knows and therefore no one else can judge. It’s different for me and this blog. I heal not because I’m a secret, I am healing because for the first time in my life I’m letting you in. You get to see all the crazy, all the insecurity, all the raw emotion usually hidden behind my tough exterior.

I guess the fact that after 158 days of self-indulgent whining I forgot and did so rather peacefully, is indicative that it’s working. I feel stronger, more focused and more like myself. Judge away, I’ve given you all more than enough material and I’m okay with that. Should you decide to judge (and in some small way we all judge each other all the time), it will not weaken what I’ve built. This is what my ability to forget led me to and in a way that is a blog in itself. The public disclosures and clumsily written missives are giving me what I need most: the ability to feel okay despite a silent keyboard.