How much of your life is up for grabs?

Or how I'm learning what to share and what not to share

I’ve always been an open book. Telling everyone everything. Not good at keeping secrets. One of the things I’ve found cathartic about writing is getting all my experiences, and gnarly feelings out onto the page and often discovering that others feel exactly the same. For years I kept all my secrets inside. Especially the secrets about my step mother’s suicide and the death of my sister. Also the time when I went AWOL in Amsterdam. And sex. Well I started writing a lot about sex when I did this podcast called ‘The Hotbed,’ and then wrote a book with my brilliant friend Lisa. It was as if I was opening a giant fire hydrant and water was flying out all over the place. It felt so so freeing. Then recently I wrote two pieces about my lack of sex life, and didn’t even question whether it was something I wanted to share or not. I have actually found that as I’ve got older I’ve been even more candid. I mean what do I have to lose? I am an editors dream as this ‘open book’ quality is great if you need someone to come out and tell it all.

But is it always okay to share everything? Something about this latest bout of writing has made me uneasy. To be clear there are still some things that I keep to myself. Some things that I feel too ashamed, too awkward or just too scared to make public. We all have these things. They aren’t blurted out when you’re drunk. They are the darker sides of ourselves that we keep hidden to survive and fit in. These things however are getting fewer and fewer, the more I write. I am literally in a process of shedding and emoting and putting it all out there.