I was going to write about something completely different – actually, I wasn’t going to write at all. Two posts into this endeavor, I had decided to call it quits – except to my surprise, a couple of people asked me when I was going to post something. It’s like a T.V. show that you don’t necessarily want to watch, but you just keep watching because you have to find out what happens next. There are blogs that I check regularly – okay, obsessively, waiting for that next post.
Anyway, the truth is, something happened between a friend and I just over a week ago that has made me question myself and question what I was going to do on this blog. Actually, it’s made me question just about everyone I know and whether I can really trust anyone with the truth about anything. Why put my feelings and fears out there for everyone to criticize and judge? That isn’t going to help me. Why not just keep it all to myself? The point was to be honest – because I was tired of hiding behind the overwhelming shame that has kept me quiet for so long. Yet at the same time, I guess I would rather hide than be judged or criticized. I would rather not lose friends in the process of being myself - but then again, if people can't accept me, I guess they were not my friends anyway.
My mind wasn’t even really on the risk of judgment that goes along with truth telling and putting yourself out there. I just wanted to be honest, blind I guess to the consequences. A “good friend” of mine made some terrible and unfounded judgments about my husband last weekend, which were indirectly judgments of myself, and this has resulted in the end of our friendship. I decided after that I was probably better off continuing to be myself, while at the same time pretending not to be. It’s worked so far I guess – so, so much for this blog.
For completely different reasons, I am tired of peoples’ reactions to me in general so I guess I am not sure what I am doing here at all really. I can’t be picky though right? I can’t expect people to react to me exactly the way I want them to. I don’t just want to be honest to elicit a specific response and certainly not to elicit any sympathy. I guess I can’t focus on peoples’ reactions at all, or I would entirely miss the point. Nevertheless, I am fed up with peoples’ assumptions and judgments and I don’t really feel like having to justify anything.
I have been through hell in the past four months, and mostly I am tired of the people who say they understand and relate or can imagine. I can tell you for sure that you cannot even begin to imagine, most of you can’t, and almost no one that I know personally. Even if you are one of the people who have observed me over the past year, deal with what I have had to deal with and you claim to have your own experience that parallels mine as you have watched me and gone through certain things with me – you still don’t have what I have, which is my own very personal experience.
You don’t feel what I feel and you don’t think what I think. You don’t know what it is like to get up every day and live with what I live with. I believe now more than ever that until you walk in the shoes of someone else, until you get up every day and live what they live and do what they do, you really aren’t in a position to judge them for anything. Until you are me, and you never will be – how can you question my motives or choices, the things that I feel and the ways that I deal with things? You can’t.
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