I have long debated the question about how much to post, how often to post, what to post, how much to reveal... and my answer changes day to day. It is at times like this when I am being so carefree and open that there is a slight tug, a reminder, that making private things public can be detrimental. My mother would tell me to "never write anything down" and she even discouraged my incessant journal writing in my childhood.
I stopped posting in the autumn of last year exactly because of this. My words, my words... MY WORDS were being used against me. To provide evidence for accusations. Blatant accusations about my character, my personality, about what I was "thought" to be capable of. Accusations about who I was. I had a lawyer fighting my case tell me that she was dropping it because I was "a very sick girl" - all because of one post where I was...well, I was very depressed. I was at my lowest point I have ever been in my entire life. And I was judged. Judged on those twenty minutes that I couldn't stop myself from pouring my guts onto the keyboard. By the courts, by the lawyers, by the law enforcement, by my peers, by my enemies.... I was judged because I recorded my lowest point in the best method I knew how. I wrote it all down. Every feeling, every emotion was written or typed and then I chose to put it in a public forum that was attached directly to my real life person. Perhaps that was my mistake - that I could be identified. That my real character was up for the judging.
I stopped writing last year, and I'll never again make such a hasty decision. I ripped down all of my postings, and even destroyed the majority of them. Precious words, my precious words, gone forever. I can never get them back. And some of them I loved, some of them I would reread as a constant reminder of where I was and how far I had come. Of what I had felt and lived to tell about.
So the lesson here, is to be careful. Remember that people do not always remember that day where they felt like they wanted to hurt someone, or they wanted to rip the hair out of their heads, or they wanted to be swallowed up by the sea.
Tread lightly, kitty. Tread lightly.
