I spend what I consider an acceptable amount of time on this blog. I usually only log on once a day, to check comments and to write a brief post about whatever it is that I am feeling that day. I like the feeling of being anonymous for two reasons: one, I hate confrontations and don’t want anyone upset if I mention them, and two, I have an innate inability to trust. Call me ridiculous, but I simply don’t have that gene in me that would allow me to trust anyone.
I understand better than most, I think, that nothing is completely anonymous. A smart computer expert could probably find out a lot about me through this website, but I am not going to necessarily make it easy. I don’t use names, I never mention the town in which I live, and I steer clear of mentioning anything that might make it easier to find me, although I try to speak absolutely relevantly and truthfully about my own life and my own opinions.
I have often commented that I like this medium because I can comment on my life, and those that read it are forced to infer the details. Or better yet, they can simply apply the words to their own life and understand. I don’t give this blog address to my friends, family or anyone else I know; I simply allow it to be a sort of journal for myself. But yet I know, someone can find me.
The comments I receive on this blog are usually heartfelt, and unbelievably heart warming. I think of myself as a Taylor Swift like winner, always a shock faced, always some sort of speech that begins with I can’t believe this. I have long been a writer, but always for myself. I can’t even bring myself to sell a book I wrote, in simple fear. That book is an honest part of me, and the potential rejection almost ruins all the absolute beauty I felt writing it. But the comments on this blog sometimes trickle into my heart and I think maybe. For the first time in my life I am thinking maybe.
But then there are the comments that aren’t necessarily depressing as much as a little worrisome, bordering right on the line to terrifying. And no amount of fighting to be anonymous is really going to save me. I understand that all comments, good and bad can be subjective, but they can also be hands down medicinal. They can be absorbed into the conscious so that the next post, the next sentence is more full, more real, and possibly more.
I received a comment that wasn’t more real. It couldn’t be used as such. And while I have no intention of listening to the words, I can’t help but be forced to read the words. I thought I would just be able to mark them as spam when it came up, for I have always assumed that negativity would be a part of this process. It has never occurred to me that it would be all flowers and sunshine. I expect the darkness, it is almost more comforting to me because I have lived much of my life in it.
But these comments made me think about my life, and why someone would want to point me out. I don’t necessarily feel threatened at this point, nor do I necessarily think this was real. But still it got me to thinking about what you may call appeal.
I am not beautiful. Never have been, never will be. Don’t get me wrong, a man has never needed to gnaw off his arm while in my bed, but neither has a man ever been stunned by me. To me, even lovers who say you are beautiful aren’t necessarily thinking one way or another, more their focus is on something more tangible and this is the way to get it. I will never inspire great odes, or great fear. I am just normal in that respect. If I ever meet a man who honestly thinks that I am beautiful and shows me in more than just words, I will revisit this idea. Until then, I am okay.
I am not rich. Never have been. I actually have a real problem with my personal money in that I tend to lead with my heart. I often purchase things not because I need them, but just to see that wonder, that surprise, that happiness on someone else’s face. I, like most people, spend money just to see those outside functions of joy. While I am working on this, the truth is I am in so much debt that the saying, worth more dead than alive, actually really applies. And I don’t want it to apply. I need the reverse, so that when the dark thoughts focus, I have something tangible and real to fall back on.
I have a disease that for the most part destroys any guarantee of pure happiness. Even when I look at my children and feel the absolute soaring melody of love, I know that this disease will eventually dim it. Maybe dim it only for a moment, but the lights always flicker in my world.
And I am lazy. This can’t be stated too clearly. I just am. I am lazy when it comes to cleaning, self-maintenance, life, death. I just am. I can acknowledge this truth, and because it is laziness, fall back on the old adage, I am to lazy to fix the laziness. I accept it as part of myself, and resolve to not do something about the money only because I need to find monetary purpose, but so I can hire that maid and gardener. Only then will my laziness not prickle the back of my guilt.
I suppose I could spend the next nine hundred words trying to remember all the good things I offer, but today for some reason, my heart just can’t. It was a careless comment that destroyed my day, and I hate myself for seeing it and believing it. But I do, and I will live with that as well. Tomorrow will come, and something else will catch my attention. It is the way the world works, it is the way I work. I will work, and in that progression I will find another piece of darkness. And in that darkness, somehow and someway I will survive.
If I could have written 20 years ago, I would have written what you have just written. I know it doesn’t make too much sense but it really dose. I learned to write at 35 and when I was thirty If I could write it would be what you have written above but I could not write. But I felt every word you have written as if I had written it myself.
Now as I look back on that hard part of my life, it is with sadness and with strength. The sadness is that I could not do more for my family, my children and with strength as I survived each day and surpassed the dread of loathing myself. In the next 20 years I came to understand that my illness was not necessarily hard wired into me, but a by-product of years of physical, sexual and emotional abuse peppered with neglect in society at large and at home.
Time is the healer of many wounds and this is true. If you can survive, time will give you the tools that you need.
I wish you well and one more adage – beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. And I behold a beautiful soul in you.
Thank you. Such simple words for a beautiful compliment. I, too am learning that strength is so silent, yet so incredibly dismissed. I have always felt that any person, man or woman, who gets up, out of bed despite wanting to hide behind the curtains, is amazingly strong. We take for granted all the little things that demand amazing strength. But if we can acknowledge the strength, than the beauty rather than the sadness will eventually become as easy to us as breathing.
Well said! Thank you.