The Occupational Hazard of Being Near Me

One of my family members told me recently that she'd been really hurt by something I'd written.  It was something I wrote a long, long time ago, but since she brought it up, I thought it might still be hurting, and that made me feel really bad.

Sometimes being in my inner circle can be an occupational hazard. 

Many, many people have asked me how I can be so open on this blog and in my short stories and poetry, how I can put all my feelings out there for the whole world to read.  How I can do it, knowing no matter what I say, it's bound to hurt someone or another.  I guess the answer is that I don't know how NOT to do it. 

Cagey often reminds me that I don't have to tell everyone everything. She thinks my openness is my greatest strength and my greatest weakness, and I know she says it out of love and concern for my well-being.

As I was talking to this family member, I did feel very, very bad that I'd hurt her.  Bad that I'd hurt her, but not bad that I wrote it, because writing is how I understand myself, how I process my feelings. Every essay, every poem, every story, is a snapshot in time of the Rita that's present at that moment. I feel my personality is constantly filling up like a database; every report pulled is just what happened to be there at that moment, subject to change. Some variables are constant, but some are just raw data, meaning nothing until they are hauled out and analyzed.  I do this often, five days a week, really, in this blog, and more often every time I take stock of my life, write a poem, feel a story taking shape in the shower or on the drive home from work. I assume my analysis really means nothing to anyone but me, as I am the owner of this database, as I assume the data holds no real meaning or value for anyone other than me.  Every piece of writing shows who I was on that particular revolution around the track, but every time I complete a lap, the finish line becomes the starting line for another go.

And so on and so forth, until I die.

And, as with every other person out there who leaves their words behind in some form of print, I may leave behind hurts even after I am gone and can no longer explain why I wrote that particular thing.  Sometimes that concerns me, but most of the time it doesn't. It's not because I'm a mean person or have no regard for others' feelings, but rather because I do understand how VERY FLAWED I am, and even though I took offense at someone'e actions or reacted badly to something someone said at some point, it doesn't mean it held for longer than a few seconds.  Or perhaps it did take hold, but later in life I realized why they did what they did or that what they said should have been framed in a different context, or that they hadn't realized I was so very sensitive, or I had realized they were.  These misunderstandings are a part of our lives, and I guess I feel if I lay bare my internal monologue, at least people will always know where they stand with me, for if there's anything I can't stand, it's inauthenticity.

I don't know if this happens to other bloggers. This weekend I read Half-Assed, by Jennette Fulda, the writer who sat next to me on the dais at the Blogs to Books session at BlogHer this year.  Jennette wrote of embloggessment, the unsettling feeling one has when one realizes a family member has discovered one's blog.  I think I'm aware of which family members read my blog, but maybe there are more than I think. I'm not really sure.  For me, embloggessment happens on a pretty much quarterly basis, as a new co-worker or friend stops me in the middle of a story and tells me they actually already know it because they read my blog.  Most of the time, it doesn't bother me, because my friends and most family members have already written me off as a loose cannon, a ball of raw feeling, and generally speaking, not to be trusted with examples of poor grammar. I do keep important secrets when asked, and I keep them well, but if you just belched while talking to your boss, I'll probably use it.

So I suppose I should probably take this opportunity now, four years in to this blog and 34 years in to this life, to apologize to those I have already hurt and will hurt in the future by something that floated through my head that I took the time to write down and perhaps even publish. I know my own mother takes issue with my version of certain events, and I feel bad that she remembers things differently than I do. I know for a fact my sister remembers things differently.  All I bring to the table is my own memory, my own analysis.  I know full well there are other versions of events, as our brains are not big enough to hold every detail of every event forever.  We remember the general themes, the high points, and unusual events that trigger a photograph of a memory, usually because we were overcome with emotion at the time.  If I record these events, I do it to try to understand why I experienced that particular reaction, not to issue blame for anyone else there at the event.  I have known for quite some time I have unusual reactions to many events, and in trying to relate to the world on a more adult level, I've spent months trying to understand my own emotional triggers.  I hope that with each revolution around the track I grow wiser.  I hope to understand myself better.

The better I get to know myself, however, the less bad I feel when I realize I've screwed up.  This is interesting to me, because it's not that I'm becoming some crochetly old bat who doesn't care about other people's feelings.  No, it's not that at all. It's that I'm so aware that I screw up on an almost hourly basis that I've ceased to be embarrassed by much that I do.  I've already said or done the wrong thing so many times, the heat just doesn't rise to my cheeks as quickly any more.  I'm not surprised to find that I've hurt someone or failed. I just want to learn what it was that I did or said that hurt that person, so I can alter my behavior around them to avoid hurting them again. I'm not sure I can actually alter more core personality at this point, but I can certainly try harder not to wound those about whom I care.

I thought about this event all the way home from northeast Iowa today, a drive of almost seven hours.  It was a good long time to think.  And I realized, again, that I have relationships with so many really different sorts of people that I could never completely change who I am for each person, but at the very least I can tell everyone that really, I mean no harm.  I am probably going to write about you, if you are in my life.  It's because I'm fascinated with you. If you're there, I care. I do not make time in my life for insignificant people. I say that not out of arrogance, but out of exhaustion. There is simply not time to spend with every human on this planet. However, if I hurt you with something I write, you have every right to call me out, and I won't publish about you again. 

I can't promise I won't write, but I can promise I won't let anyone else see it.

;)