The Doubt That Knows Too Much

I have doubted myself in the particular way that knows too much about what it is doing to be called innocent and not enough about why it keeps doing just to be called honest,
I have doubted myself and dressed that doubt in the language of discernment and high standards, responsible awareness of my own limitations so it would sound less like fear,
I have doubted myself in the middle of the making and let the doubt become a kind of second author who did not share my vision but had louder opinions about how to survive the world,
Do I actually believe the doubt is protecting the work from being released before it is ready or is it protecting me from finding out whether the work is good enough to be seen,
I have doubted myself so many times and so thoroughly that I can no longer tell the difference between the doubt that is asking me to go deeper and the doubt that is asking me to disappear...

I have carried the sensitivity that makes the work possible and also makes every piece of feedback land somewhere it was not invited and stay longer than it had any right to,
I have carried the sensitivity and understood in my clearest moments that the same thing that allows me to feel what needs to be said is also what makes it so hard to stand in the room after I have said it,
I have carried the sensitivity and tried to harden it and found that the hardening did not protect the work but simply made the work harder to reach from the inside where it has always been made,
What would it mean to stop treating the most tender part of me as a liability to be managed and start treating it as the specific and irreplaceable instrument it has always been,
I have carried the sensitivity all the way through the making and all the way into the world and the carrying has cost me things I could not have named and would not trade away now that I know what they bought...

I have looked at my own work and heard a voice underneath all the deeper assessment that was simply asking whether I was allowed to have made something like this,
I have looked at my own work and felt the strangeness of being the only person alive who could have made exactly this and also the person least equipped to trust that the fact means anything,
I have looked at my own work and wanted someone else to tell me what I was too close to see clearly and then doubted the moment it was offered because I had already decided in advance what the truth must be,
When did I become the last person I was willing to ask for an honest assessment of what I had made and whose opinion did I replace my own with when I made that particular trade,
I have looked at my own work and known something in the looking that I could not hold onto long enough to speak out loud before the doubt arrived and rewrote what I had seen...

I have chosen to keep making things despite the part of me that has never once been fully convinced that making them was a reasonable thing to do with the time I have been given,
I have chosen to keep making things and found that the choosing was not the same as the believing and that you can do the work without the belief having arrived yet and the work will still be the real work,
I have chosen to keep making things and discovered whether I deserve to be here making them is not one I am required to resolve before I begin creating,
What is the version of me that keeps choosing this despite everything and where has she been finding the particular kind of courage that does not announce itself before it acts,
I have chosen to keep making things, the act of choosing itself has been the most honest response I’ve ever given to every voice that has ever questioned my certainty about my purpose in this endeavor…

Watchwords:
Doubt that knows too much to be called innocent,
The second author who didn't share my vision,
Hardening made the work harder to reach inside,
The last person I was willing to honestly ask,
Choosing without the belief having arrived yet...