The First One...

aka WTF is a Substack and will anyone actually read this???

Dear Diary,

I’m lonely. That’s why I’m writing this. And not just for the spark of steady, reliable friendship but for myself. Whoever she is. She seems to only come out in glimpses at the moment. Well, that and to prove to myself that I can. You see, my brain hasn’t felt like mine for a hot minute (read: the last couple of months) and normally, my way through that when it happens, is to write. To tunnel down into work and dig through until daylight emerges on the other side.

But in this particular whirlpool of anxiety and stress, loneliness and deep burnout, I’ve lost my grip on writing. Where words once flowed like a fountain, they now more readily resemble the random uncontrolled spurts of a rusty tap. I reach for them, sometimes, and find air where there should definitely be something solid. So this is an experiment. A test. A tentative stretching and strengthening of a suddenly weak muscle.

These words are for me. For fun. Yes, they’ll (hopefully) be read by an audience. But as the title suggests, the idea of the word ‘secret’ is that it might create space for my brain to write as if no one is watching. To do something without overthinking for a change, which unfortunately seems to be hardwired into me as the only ios operating system and type of thinking I have available. This is about the reclaiming of my voice and my confidence in it, which over the last few months especially, has wavered and cracked.

If you follow me on Instagram, you might remember when I posted about feeling as though my brain was broken. As though I’d suddenly turned around and found myself smothered. Frozen. Adrift.

hannahthewildflower

A post shared by @hannahthewildflower

For the first time ever in my type-A workaholic life, I had to take a break from work. For someone who relies on work to keep their brain steady and the wheels greased, it was terrifying. How long would it be like this? What kind of recovery did I need when I was already taking medication, going to therapy, exercising and using every tool they tell you to try? The truth is, I haven’t fully figured it out yet.

I keep coming back to the image of a skittish horse, the one all the adults at the stable say to stay away from. But there’s always that 15-year-old girl scrambling for anything to hold onto in her life that thinks she can get through to this horse. Calm them down, change them. Both of them need it. Not only is it a well-worn storyline from many TV shows and movies I inhaled, back when horse riding was something I was physically capable of, but it’s also a brilliant metaphor for explaining to people whose brain chemistry is standard and balanced, what the heck is going on in mine. Because I am both the girl and the untamed horse all the time right now. It’s exhausting.

So, I move slowly. Gently. And with each baby step, I forge ahead. This might not seem like a baby step. Maybe it’s actually a giant flying leap. But either way, I’m taking it. Over the years, I’ve written many words with gusto and steam, only for my discipline to quietly and slowly die out. The version of me captured by the Internet has a graveyard of abandoned blogs and websites in her wake. Ones I started when I was younger and trying to make the Disney Channel Original Movie Read It & Weep my reality (trailer below for the uninitiated).

Or that phase I went through where I desperately wanted to be the next Tavi Gevinson, the teenage ingenue whose words got her a front row seat to fashion shows with Anna Wintour and a friendship with Taylor Swift. The times I thought I had so much to say but actually didn’t, because what did I know?

Now at two months out from 25, I’m not saying I have suddenly stumbled into some all-knowing wise version of myself. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. But I do have a fully formed prefrontal cortex. I know the kinds of people I want to hang out with and the ones I’d rather see or actually send to Siberia. I have opinions (lots of them) and am starting to develop values. A politics. Thoughts on the world and my place in it. Maybe it’s pretentious to assume anyone cares about those thoughts or maybe there’s freedom in sharing them anyway.

I’m not saying anyone has to agree with me and actually, I’d kind of be delighted no matter what. Because making me think? That feels like a gift for a brain that almost feels as though it’s sustained some sort of emotional injury the way others might twist an ankle or tweak a knee.

Either way, that loneliness I was talking about earlier? It’s always been offset best by connection. And my greatest connection to anyone? That’s always been through my writing. So, that brings us here. To the first page of Hannah’s Secret Internet Diary. A place for everything and anything I’m interested in. Getting deeply personal on the Internet? Sure. Reviews and recommendations? They’re welcome too. Pop culture deep dives. Bring them on. It’s all up for grabs. The only rule? Say it, whatever it is. When the urge comes to run and hide or abandon ship, don’t. Hang on tight and remember why I fell in love with creating stuff in the first place. For the joy. For the heady rush of spinning straw into gold. For the moment where someone might say, ‘You know that feeling you had? Yeah, me too.’

When I was trying to work out where to house my new idea, Substack was suggested by a few lovely people for its accessibility and its user-friendly easy setup. I’ve seen the wonders my pal Hannah Ferguson conjures on here with her Cheek Media newsletter and I’ve found the Penelope Featherington memes quite entertaining too. The other reason for choosing Substack which I feel slightly less confident in mentioning, thanks patriarchy, is that it gives you guys the option to support me and my work financially, if you can. Some newsletters tier their content, offering basic bits to those who subscribe for free and a fuller picture to those who can pay. While I completely understand, that model, it’s not going to be how I run things at least for now. Everyone gets access to everything and deciding to pay is just an extra way of showing support for me, if you can. If not, no worries. I get it. That structure may eventually change, but if it ever does, you’ll be the first to know. Deal? Deal.

I’m going to try and do this at least weekly. Maybe more often if there’s enough words and thoughts and hunger. I guess it depends whether the world calms down or not. Whether my brain plays ball or not. The one thing I’m not going to do? Put pressure on myself. Create an arbitrary churning deadline. That’s part of how we got here, in the first place. There’ll be more explained, eventually once I find the words to put to the weird shapes my mind has bent into recently. So, if you can live with potentially inconsistent thoughts from me that genuinely might just be ‘WHY DID I DECIDE TO BECOME A WRITER? GODDAMIT’ some weeks, then welcome aboard. If not, quietly exit stage left. No hard feelings.

Let’s see where this goes OK, Diary? OK.

Love, Hannah x