#i shouldn't be afraid of people without media literacy hating me.

[cheshire-castle-library]

I feel like as a writer I'm such a coward. I want to write things, but I hold myself back because I'm afraid of people finding out I'm a fucked up little guy. I know, academically, that every one who puts themselves out will end up tried on public opinion. I know that doesn't mean I'm a bad person, just because there's a chance for a pitch fork mob. But I'm still I guess "ashamed"? Afraid the church will burn me at the stake for writing romance like a Ludo song? Ashamed people I know will see that I do - in fact - have dark and scary thoughts? As if they don't already know I have edge-lord characters??? Do I fear I am unlovable if I write a fucked up thing? Am I so programmed to be the "Respectable Oldest Daughter" that these ideas must die with me?!

How do I free myself from this fear? I want to write messed up romance, the kind of true love on the torture rack that Morticia and Gomez had, I want to write the horrors that killed people and splayed out their insides before my scifi MC. I want to admit the world is terrifying and beautiful in horrific and yet conquerable ways! But I hesitate, choke myself back, write only things that you could show a 10 year old without giving them nightmares.

But I had nightmares as a 10 year old. I saw things that made me afraid. I imagined things that haunted me, that chased me in the dark. I know fear and I have faced it. Why am I so afraid of showing that? Why am I afraid of being perceived, when that the point of writing?!?