A week ago, after nearly a year of my blog sitting in silence, I posted a creative nonfiction piece titled “Scallops.” I’ve known for a while — a few years, actually — that I wanted to write about those times on the beach, in the bay looking for scallops. But I didn’t have the words for it. Not until this past January, at least.

I surprised myself with how sudden those words came to me, how after a few years of what I can only call a dry spell, I could write creatively again. I had missed it, missed the words coming to me, the joy of finding the right phrasing to capture an experience. Although I’ve written a lot since going to college, it’s mostly been academic papers, and newspaper articles. Works with tight expectations of research and interviews, formality and facts. I can write them decently enough, and can find some enjoyment in writing them well.

Academic papers, newspaper articles — and, well. The blog posts from my time studying abroad in Europe. I have mixed feelings about those posts, and, by extension, this blog. That’s what I’m writing about, now: the year of writing half-truths, those lists of places and things and people, and the number of pictures I thought could make up for the lack of feeling.

Before I go further, I should clarify a point. All of the things I wrote about while I was abroad did happen — I didn’t make things up. I was accurate in describing what I did, what I saw. I just never described how I felt. That absence of feeling was an absence of honesty in my writing, and the reason why all those posts read like lifeless, dull, play-by-play accounts of my sightseeing. Rereading them brings me embarrassment and pain. Embarrassment because it’s terrible writing, and the only writing of mine that many friends and family members have seen. Pain because I remember what I didn’t say.

None of this is a revelation to me. I knew my blog posts were far from the best writing I’ve ever done as I wrote them. But I wanted to document my time abroad, and give updates to the people at home to save some time and money on long-distance phone calls. This blog accomplished that well enough, I suppose. My family could read about what I did, see pictures of what I saw.

However, when I wrote my posts, I purposefully left out my emotions, and left out the difficult-to-discuss reality of studying abroad with severe social anxiety and depression. The writing was awful and I hated it, but I could pretend things were fine, and no one had to worry. It was an imperfect, cowardly solution. And yet, I don’t think I could have managed the alternative.

Mental health is something of a taboo subject. No one wants to talk about it. At best, doing so leads to awkward, concerned questions and well-wishes. At worst, others see it as a personal failure. In addition, everyone expects you to be happy when you study abroad. And why not? It is a chance few get, an experience of a lifetime. When you’re that lucky, you’re not really allowed to be unhappy. You’re visiting world-famous sites, looking at beautiful views. You’re living in a castle, for goodness’ sake! Words such as “despair” and “hopelessness” and “panic” find themselves on a list of banned words, no matter how much truth they may hold.

Shame kept me from being honest, and I’m not a good liar.

If I want my writing to be good, it has to tell the truth. Even works of fiction require emotional honesty. And the posts from abroad, though accurate in the reports of the facts and names, do not tell the true, full story of my time abroad. For all their literal accuracy, those stories ring false to me. They are social-media fake, put-on-your-best-face-for-employers fake.

Is this what regret is? Regret is a funny thing. I regret how I wrote about my experiences studying abroad, in that I wish I told the truth about my state of being, and wish my posts sounded like me. And yet, I don’t regret that decision at all, in that I know it wasn’t possible for me to do otherwise at the time. Can I regret something, when I wouldn’t change what I did? Maybe. I don’t know.

Enough time has passed that writing honestly about the pain is possible. The fact that I’ve been silent here for so long perhaps makes it easier, too — I would be shocked if any of my relatives are regularly checking my blog anymore. It’s not that I don’t want them to read this. (I’d actually probably love it if they read this, if only because it’s better writing than they got when I was abroad.) But there’s no expectation of it, and that invisible presence reading over my shoulder as I write, judging me for my words, has left. I’m writing for myself, now. Whatever happens afterwards, happens. It doesn’t bother me.

I can breathe, now.

This post is an exercise in honesty. A new start, as it were. I won’t delete or edit my accounts of my year in Europe. To do so would be just another kind of falsehood. They will stand as they are, in all their flawed glory, full of half-truths and lies by omission.

I don’t know how often I will post on this blog, or what I will write about in the future. I won’t share everything, but what I do share will be true. That’s a promise I’m making to myself. I’m in a better place than I used to be, mentally. This blog can finally be a personal blog, something I write for me. If others read and enjoy it, that’s cool. But other people will not be why I write here, not anymore.

So, to conclude this first experiment in honesty, I want to offer some of the things I left out in my earlier accounts of being abroad. Later, I might post the (honest) essay I wrote about this time for my honor’s program that goes in more detail. I haven’t decided yet. But for now, I will share this:

 

Long hours spent in bed, exhausted and lacking energy to do anything but fall in and out of sleep while sunlight streamed through the window. Sitting solitary and alone in parks. Quiet, lonely nights spent watching the city from the castle walls. Silence and silence and the distant sound of people.

A racing heart, a tight chest, panic swelling at the sound of people talking outside the door, at the lunch table, at meetings. A loss of words, an inescapable feeling of stupidity, in class as lectures and discussions and words floated by, meaningless. An over-warm face, sweaty palms and stumbling, halting, incorrect words were forced out.

Lists of therapist-assigned challenges: have one conversation in person each day, ask a stranger for the time, speak at lunch, knock on someone’s door. Going to gatherings, staying long enough to say you’ve been, and leaving as quietly and unnoticed as possible.

Fear and avoidance and despair and panic. Wishing to be better, wishing to have friends, wishing to talk and laugh and be something more than the shy girl who couldn’t speak German very well.

 

 

There. It feels good, to finally share the truth.

 

What I’m listening to this week: Widows Peak by Odetta Hartman.