I remember reading cards on PostSecret and thinking “Yes! That is exactly what I’m feeling right now.”

I remember creating cards I never sent to PostSecret, thinking “I hope people will be able to relate to this feeling.”

Now I feel things and I keep them inside. I don’t ask other women, other parents, if they feel the same. It feels too raw to tell them, to ask them. I can’t make myself that vulnerable.

But I want to know if they relate. So I push myself to ask the deep questions of people I don’t quite know. “Do you feel alone? Do you feel smothered? Do you want to be alone?”

The questions we ask change with our stages in life. But we should still ask them, because we should still try to connect.

(Be warned: if you send me a picture text, I’m likely to use it as a writing prompt. After asking permission, of course – I’m not a monster!) This picture was sent to me one early morning by Janet, a fellow writer who most likely knew this type of image would inspire a story.

I’m up too early. Unable to sleep. I step slowly through the house as if seeing it for the first time. It looks different in the morning dark. It looks different with no one else awake.

I grip the doorknob as it turns so it will not jangle and wake the others. It may sound like I am so thoughtful, that I want them to continue sleeping uninterrupted. I just don’t want them to be alerted to my presence. I need to be alone.

The backyard is draped in fog, giving the impression that it goes on for miles. It doesn’t, I know. Everything has a limit.

The fence is distinct, even in the haze. It looks spindly but sturdy, which is a stark contrast to how it looks in broad daylight. How it looks in daylight is janky and broken down, and it makes him rant about how much a new fence is going to cost us and how I should go ask the neighbors to chip in.

I unfocus my eyes as I stare into the fog, past the walkway behind our house, so far beyond that I can imagine anything I want back there. A quieter home, a bigger yard, a different world.

I sit on the grass and feel the cool dew on the back of my legs. I lie down and my shirt gets damp. I press myself into the ground, my legs together and arms stuck to my sides. I pretend I am in the bottom of a canoe, floating away on a vast body of water. I hear waves pounding the boat, but I know it must be the rumble of my house waking up. I need to get my canoe back to shore, climb up and out and into the house before they wake up and find me gone, or peer out of a window and see me out here. Here, where I can still manage to find a sense of peace, an escape, however imaginary it may be. This is mine, they do not need to know about any of it.

I push myself up from the ground and pad back into the house. My feet are still slightly damp, leave vague footprints on the wood floor. I know they will dry up before anyone notices them, faint as they are.

From 2008 to 2017 I had a personal blog called Allison Writes. It was initially allisonwrites.blogspot.com, until someone convinced me to buy AllisonWrites.com. I did, and I blogged thrice a week for many, many years, until it fizzled out. To be fair, “fizzling out” coincided with having a toddler and my dream job, so blogging didn’t seem as vital as it was in, say, 2009, when I was an MFA student in a new city desperate to connect with someone, anyone. Or in 2011, when I was traveling alone and wanted to keep everyone updated about my whereabouts (oh, and safety) so I didn’t have to email them directly.

A year or so ago, I thought I might take up some form of personal blogging again. I had been book blogging since 2014, and, let’s be honest, for a writer and booknerd, book blogging is pretty damn close to personal blogging. But I yearned for the heydays of blogging, ala 2008-2012, when you could be open and honest because no one you actually knew would read unless you sent the link personally. (And sometimes, not even then.) I typed in “AllisonWrites.com” to see about renewing the domain, and was alarmed to see it was going for over $2,000. (I used to pay $100/year for the privilege.) True, I had a few sponsorships in my day, and well over 100 (did you gasp?!) subscribers. But having my trusty ol’ domain name was not worth the price, so I pushed blogging to the wayside and did… whatever I have been doing for the past year or so.

Cue writing a book (did you gasp?!) and having it published and getting active in conference life once again. I was again thinking “Maybe I should blog. But not personally. Professionally.” AllisonWrites.com was still too expensive, though as I look at it today it is a mere $395 (via Huge Domains.com, which made me snort), though I’m not sure if that’s ownership or rental. Still, I figured I would start somewhat fresh with the more professional AllisonRennerWrites.com – using the last name shows that I am no longer a 20-something blogging about the attractive plumbers that came to my apartment and drinking beer flights in Minnesota. No, now I am a published writer, a “grown-up” who merely thinks about the attractive plumbers that come to her home (see the callback to ownership vs rental) and pretends that a six-pack from Kroger is as exquisite as a beer flight from another state.

If any of you have found me here from the glory days of AllisonWrites.com (stalkers), you will be pleased to know that I still love listening to music, taking random adventures, and find myself to be funnier than I actually am. If you’re new here, then Hello! Please disregard everything you’ve just read, and stay tuned for more “grown up” writing to come.