When I told my friend I returned to Earth, she asked me where I had been. I never thought she’d ask, but I supposed ‘elsewhere’ was an adequate response. The reality is I know where I’ve been, which is separate, unmanifest, and distanced. Some other realm marked by instinct, a hum that drones over clarity and is the home to habit, autopilot, and disconnection.

It took me a while to find out that I had been there and that, frankly, I was away from Earth at all. I had written and created art, two activities that tend to fall to the wayside when I lose my way. Uncharacteristically, I was still eager to contribute to this part of myself. This is not to say that my work was more or less hollow, or really any commentary on my craft at all. My commitment to creating is rather a piece of context that demonstrates how easily it is to not notice that we’ve disappeared, even when using tools that act like mirrors.

This time, I went too far inside. I followed the white rabbit; I fell into myself by choice, but without knowing. The white rabbit, or the voice inside my head, got a little confused, made a wrong turn a time or two.

I’ve wanted to write on this topic for a while, but failed to have a fully formed thought to bring it to life. I wanted to write about muchness and smallness, our perceptions of expression and our willingness to participate in our outward being-ness. I knew there was something there, but I’ll get around to that. As I’ve opened my world up to more forms of public expression, I’ve been met with a million and one internal ego-guardians who beg me to shut the fuck up. I needed to know what it meant to speak before I could learn to respond to them.

In learning to speak, we begin a process of hoping to be understood. We do not communicate simply because we enjoy the sensations and vibrations of our vocal cords; we hope to make sense to someone, anyone. It is not the primary goal to speak so that we are understood, but to demonstrate through language something that we deem necessary to translate. We are sending a message, hoping in one way or another that we are received the way we intend to be.

When I refer to speaking, I am also talking about the many ways we come to express ourselves or hope to be understood. We self-express through our own choreography, the way we move through the world. We express through the way we decorate ourselves, our homes, our words and contributions. When I say we hope to be understood, I do not mean that we expect perfect translation all the time, but that we use various forms of language to communicate our being, and we often do so subconsciously.

By now, I know I’ve probably lost you, at least a little. Why did I say I was not on Earth? What the fuck is the rabbit here for? Why are we talking about talking? I promise it’ll all make sense soon, but let’s work backwards.

We are talking about talking, or expression, because authentic self-expression is a facet of strong self-esteem. From the way we communicate linguistically to the way we operate in our worlds, we express our being-ness. We become loud in our energy, and I don’t mean obtrusive; rather, I mean unstifled.

The rabbit, or the metaphor I’m using for the thing that took me down an unidentifiable path, is really just a shitty idea that slowly attacked my self-confidence. Being in the world felt icky, like my skin didn’t fit. I began to feel silly writing to you; creating and sharing with you felt embarrassing. I didn’t want to talk to my friends about my life, me, or my honest concerns that I’m going down the wrong path. This line of thinking was not clear to me, as the rabbit is witty and persuasive. It was not that voice that says so explicitly ‘you are dumb for doing x’ or ‘you should be embarrassed,’ but rather it was the voice of ‘what are you doing?’, ‘do you even have something valuable to say?’ and ‘is this who you actually are?’.

Down the rabbit hole we go.

It was here that I began to romanticize silence in all forms. I thought that less self-expression meant it was easier to understand me. It seemed to be more authentic and comfortable for me to reduce my size. Make me smaller, more palatable, quieter. I disappeared almost entirely; only some remnants remain in the ruins of habit.

To be clear, expressing less does not increase your chance of being understood, but it does make it less likely to be misunderstood. It was more comfortable for me to avoid the chance of mistranslation than to live with the risk of it. It was an unconscious fear of mine that my being would be read incorrectly, that I would do the talking and still, no one could make sense of me.

I followed the thought that I’m doing this wrong, it isn’t me, I’m a phony. If I live how I want to, people won’t get it because there is something inherently and viscerally incorrect about it. Even if I were living authentically, I’d still somehow be an imposter in some cosmic way, like everything I am and the way I express myself isn’t meant to be. I’ll become smaller again, more palatable, and become silent. It’s now habitual to feel that sense of pretending, to deny myself of Earth because if I shut the fuck up, maybe I’ll get the words out right this time.

I thought my silence was what I wanted, but I really wanted to find less of me in the world. I’ve grown more and more invasive in my life, and I find proof of my distinction everywhere; proof of the opportunity to misunderstand me by the lines and artifacts of my individual experience. Self-expression made me larger; my interests, my thoughts, feelings, habits, beings and becomings are littered around my life, and I had felt embarrassed by it, but I didn’t know. I had instead convinced myself that I am lying to you, and that the proof in my life was unreliable. I am not poetic, or creative, or soft. I am disorganized, stunted, barbed and on top of that, I am a liar now too. Fuck you, rabbit.

To come back to Earth is to change what it’s like to be in it. I have to practice ‘committing to the bit’ entirely, and that means feeling, as deeply as I possibly can, that I am not pretending to be a human on this Earth. I must use my proof, my expression to its fullest and use these crumbs as reminders to say that I am truly as I say I am, and that in all other ways, I have been honest.

So this is my final real lie, that I am undeserving, different than what I believe, and that my self-expression is wrong when it was, instead, simply fear that took me away from my fullest self. I would rather be here fully, in my skin, as honestly as I can, than disappear again. I’m ready to speak, however that may be, and just as ready to be misunderstood. The rabbit is just a metaphor. Oh, and when I said I returned to earth, well, it’s just an expression.