I’ve been thinking lately about whether or
not this blog is a help or a hindrance.
Until recently, I’ve always believed in the
power of the confessional. I’ve been squirrelling away my private thoughts in
notebooks, unmailed letters, journals and stories for decades now. I have always written my way through my own life,
making sense of what was happening to and around me through my pen. Writing was just about the most cathartic act
I could engage in, and always left me feeling more sure about who I was than
when I had started.
When I began writing here about love affairs,
sexual escapades and various other dalliances, I think the original intent was
to find a way to make events that were either confusing, or painful – like
breakups or heartaches – lighter. In
this blog, I created a persona that could laugh carelessly at the questionable
or disappointing behavior of men and blithely trip onto the next adventure with
a little shrug and a sigh. It was also a
space for me to give meaning to what might otherwise seem like meaningless,
frivolous encounters. Who cared if that
man never called me again, if I had a great story out of it? Hell, who cared if five men broke my heart,
or made me feel cheap, or were rude to me, or offered me less than I deserved,
if that meant five great stories? Ten? I
congratulated myself on my candour, but the confessional was being somehow
being subtly manipulated into something else, a kind of armour that allowed me
to guard against any hurts I suffered rather than truly write my way through
it.
The problem that this causes for me now is
the growing space between the truth of my emotions and what I might articulate
here. Actually, no. That’s not right. That isn’t the problem for me.
I think I know very clearly the differences between the person I am, and
the heart I own, and the confident, sometimes whimsical girl whose voice I
feature here.
The problem is when the audience is confronted with the difference. It’s easy to make assumptions about how I
feel or would react to a situation based on the character I portray here. But what happens when the real me doesn’t
match up to that girl? It can cause
conflict, confusion, disappointment – in fact, it has done so. Assumptions are
made, which I then find myself apologetically dispelling.
I struggled a bit with whether this just
meant I’m a shitty writer. That I don’t
do a good enough job of truthfully explaining who I am or what I am
feeling. I became dismayed that a person
reading a post could not separate the fact from the fiction, or discern the
reality of who I was in person from the voice on the blog. But at the same time, I felt that I had been
so real and raw in some posts, how could anyone get the wrong idea about how I
was feeling?
Then I considered whether I should ever share
the blog, or the fact of its existence, with anyone who might potentially be
featured in later posts. I still don’t know
what the correct answer is. That’s the
wondrous and terrible thing about writing: once I put something out there, it’s open for
interpretation, and whether that interpretation matches my intent, or whether a
reader will grasp what I was truly feeling, and understand the elements I have added
simply as a writer rather than as a subject, I don’t know, and I can’t
control. It might be bravado, in the
form of sarcasm or wit, or dramatic emphasis on a particular aspect of an
event, but what is becoming clearer to me are that there are sufficient gaps
between what I communicate here and what I feel, that – well, I have to decide
whether I’m OK with that.
And I suppose it comes down to this: what is this blog for, and who is it for? Is it a space for me to share my thoughts
without filter or edit, a truly honest and raw account of my life and what I’m
feeling, or is it a product I put out in the world, to be a titillating and
(often) humourous read for others? I
guess I’m still not clear on where I stand on that. And which one you, Dear Reader, want to
read.
