I Can’t Pretend That I Don’t Care

Because I do…very much.

I just can’t. I can’t say that this doesn’t matter. That every word I write isn’t done with the hope that I touch one more person than I did with my last piece.

I’ve tried. I really have tried to make myself believe that I can be OK if this is it. I’ve tried telling myself that if nothing more happens outside of what I’ve already accomplished, that I can live with that.

But it’s a lie.

A bold lie, at that. Truth is, I care very much. I care about how many people read my articles. I care about my writing getting better. I am proud of the fact that my first novella, Thoughts of a Fractured Soul, was good enough to be added to school curriculums here in Toronto. It means something to me.

But it wasn’t enough. I wished it sold more copies. I wish it was popular enough to take me on a national book tour where every single stop was overflowing with people eager to grab their own copy and hear me speak about what inspired me to write it.

And so I wrote another book. And I challenged myself to tell a story that could touch more people. I pushed my mind to imagine scenarios outside of my observations. “What if,” was the question I constantly asked when I was writing BEAUTY SCARS. What if an accident can make someone beautiful? What if two people could simultaneously dream of each other? What if I told a story from a female point of view?

Then I trusted my gut and followed through with all of those what ifs. The result was a story that I couldn’t be more proud. I know I put everything into BEAUTY SCARS and will push till the world realizes how special that novel truly is.

But the world isn’t there yet. Millions of people haven’t grabbed hold of this story and had it move their world. And I can’t pretend like I don’t care about that. I do. I want more and so I continue to push.

Contradictions

I’m fully aware that my last piece spoke about my fear of just letting things happen. That maybe I’m spending way too much time chasing and not enough time living in the moment of what I’m creating.

But that’s who I am. This is how my mind works. Some days I feel one thing, then, as if someone else has entered my body, or maybe some other part of my consciousness has taken over, I feel completely different. I have no explanation for that. No reasoning I can give you that makes sense.

I’m also not apologizing for it. I call this blog CRY for a reason. It’s an expression of true emotions as they happen. Unfiltered, unedited, raw declarations. That’s what this is about and that’s how I’ll continue to write.

And with raw emotion comes contradiction. I’m accepting that. I’m expressing that. I’m OK with that. I’m also OK knowing that my next piece might come from a place in contention with what I’m writing about today.

What I’m not OK with is the pretending. I’m not cool trying to convince myself how to feel. Logic has it’s place, but so does passion. So does persistence. So does ambition. I’m through feigning any kind of reality in which touching the most people I can with my stories isn’t important.

CRY

I Can’t Pretend That I Don’t Care was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.