Kathy Sebright

I’ve been waiting. Waiting for the right words. Waiting for the right time. Waiting for inspiration to hit. Waiting to have something more important to say. Waiting and waiting and waiting. And a couple of years have passed in this holding pattern.

I’ve been wondering just how much time can go by before I have to stop calling myself a writer. If I am no longer actively seeking out writing assignments, if I am no longer sending my work out, if I am no longer writing, am I still a writer? What if the words are just lodged in my throat? What if there are thousands of words burning inside of me like an out of control forest fire and I have simply become unrooted in who I am and too afraid now? Am I still a writer if I have become comfortable choking on the ashes of everything that goes unsaid? What if I have very recently turned down not one, but two speaking opportunities? Further tanking the hopes of what I thought I would be, what I thought I could be. What then to this form of self sabotage that feels steeped in cowardice?

Maybe quiet bravery has to come first. A small step forward that no one sees. A dim light in a dark room. A whisper of hope. Giving what you fear a name. Pushing past what would stop most people. Or maybe sometimes bravery just needs to roar. Standing up when everyone else sits down. Doing something even though you have NO idea what you are doing. Saying yes to trying. Maybe bravery can be anything you need it to be. Anything you say it is. Maybe you are already brave.

What if we did that in everyday life? What if we stopped waiting for the perfect time? Because there is no perfect time. There is only here. There is only now. And I have no guarantees in this life. I don’t want a list of things I should have done or wish I would have done if I live to an old age. I want to run a multi-day ultramarathon through another country. I want to jump out of an airplane. I want start my own charity. I want to write books…plural. I secretly even want to write poetry, even if it is seen as an outdated art that doesn’t sell. And more, so much more. I want to do more and see more. I want to take my kids on adventures of their own. I may not always succeed in what I do but I want to try. I have to try. I am not this person who sits on the sidelines. I have never been before and I don’t want to be anymore. 

And so today’s quiet bravery comes in the form of this muddled piece of writing with no real defined edges. (Thanks for reading it anyhow!) I promise it will get better as I get in the swing of it again. Here I sit, afraid to hit this silly little blue button that says publish. But I am going to do it anyhow. And I am going to do it more often.

Join me. Let’s do the small and big things scared. Let’s start today. Not tomorrow. Let’s do it now.

About two years ago, I lost my voice. Not literally of course, just figuratively. All of the words inside of my head shriveled up and slowly died like a forgotten about garden behind an abandoned home. What was once blooming with life was suddenly gone. It had been left behind, the beauty all but choked out by the overgrowth of weeds that descended upon it. All of the joy that had once burst forth from my heart when I sat down to write crashed at my feet in a thousand pieces. I stared at a blank page and recoiled. I felt taunted by the nothingness where I once would have seen nothing but possibilities.

It’d be easy, or maybe not so easy, to attempt to figure out just when I had lost my voice. Although, I don’t know that it does me any good at this point. It doesn’t matter when or why my voice slipped away from me, only that it had. And I went with it. Whether I liked it or not, I went with it. I slipped away too.

I thought I could be ok there. In that strange in between that didn’t feel like home. In that place where nothing made sense and the things I once loved seemed so far away. In that place, all the people I loved felt so out of reach. And for what? And why exactly? Who said I wasn’t worth it anymore? Who told me I didn’t have anything important to say? That I wasn’t a good enough person? Or that I should cower and hide from the world? Who said I couldn’t do the same things I used to because now things were different? Who? The enemy.

My enemy? It lives inside of me. There are two parts of me, the light and the dark. And over the last two years, the dark, the enemy, nearly stomped out all of my light. It buried me so deep under ground I thought I’d never see the light again. The enemy lives in my head, in my heart, and in my soul sometimes. It starts as a quiet whisper in my ear but grows and grows, until it is an all consuming scream that I can not block out. The enemy wants me to believe I have failed. That I am not loved or even liked. That I don’t deserve to be happy. That I am unworthy and unimportant. That what I write is junk. That I have trashed the beginnings of my writing career already. That I have nothing to offer anyone. Oh the enemy tried to get me to believe so many things; and I did. I foolishly believed so many dark and damaging things about myself. And I lost my way. I truly lost my way. These slash marks on my wrists bare witness to just how far gone I was. All the ink in the world can not cover up the truth. I disappeared and went nearly silent.

Last year, still in a debilitating downslide, I saw a Facebook post about roller derby tryouts. It seemed like a ridiculous idea. I went rollerskating once in the fourth grade and I wasn’t any good at it. But my days and nights were long and lonely then and I needed something good to focus on. I needed something for myself. Anything. And I couldn’t bring myself to write or run because it was too much like the old me and I was this new dark me now. So I needed something new. I decided it had to be roller derby. I was terrified walking into that roller rink for the first time but something inside of me knew I needed to try. I needed to throw myself into it. And try I did. It was hard and it hurt, but I loved it. Pushing and fighting my way through a crowd of women that wanted to stop me, made me remember how hard I used to push in real life. Dropping low and preparing my body to get hit hard, over and over, by a woman that wants through made me remember I have always been able to take a hit and keep going. I came back in glimpses, the darkness fading just a little bit at a time. Roller derby made me feel strong and brave and I had forgotten that feeling. I had relinquished my power in this life and gave up in a lot of ways. In a sense, roller derby was me learning to try again. I had to give even more when I felt I had nothing to give. I had to (literally) pick myself back up off the floor no matter how hard that hit was. I had to find that drive, that will, that strength to dig deep. The power was cumulative. It snuck into other parts of my life. I started to get back up, in a hundred different ways. I started to run a little bit at a time again. I started to write in an old notebook, just for myself. This quiet and methodical rising happened when I wasn’t even looking. Because I knew I wasn’t ready then, but today I am ready now.

It is time to get back up. It is time to write again. It is time to live again. I will not hide any longer. It was a long, hard fall, and it took me much longer than I would have liked to stand back up, but here I am. Eight wheels brought me back home. Eight wheels brought me back to myself. And it is good to be home again.

Today, June 21st, is National Skate Day. I will be celebrating on those eight wheels that have taken me places I never knew I was brave enough to go. #Yayskateday

The sky is blue and the air is warm. It blows in through the sheer bedroom curtain as I click the keys furiously. I am alive and well. I am happy and content. But I am also scared and unsure of myself. My book will be out in less than four weeks. This is big. Like REALLY big. This is something I’ve wanted to do my entire life. A dream that I’ve carried around with me ever since I could hold a pencil and write more than just my name. It’s more than I could have ever hoped for.

I’m standing on the edge of that cliff, on the cusp of jumping over, and I hesitate. What am I doing? What on earth am I doing?

It has been seven months since I have published a post. Seven. I could make excuses, but why bother? As I’ve stumbled through the editing and formatting process and attempted to learn as I went, it’s been undoubtedly slow. It’s taken up most of my free time and zapped all creative energy from my brain. With every misplaced comma, incorrect tense, and each capitalized word in quotation marks, the words in my head fell farther and farther away from me. I forgot that I actually enjoy writing. I got focused. Too focused. I wanted to make the book perfect. I HAD to make it perfect. I couldn’t do anything else until I got it just the way I wanted it. That would make me feel better. Or so I thought.

I sit here today in front of my laptop. I should be working. There are people to contact, facts to go over, last minute things to check, bottom lines to look at, and more. I’m bored with it though.

What am I doing? I am telling the truth. The whole truth. The bits and pieces that I have buried like treasure for safekeeping. I have built wall after wall around these secrets to keep others out. And just like that, I’m going to blast a hole in the wall for the entire world to see. Seriously? What on earth am I doing?

You see, I have secrets. Lots of secrets. For every word I share, there are twenty more lurking beneath my fingertips. For every devastating memory I bring to light, there are five more that I choose to keep in the darkness. I am publishing a book of secrets, things that my own family and friends don’t know about me. My final chapter – that’s the real deal. It’s the true test of my bravery. I wanted to take it out. I really wanted to take it out. I still do a little bit. But I can’t. It’s too important. It changes everything and there will be no going back. I have to tell the truth. There is no other way around it. I have to tell the truth. And I am scared and unsure of myself.

I stand on the edge of that cliff, on the cusp of jumping over, and I hesitate. It’s going to be okay Kathy. I close my eyes, take two steps forward, and free fall into the great unknown. Today, my book is finished.