Thinking through the writing thing.

One of the reasons I probably stopped writing in general is because I have an immature idea of what the line between my private life and my public life is.

To explain a little: I had at one time a tendency to be secretive and overly private with my innermost thoughts. The thinking went that, essentially, since I had no idea whether my life was going to be a smug success story or a painful soul-crushing source of irony...I should do my best to not let people in on what my plans and life choices were. That way at least I would be the only person to know how my life turned out. In the end though, refusing to answer any sort of personal question with the truth turned out to be a ridiculous and cumbersome way to go about forming relationships: eventually, you just end up dating someone who you resent because they know nothing about you.

This kind of behavior was something I had to unlearn, and I chose to unlearn it by overextending my honesty past the limits of my own comfort. Hence the blog. Now that I share my life with someone, I have to make different decisions about what things I reveal and what things I keep to myself. It's just another situation in life where the "all or nothing" approach isn't really practical. Great.

As a result, I am more likely now, again, to stop myself from writing anything that I think might indirectly reveal to much about my new husband (can't get used to that...need substitute terminology....manstuff? other brain?). I feel like I'm violating the privacy of my significant other to acquaint everyone with faults that belong to me. Whereas before, I was trying to take the stance of "fuck that...I don't care what people think...this is the reality of who I am and we all have to accept it," now I am dragging an unwilling participant into that mire with me. It doesn't seem fair really. But then what will I write about? How will I stretch and pin down and expose my convoluted logical paths so that I can carefully examine and unravel them?

I think that it could be as simple as reframing the discussion in a more positive way---ie, keeping some things private is more of a "thoughtful filtering" rather than "purposeful obfuscation of the truth." To not reveal everything doesn't mean I'm compromising my identity or compounding my own hypocrisy. I think exposing my thoughts/behavior to the general public has been a really helpful exercise for me: for example, I am more okay with not being perfect today than I was five years ago and I am fairly comfortable with people rolling their eyes at me.

In all honesty, the "all honesty" boundary has been tested. It is over there, and we've been on either side of it. Not being comfortable with myself seems like less of a problem now that I've taken decisive action to become comfortable. I'm not there yet, but I've sketched out a rough pathway and am just going to stay on it. In any case I think I've figured out how to write again.