I’m going to start writing again.

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It is said.

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I said it.

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I wrote it and typed it and hit publish. Fuck it. Fuck it.

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I’m announcing it because I’m scared shitless. And I should clarify that I’m scared to publish my writing on any platform other than a bygone blog now that my kids are old enough not to put themselves in mortal danger if I write for a hot minute.

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I’ve written a million things that sit, drowning in the shadow of my fear. I’m afraid none of my pieces are worthy of a 42 year-old mom’s debut onto a stage brimming with brilliant writers and wordsmiths. Darlings of a Publishing God that would never deign to turn its monocled attention in my direction. The years of trampled and forgotten dreams beginning to wither me into a hag of could-have-been.

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If I pop my cherry with a piece about how terrified I am of publishing my first piece, maybe I can drop the overwhelming fear and self-doubt and move on to more writing of consequence. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

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I spend the infinitesimal time I have available to write, scared that what I produce is the irrelevant drudgery of inexperience and trying too hard.

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All the while, my Eternal Mommy To-Do List chases me around the house and through the grocery store and to the ends of my dreams, finally catching me. It ceaselessly beats me with guilt into abject submission until the kitchen is clean and the kids aren’t eating processed foods all the damn time.

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So…So, I’m scared. I’m so fucking scared.

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I’m scared I’ll never earn enough money with writing to be financially viable and worthy of anything, least of all approval and recognition and desire. So that all the time spent away from my family and household duties, in front of my computer, typing into the ether, was worth it.

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I’m scared writing will eat all the relentless TIME and EFFORT it takes to raise children who aren’t assholes and who make good decisions. Who are productive citizens that don’t shrivel up and die or develop extreme psychosis because their mom was busy writing and turned away from them for a while.

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I’m scared, having focused on my writing, that my house will turn into a dungeon of filth, Unfit For Human Occupancy, let alone a kid’s play date or a girlfriend pop-in-for-coffee or — god forbid — a celebratory gathering of families. Ours will be the crazy house, inhabited by un-participating, pale hermits because Mom wasn’t out leading the charge of socially-acceptable, carefree cleanliness, friendliness, invitation and entertaining. She’s a writer. (If I’m lucky.) She’s busy. No one will invite my kids to anything and my babies will resent me in their weekly therapy sessions trying to recover from all of it and everything.

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I’m scared I will no longer recognize my husband or he will no longer recognize me. Our hormones will change and our scents will repel each other. His focus on bread-winning, mine on my hobby. The only marker of our union will be our unromantic routines and the tasks required to move our family through another day, another season. He wants to me to be happy, but what does that even look like without writing? Should I have focused more on my family? This is all my fault.

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I’m scared that I never took writing classes in college and that the professional writing I did all those eons before MARRIAGE and CHILDREN will not have been enough. That I’m starting too late in the game to catch up with the established, recognized, successful Beautiful People who command the keyboard like golden Greek Gods driving chariots through the sky of eternal sunlight and possibility. Writers invited to a dance I can only watch with my nosed pressed to the window, my kids tugging at my pantlegs and my husband wondering what’s for dinner.

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I’m scared that I won’t be funny enough or I’ll be too jokey; I won’t be taken seriously and there will be too many unnecessary words and not enough commas. Everything will be run-ons or fragments, pithy tangents and meandering bullshit, elementary use of language and all of it done before, said before. The ideal reader will storm out, yelling, “WASTE OF FUCKING TIME!!”, never to return. I’ll have to find an unideal reader and duck tape them to a chair because duck tape is what I have on hand.

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I’m scared that my feelings of inadequacy — undetectable to the naked eye due to my vibrant costume of Lively Spirit — will consume me until I rot into a husk of abandoned potential. I’ll only be known for my quick wit at a Mom’s Night Out after enough alcohol has soothed my fears that my failure will display itself like a festering cold sore all over my face.

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I’m scared to write. I’m scared to death to publish. I’m scared to be read. My fear is a bottomless, enormous cavern that tells me that what I write is absolutely of no value, who was I fucking kidding? A gravitational, magnetic force I am powerless to resist, sucking me down until I’m trapped inside, in a never-ending struggle, trying to pick-axe my way through goddamn boulders and concrete in search of daylight and air and myself.

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I’m scared, too, that I’m being overdramatic. That this is stupid and these tears are stupid. That my bobbing leg and high heart rate are weak and self-centered, Narcissus defined. Get over yourself, for fuck’s sake. Fucking do some yoga and unblock your chakras or whatever and shut up and jump.

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Fuck it. Fuck it.

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I must write. I have to. I can’t live like this anymore.

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I’m more scared of not writing.

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I’m scared that I will die a slow, early death after all that wanted to come out of me in words was suppressed, tamped down until it calcified into an unrepentant cancer, feeding off my regret and bitterness. “She died from a heart cleaved into tiny shards by all her unwritten words.”

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I want to be free again. I want to be alive again.

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I’m so scared. But, here I go.