Every so often, I get self conscious about my propensity to overshare every detail of my life. I do try to make it entertaining, even when I'm in a rut and living a boring existence. I'm painfully aware I keep few secrets, including some that really ought be private. I still try to cloak myself in anonymity, as best I can, and I am loathe to name names when I describe shared experiences with my friends. I write so much mostly for myself, but sometimes I wonder whether I'm providing a service to others who need to know they weren't the only ones who went through certain trials and tribulations or experienced joy at silly things. Today I was thinking about how much I've written in the last 32 days about my breakup, while it is still raw and tearing me apart. I've hidden very little about how much it hurt me, not because I'm trying to sway everyone over to my side or to turn anyone against Mr X. I've gotten in such a habit of being open with my life, that it felt dishonest to hide away the hard parts for the two months before I let everyone see behind the curtain. I enjoy the support I have gotten, yes. I needed it, and will need it still. I want to think that some of my same supporters are offering love and counsel to Mr X as well. But I am writing about it so often because I have a deep need to let it out. I used to bury all of my feelings and opinions, long before I started a public journal. I went through some periods when only people very close to me knew I had a voice at all, I was so shy. I remember being teased once when I'd quoted a movie and my fraternity big brother said something like "Wow, three sentences in a row. That's the most I've ever heard you speak." (Unfortunately we were in a room with someone I had the biggest crush on, so I was mortified and barely spoke again for an hour or so.) I am conspicuously less reticent now.
Today I had my music playing, and the above-mentioned song came on. I suddenly remembered clearly the way Fish had written about his love life several years back, when he was putting together an album and engaged to be married. The engagement fell apart, and the album was released on the day that was supposed to have been his wedding day. He wrote rather extensively and eloquently about how conflicted he was, on what should have been a happy occasion how he was disappointed that it wasn't a much happier one. He opened up about his heartache and shared the truth of his pain. This memory made me reflect on everything I've written here in the last month. I recall feeling empathy for Fish as he went through his crisis then, and I have felt a lot of the same directed my way from my regular readers (and from people who came in just to see the train wreck -- I don't hold it against them that they arrived late on the scene, only once I became a spectacle. It's human nature to stop and stare at a catastrophe.) It is a common experience, sadly, to go through this sort of breakup, and so many of us have a similar story we could tell, if we have the right forum in which to tell it.
I am trying to move on to more normal subjects, just so that I am not a Debby Downer all the time. I don't want this to just be the "lupus and divorce" blog. I started it three plus years ago to share the inner workings of my Park, back when it was me trying to care for a quarter acre of lush garden in Charleston, with five cats and two dogs, and a husband deploying to Asia for a year. I wanted to keep him connected to home, even though my stories led him to believe that I was coasting and letting him do all the work (so not how it happened, but maybe my own fault for writing that way). I'm going to bring back some more of the flower-and-cat kinds of posts as I can, to keep the mood lighter when I need to cheer myself up, or when I don't want to admit how much of the day I cried or ached. Hopefully soon I'll be sprinkling in some successful real estate deal posts too. Having an income might make the rest of my life a lot less scary to face. I will continue to be honest, but I am determined not to be overwhelmingly negative, even if that means my readership goes back down to more modest figures. I like having an audience. I just hate complaining all the time.
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