I just finished reading Hannah Hart’s book, Buffering: Tales Of A Life Fully Loaded (that’s an affiliate link btw) and I am sitting here triggered as fuck.
It’s not that it wasn’t a great book – it is.
It’s not that it was too graphic – it wasn’t.
It’s just that I saw myself and some of my prior situations in so much of her words and in such a different light, that I get why folks get all glassy-eyed when I tell them some of the stories about me and my family and what we’ve been through.
It’s sobering.
Her book also shone a light on me and my personal tendencies that have me making the decisions that I have and do. I am feeling all kinds of ways about myself at the moment: sad, angry, WTF, Oh geez!, heartbroken… many things. She made a video about the difference between secrets and privacy. And when I watched it (twice), I didn’t get it. But after reading this book? I get it.
I too have been holding many people’s’ secrets along with some of my own. This doesn’t leave much space for privacy. Holding secrets always leaves you open for inquisition. Inquisition erodes privacy. My long stretches of being gone from this, my blog, my letters to you guys, is because in those long stretches, I am struggling with secrets. Some of them new, others not so new but all of them problematic nonetheless.
I say that I am an open book but the truth is there are chapters that I have not made public, because they contain secrets. I have a project I’ve been toying with (a new book, which I’ve been slowly writing) and I’ve all but convinced myself that it won’t be a good idea to publish it because there is too much of me in it, too much of my unadulterated Self there for all to see. Once you put something like that out there, there is no pulling it back.
But this book, has given me a sort of road map to plod through my project, because I think there is value in sharing Our stories. In my absence, I’ve been swimming through a sea of Stories. Stories about people and the things that happen to them and how they get out of those situations (or not). And these kinds of things fascinate me. I think by reading other people’s stories, it’s a way for me to find the answers and maybe a viable Ever After of my own.
But this book? Is brave. It is clean. It is beautiful and heartbreaking. It takes my breath away.
Thank you Hannah <3
-S
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