“You can’t please all of the people all of the time. And last night, all those people were at my show.”
Mitch Hedberg.
***
The main reason I came back to blogging was because I found myself stuck. I felt that I needed some sort of extrinsic motivation to put myself out there again. In the dating world. It worked because in order to write, in order to maintain a blog I needed to take action. Before I knew it, it morphed into a place where I was candid–not about the things I do–but always about the way I felt.
For the longest time, I hardly thought about you, The Reader. You were always an abstraction in my mind. I was simply writing into emptiness hoping to stumble into some sort of realness. I was writing as if I would be the only one reading.
***
Last year I was lonely. For various reasons, I did not have a single person I could call to go out with. During this time I ran into a friend of my brother’s and she asked me, “So where have been hanging out?” I replied, “No where really.” She then asked, “How come?” Without thinking I said, “I don’t really have any friends.”
I recited the conversation to my brother the following day and he very nearly choked on the Coke Light he was drinking. “Why did you say that?” he asked. I shrugged my shoulders, “Cause its the truth.” “People don’t want to hang out with people who don’t have friends” he said. “Really?” I asked in surprise. “Think about it” he said, “Would you want to hang out with someone who told you that they didn’t have any friends?”
I saw his point.
But, I didn’t–and I still don’t–agree. I don’t agree that certain things should not be said because some people are uncomfortable hearing them. I don’t think that truths should be presented in any other form than their own. But, I am aware that there is a time and there is a place for truth.
And I found that time and that place right here.
***
For the longest time, I have been the driving force behind my blog. But lately, I feel as if I have lost control. The voices in my head grow louder, more aware of you, the faceless Reader. “Don’t write about that.” I find myself thinking, “What will people say? What will people think?” Lately, the pleasure I once felt for writing into the emptiness has vanished. The emptiness has become a very tangible, very real spinning vortex of voices.
I am torn between wanting to express the truth of my experiences and the fear of disappointing, of angering, of provoking, of the negativity that I know will undoubtedly follow.
But then I think, I am neither the first nor the last person who finds themselves in a place where they do not want to be, but find themselves there anyway. I am neither the first nor the last person who will go through such a dilemma. Caught in a sticky web of my own values; the harder I fight to come unstuck the more stuck I become.
This blog–this place–is my home. I really do not want to be kicked out. I don’t want to pretend, to lie, to withhold my truth in the one place I have created for realness. In this one place where I can take a feeling and just breath it in for awhile. In a place I can come to–time and time again–to just try make sense of it all.
***
Let me be clear. This is not a preemptive strike. The next post up will not be how I made out with a man who has a girlfriend. Neither, am I going on defense in order to prevent an attack.
Four years ago and for the longest time before that I hated gold almost as much as I hate drivers who do not indicate when turning. “You’ll NEVER see me in gold” I would proclaim to anyone who cared enough to listen. Yet, if you look in my drawers today you will find about three pairs of gold sandals, tons of gold earrings, necklaces, bracelets. I even own a gold sequined bag and I love it almost as much as I love my nephew.
I guess what I am trying to say is that you never know. You just never know what will happen. Or what you will do. Or who you will be. Or what circumstances you will find yourself in today, tomorrow or three years from now. You just can’t say, “I’ll never, ever do that.”
And because I know this, because I have seen it. I want to be prepared.
I don’t know what type of post will follow this one. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Or not do. I have no agenda.
But, I know that I have found a place where the truth of my emotional existence can live.
And I want to be able to write about it.
