Why Do I Write?

I received confirmation of the long-suspected truth that Uber-Bitch (who doesn't care for that label) does read my blog. I knew that, have known it for a long time, as Guardian Angel and I have discussed. She finally decided the time had come to speak up and vent her reactions to my blog, current and past. I am now a liar and two-faced, I broke the friendship first by the rantings in my blog, she kept the family going last fall/winter, and I have been spouting lies the whole time. She also feels sorry for me because I "don't even dare look in the mirror for fear it'll crack" whilst she knows she has flaws and is trying to fix them. She also is not trying to start a blog war and would not be fazed by anything that I or my "little dumb friends" have to say and she doesn't care if I think she is wrong. You can read the entire comment here. You can read her blog post detailing the backstory of her comment here. Or browse her blog here (although this may be what she meant by sending my "little dumb friends" to her blog).

I did return to her blog after her comment and sent a return message. It was long and intended to have the overall message that I don't care what she does, that I already knew she had been here, and that I will think what I want while she thinks what she wants and really it's better off that way. And then, because I am incapable of learning from my mistakes, I sent it without saving a copy. Since she never lets comments go through that means I don't have it saved anywhere. You'd think I would have learned from the hard drive fiasco...

One thing that her comment did was make me think about why and what I write here. I have always made a point of not giving out my blog address to the people in my daily life. If I know someone is reading it, I have the tendency to censor what I write for fear of hurting or offending or angering them or giving them ammunition against me. I use my blog to purge myself of the thoughts and feelings that are uncomfortable or that I need to sort out. My blog is public because unlike a diary/journal or a private blog, having it open gives me a feeling of casting my thoughts outward and, as I said, purging myself of them. That is one of my (many) little weirdnesses that I don't normally need to justify.

The second component to this public blog is who I write for. That is unequivocably ME. I have a few regular readers and I have a couple of posts that get regular hits from the search engines but I don't cater my writing to them. If they enjoy reading my blog, that is great and I'm happy to have them here. If they don't like my blog, they move on and I'm fine with that too. To that end, this blog is not about proving myself to anyone but myself. It's not about justifying my thoughts or actions to anyone but myself. It is not a daily chronicle of all of life's ups and downs to be read at a later date to see how far I've come, although I do use it for review at times.

I write on my blog so that I don't have to vent my feelings to someone who might feel caught in the middle between me and whoever I was venting about, or to someone who would judge me for the content or someone who would use it against me. As Uber-Bitch demonstrated, I had cause to fear those things. I write on my blog to make sense of myself, a difficult task at the best of times. I have almost as many "drafts" of posts as actual posts because before I finished the entire post, the situation I was trying to unravel took care of itself or I had a chance to talk to someone about it and made sense of it already. Because I write for me and me alone, I don't feel pressured to complete those posts or to update frequently to appease my readers or chronicle every notable incident in my life. I write what I want, when I want to write it and I don't worry about the effects on others because they aren't supposed to be here.

That said, anyone who knows me even a little bit could easily find my blog. I am well known for my Silent Voices, my SV. Most people that are close to me know that I blog too and most of those people know that I use Blogger to do it. I never use names; everyone has a moniker. This is to maintain privacy from strangers although someone truly psychotic could easily track me down from context clues if they really wanted to. It is also to reduce the number of viable searches someone could make to find my blog. But truly, try a google search on TheSV or the sv blog or "silent voices in my mind"... All of these are known keywords to people close to me and my blog shows up within 3 pages on each search.

The really twisted part of this easy searchability comes in when I consider the fact that I am completely aware that my blog could easily be found by anyone who wanted to. This is reflective of another one of the ways in which I am completely fucked up. It's one of those tests that can't be passed. If someone doesn't go looking for my blog, it could be interpreted as not really caring or being interested. But if they do find it, they aren't respecting my privacy.

Like I said, it's totally fucked up. But I do recognize it as skewed and while I don't change the blog to something obscure and unsearchable, I have actively chosen to see the good side of that "test" - those people that don't seek and find my blog are respecting my stated wishes to not give out the URL and those people who have found my blog on their own (there are 3) are simply concerned for me and want to know more than I am capable of directly telling them.

To counter the paranoia I feel over leaving myself vulnerable to searches, I keep close tabs on where the hits come from and how they got to my blog. Every so often a search comes up that makes me nervous because I can't identify it. Or I have a couple of repeat viewers that I don't know whose locations aren't from here but have suspicious timing. (It is very easy to cloak your IP city and state intentionally and a lot of IPs don't reflect an accurate location anyways.) In that manner I have recognized when people I know are reading my blog. Sometimes it takes a while for me to catch on, but I've caught it 3 times. It really is no protection against someone reading, but it gives me the illusion of having "control" over it.

So there it is. This is why I write here, what I write here, and why I write what I write. Now I just need to determine if I can continue to meet my objectives here now that I have confirmation of Uber-Bitch's readership. I refuse to make it private or invitation only to "prevent" her from reading. I truly don't want to pick up and move again. I like this blog and where it's at and the history I have here. But can I continue to write without self-censoring?

On one hand, she judges me by it (and always has, as it turns out) and being judged is one of my greatest fears. On the other hand, there's a good chance she will stop reading as soon as I stop mentioning her since she no longer has any incentive to care about my life. There is still the issue of what I write being used as ammunition against me but there is nothing new that she can do or say to inflict additional damage so I think that is no longer a concern. Normally, with people in my daily life reading, I would be concerned about hurting someone or angering them or generating additional conflict with them. Obviously that isn't a problem since she is no longer in my daily life.

And that statement right there may be the key to the whole question. I am uncomfortable with people from my daily life reading my blog. But she is no longer part of my daily life. At this point, she can only hurt me if I care what she thinks - which I don't. I can only hurt or upset her if she cares what I think - which she stated that she does not. There is no area of my life that she has reason to complicate now so the issue of ammunition is resolved.

End judgment: I keep my blog, and my writing style, as it currently is and let her deal with herself.