I was once asked if I ever run out of things to write about. This was a few years ago when I was dropping two or three posts a day on Fetlife, and half of them would always start trending.

“No,” i remember answering. “I never run out of things to write about, because I never run out of things to think about.”

It’s still true. I have plenty to say; but I seem to have lost the drive to say it there. The less “safe” that space felt, the less I felt like allowing myself to be publicly vulnerable in it.

There’s stuff I’d love to still be writing about. I have a ton of thoughts on relationships and human connection. A story a week on love and lust and kinky sex. I’d chronicle my exploration with rope suspension and share photos and stories that represent my experiences as a larger-bodied bottom. I’d share my musings on the parallels between life and art (namely in the form of the many, many TV shows that I watch). And so many things to share about the way I’ve been asserting myself at work, because #TimesUp and all that jazz.

I could share about some of the feelings I’ve been having as I form new friendships with new people that are helping me explore different facets of my relationship paradigm. I’d love to openly process where I am emotionally about the potential for one of those friendships to become physical – something I both want and fear simultaneously.

I could keep you updated on my cats and share the whimsy of that time (early this morning) when in a fog of sleep deprivation, I asked Alexa to turn off the cat’s incessant meowing coming from behind my bedroom door.

She did not understand.

I would definitely share with you all the different ways I have been inspired by others. I want to share their blogs and their art and their messages with you, and convey how how much opening up my mind and heart to the things that used to make me feel a measure of discomfort has expanded my understanding of beauty and strength and integrity in so many forms. The way that embracing and elevating and listening to diverse voices has given me so much to be inspired by and has so profoundly enriched my perception of the world around us.

There is so fucking much I want to say.

I don’t even doubt that there are people who want to hear it, and people who have to hear it and people whose lives I can improve by sharing it – and yet….

…and yet, I remain in my silent corner.

I want to blame it on trolls and stalkers, but the truth is – the trolls don’t really come for me, and when they do, I have no qualms in ignoring and/or blocking them. The stalkers, though. That one’s a pickle.

I can pinpoint the moment I started being afraid to share all my thoughts with you to the moment some angry guy on the internet retaliated against my anger toward him for invading my privacy by escalating his implied threats of exposure.

I wish I could have just limited that fear to my exposure on Fetlife – but, no. He made it clear that what happens there does not necessarily stay there.

I changed my behavior after that. I purged my friends list (again). I set all my face pictures (and then subsequently all my pictures) to friends only. I limited the degree of vulnerability I was willing to share openly.

And without that…without that feeling like I could be my most authentic self in that space, I lost the will to post altogether.

I kind of miss it.