How Vocal Is Helping Me Find My Voice

My first piece on Vocal published in 2019 was a deeply personal one about being homeless:

I opened up about things very few people knew about, but still with a degree of security writing under a pseudonym. Getting published was making an achievement out of a horrible situation.

I won awards and high recognition from my writing when I was younger, as well as for debating, but life, depression, disability, chronic pain, and a non-existent self esteem and confidence slowly killed the ability to write or even piece two words together. Brain fog and feeling like my stories, although I now realize are somewhat extraordinary, were of no interest and I thought I wasn’t special enough to have a right to talk about my dark past or troublesome present.

When I published my first article I kind of left it in the ether. I would wind up being homeless for three years, experiencing intense physical and mental health issues. All dreams and aspirations I had when I was young and idealistic were replaced by just having a dream of having a roof over my head and everything else got put on the back-burner. A month after being housed, late one night some words came to me and in a flurry I managed to write what would become my second publication on Vocal. It was less sophisticated than the first but for the first time in years I was in a head space and had the desire to write. It gathered momentum and more stories came although so far I have not put them up here. They are deeply personal and some find the style and analysis I developed while being a high-achieving academic while getting my degree. It is both a liberating and highly vulnerable process as I work through my shady past as a teenage psychiatric patient, my background of serious childhood trauma, chronic pain, and the many other various unsettling, exhilarating, painful, and high-as-a-kite periods in my life. My life experiences shock some, bring comfort to others struggling alone, and overall looking back and becoming more self aware, are pretty intense and unusual. I wonder how my life would have been without the grim experiences in my early years but the path I was and remain on, is for me to work out and maybe someday find myself in a better and brighter place.

A talented and inspirational friend of mine told me about the Vocal Facebook groups and overall how it works, which brought a next level understanding. Reading and interacting with others is helping me feel more confident writing about things that have been shrouded in secrecy and shame. There’s a deeply vulnerable side to opening up about personal stories. It requires a degree of trust that many times over was broken. As I read others’ stories that are tragic, beautiful, fascinating, some succinct and others woven elaborately, I feel maybe it’s okay to open up more and speak my truth. Although I still have some trepidation, the supportive nature of the people in the Vocal writers community is encouraging and I feel someday I could be speaking loud and proud about my experiences that will both be cathartic and perhaps help others, my life long mission to shine some light and solidarity to those hiding in the dark shadows as I have done and still do. My initial post on Vocal was just something to vent and tell a story about the hopelessness of Ireland’s ongoing housing crisis, but from what I’m seeing the more I explore the musings of the other Vocal writers, that it’s a platform not just to reconnect with my roots and retrain my brain words once flowed effortlessly from, but to establish connections, and maybe someday make something of myself after a long term forced pause on my life and aspirations.