Someone challenged me this week on why I'm doing this at all when I asked their permission to write about them in this blog. This is the first time I have ever asked, or offered to change someone's name, which doesn't make me look like such a good person, and I didn't get the response from him that I was hoping for.The long and short of it was that he didn't want me to write about him, and I was not my most mature self in dealing with his answer. It bothered me because in the course of the conversation he asked me, point-blank, why I needed to write about this when the whole point of starting this blog was to work through my emotions as they pertain to my divorce. If this has nothing to do with my divorce, and there are no emotions to work through, he reasoned, why am I even writing about it? I tried to counter that I am always honest, and something else about how I share everything, and he had no problem making me feel like that argument was hollow. In his estimation, I was just bragging, and he didn't want his name associated with my bullshit.
I had to concede to his point because he was right, to a degree, but it left me feeling kind of despondent. Saying that there are no emotions associated is an unfair assumption. There are always emotions surrounding sex, and I don't want to be the kind of person who thinks there aren't. There is a reason we don't just fuck ourselves all the time. You can't french yourself and you can't spoon yourself. Plus, I may have started this project as a way to work through my failed marriage, but I do write about other things. I have other things to work out that have nothing to do with my divorce.
I was bothered by his harsh assessments enough that I couldn't sleep at all that night.This is actually one of the many reasons why I like this person so much. Sometimes, you like someone not because they are always nice to you and they make you feel like the best person in the world, but because they aren't always nice and, occasionally, make you feel like the worst person in the world. It's a hard pill to swallow when you realize that someone sees right through you, and what they see isn't good.
The question of why I do this continued to bother me all day, leading to me question myself on whether or not it even matters. I'm the only blogger in my area, it seems, who isn't writing about being a parent, the arts, or local history, and all I can think is that what I'm writing just doesn't matter. It made sense and helped, when I started, in a similar way to how it helps when I just think out loud, but now it's mostly just about me bumbling through a bunch of bullshit and talking in circles about boys, and it seems less and less relevant. I'm stuck- I'm stuck in this cycle of caring when I shouldn't care and then talking my way around it to make it seem important. I'm growing, but I am still not a grownup.
This is going to keep coming up if I'm going to keep writing this stupid blog. Someone pointed out that I had to know it would come up eventually, because I made the choice, early on, to not change names or hide anyone's identity. I asked for this other person's permission because I wanted him to be okay with it, but he wasn't, so now I'm dealing with my reaction to that. I had to ask, though. I've never asked for anyone's okay before, because with those people, at that point at least, I didn't care. When I started this blog, I didn't think my ex and I would ever be friends again so I didn't care if his feelings were hurt. I can't conduct myself that way anymore, it has become clear, because to do so would mean risking losing a friend. I was fortunate enough already that my ex doesn't mind being written about and that the only other person I have written about doesn't read it, or is just too cool to tell me if it bothers him. As for my other friends, they haven't said anything or asked me to change their names. My sister did take issue with something I wrote about her, so I edited it to make it a little less harsh because, truthfully, what I said wasn't really fair. I can't lose any of the friends I have because I'm not very good at making new ones, and I like the ones I have, especially this one, who I am so fond of. Nothing is worth risking any of my friends never wanting to speak to me again.
He knew I had written him into my novel and seemed like he did not have a problem with that, but that might have more to do with the likelihood that no one will every read it, so it's not a threat to his privacy, and in any event, it's a work of fiction. I don't know, and somehow, the things my friends say that usually placate me are not working. I can't tell myself that I could have just written about it without asking. That argument doesn't stick because I keep coming back to asking myself why I need to do this at all. It doesn't matter and it's not helping anyone other than myself and the fact that I will just keep doing it regardless says something very specific about me. I have always been this way. I would put on a show even if no one was paying attention, and I'm still doing it, but now instead of singing songs from The Little Mermaid, I'm talking about my personal life. The only thing I can manage to not care about, most of the time, is the fact that no one cares. In the meantime, I will be more aware of what I'm writing and who might be affected by it. I also am starting to accept that I don't need to blog about every single thing that happens to me. Some things are meant to be private. Private and secret are not the same thing, just like being honest and sharing too much are not the same thing. Little by little I'm getting it.
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