I Wanna Tell You So Many Things

I have a confession to make. It feels so obvious but I think I should still share it- I get so nervous about putting things on this site. I get anxious about things in general (ask me about my anxiety around multiplication facts!), but this feels much more realistic (and now we actually have calculators with us forever so who cares what 8x7 is!?). Like it could really impact me negatively either right now or in the future. 

I know full well how the internet works and that nothing is truly gone forever. In fact, if you looked hard enough, I wouldn’t be surprised if you found my GeoCities website from my youth (It was called Duckz Rule and had yellow font on a cloud background… I’ve come so far). So, when I wonder what to write, I have to take a universal truth into consideration- that the internet never forgets.

Remember back in the day when LiveJournal was a big thing? We’d all post what we’d received for Christmas and song lyrics with entire verses put in bold to really tell you what we meant. We’d share quizzes and the earliest forms of memes while participating in RPG groups about our favorite TV shows (just me?). We could also be cryptic as hell (like I eventually became) and put up a very cool “Friends Only” banner and make our account private. But, when I first started, my page was (forgive the pun) an open book. It was middle school, so obviously not a great time for me, but I was striving to be normal and share like all the ~cool~ kids did.

That wasn’t the case.

At least my classmates voted me to be famous… (the other kid backed into my car in high school…)

Sadly, people (mostly my classmates… woooohooo Amherst Middle School) would use my posts and the subsequent comment section as an open forum to make fun of me anonymously. They’d call me ugly, say I was stupid, and, at their worst, that I should take my own life. My mom would spend her evenings at the computer with a glass of wine while web sleuthing and taking down IP addresses, ready to head to every house in town with a baseball bat to defend me. I never found out who left such hateful comments, but it scared me. Even with Duckz Rule, I remember my stomach dropping when someone left a nasty comment about how they were upset because the site was “not about ducks”. The internet is full of hateful people; do I really want to expose myself to that? 

I love writing about the real things that happen in my life, but a lot of them I’m too afraid to share. What if someone gets upset by me telling the story of how I lost my virginity? Or sends my ex a link to a post about him. What if it all comes back to bite me in the ass? And then I really stop writing because I was too honest and people got ~mad~? Would I care then? Do I care now?

I keep reminding myself why I started this blog- because I wanted to write more and be held accountable. It was not to play it safe and sugar coat my life and the stories I have to tell (and I have some good ones). It was to be my true self- warts and all. To talk about the horribly wonderful thing we call life. But I am also consciously aware of how this could all turn in an instant. I want to be transparent while being able to keep my job.

It’s a tough decision to make. I really want to tell you all about losing my virginity on a cruise ship and all about my questionable boyfriends (I think one was in the Mossad?). And maybe I’ll get the courage to. Right now though, I guess I’ll toe a very fine line.

PS: not even kidding about the Mossad thing...