Gangly, Dirty, and Definitely Not Pretty

Journal your truth

Complete with neck stabbings

I was watching Goodfellas the other day, the one that had been edited for network television. The explosions of colorful language were replaced with jarring dips into silence. Someone bursting into a room covered in blood left the viewer to their own imagination to puzzle out the terrible thing that had just happened off-screen. The edgy air of constant danger was gone, the shocking heat of a sudden neck stabbing sanitized and whisked away from view to protect delicate sensibilities. The uninformed could be forgiven for wondering how a movie about a bunch of guys eating pasta in undershirts and sipping tiny cups of espresso garnered so much praise. 

Journal your truth. When you censor, you stop writing and start performing. Catering to an unseen audience, you limbo under an undefined bar of decency as you whittle your endlessly expansive emotions down to inoffensive small talk. Write it. Get it onto paper in its raw form, gangly and dirty and definitely not pretty, so you can love the parts of yourself that are gangly, dirty, and definitely not pretty. 

Editing yourself sends a message to your subconscious that your feelings and thoughts are wrong, shameful, or unacceptable and should be repressed or, at least, diluted. Why? Why back away from your first word choices because they’re too loud, too angry, or too vulgar? Where is that judgment coming from in your private writing if not from yourself? How many other things are you bringing down to PG-13 because you judge yourself too much to unleash? And anyway, what’s a few neck stabbings between friends?