I feel like I haven’t been blogging much lately. There are a bunch of things happening I feel like I can’t talk about. I’m really bad about that. If I have to censor what I say and speak carefully I don’t see much point in talking at all. If I have to do those things then my point of view isn’t actually desired and I’ll just shut up. It’s part of why I don’t follow social conventions much on “appropriate topics”.
Life involves an awful lot of work. I can only do so much and feel good in my body. There needs to be a balance of different kinds of work: mental, physical, emotional. Without balance it all falls over.
I’m trying to edit the book. I have 13-14 pages left. I’m struggling. I’m feeling a lot of tremendous anxiety about the end of the book. How do I ensure that all the right elements are in place to honestly lead to the rest of my life?
I’m thinking hard about the foreward. Ok fine, I wanted to write this. Reasonable, fine. Why do I want to publish it? Why do I want other people to know this story with me? Because I’m tired of being alone with it. I’m tired of having people giving me entirely inappropriate advice because they assume my life was like theirs.
Other people grow up with families who pass their stories on. People know what “Bob” acts like; you can tell because they say things like, “Well you know how Bob is.” No, I don’t know. I have never been around long enough to find out. And people haven’t really been around me long enough to understand me either.
No one can ever know these things about me unless I tell them. I have spent my entire life feeling isolated and alone and scared. Once this story has been set down there is no fucking way I wouldn’t publish. I want to be known. I want to be seen so much it makes me ache. I’m publishing because I want to. Because it is an interesting story and I want to share it. Because people will finally understand my vague allusions. When someone wants to give me advice I can ask them if they’ve read the book and then let them say what they want. I don’t have to follow the advice. But I get to know that this isn’t some random passerby who doesn’t know shit about me. This is someone who cares enough to go read the backstory so that (s)he can be part of my life.
That feels really different. Most of my family will be shocked if they ever read the book. They have no idea about most of it. They don’t know me and I savagely resent them for this. I savagely resent that god damn everyone in my family will get to say, “But we never knew!” and be telling the truth. I think that is what I can’t forgive them for in the end. They managed to silence me such that I was never able to get proper help from all that psychiatric care for fifteen years. They can’t silence me forever. I want to tell my story. I want to get very clear about what happened to me and I can’t do that in private.
That’s strongly related to why I am upset about some other things in my life. I’m not happy about how I am being treated and I feel like I can’t talk about it in public and I don’t have anywhere else to talk. I am talking in therapy and to Noah about this situation but that’s the limit of my talking to people. I literally just don’t do much else of it lately. All of my IM buddies have disappeared. Fuck you all. (I’m kidding. I love you and miss you intensely while you are having Real Lives.)
It’s time to go parent.