Where’d Summer Go?
I may not be the most regular with posting on the blog, but I don’t believe I’ve ever missed an entire month.
The thing is, stuff that makes sense while in a slump of depression with a side of Zoloft withdrawal, no longer makes sense once the serotonin has leveled off and therapy has started to kick in. I had written those last two posts while in that slump and frankly, I was scared of what I said. I remembered the gist of what I wrote, but not verbatim and I worried that I had gone too far or embarrassed myself. I realize that all I had to do was re-read what I had written, but I wouldn’t. My therapist calls this behavior, Anticipation Anxiety.
In the South, social mores are strict and taken very seriously. Airing your dirty laundry is one of the worst offenses. Younguns are taught what not to say more fervently than what to say. Every interaction has a defined protocol and you learn at a young age not to fuck with it. You’re expected to maintain a facade of happiness and to be well-behaved in public; there are jokes about how it doesn’t matter what’s going on inside the house, as long as the yard is mowed. ”Unacceptable” behavior is done in shadows and is never admitted to.
I broke every one of those rules with this blog. I have been honest and open and put my dirt out for the world to see (all six of you) and I don’t care … most of the time. Then I have moments where I worry that I should have filtered. I re-read those posts today and I’m okay with them. In fact, they’re a lot more innocuous than they were in my memory. I tend to build things up in my head and this time it was exacerbated by the fact that I was told by a reader, “Maybe you should get a diary.”
Sidenote: I hadn’t thought of this before, but I don’t receive comments like regular bloggers. Other bloggers get comments typed into the text boxes at the end of their posts. Readers respond to the author. The author responds back. Readers send messages to each other. Know what I get? Phone calls. Face-to-face conversations. Private emails. Wonder what that’s about?
And that’s something else that’s kept me away from writing here. Wondering if I should be doing it in a diary. Wondering what the point of this is. Should I stay away from the more personal stuff and just tell the funny anecdotes? And I realized, this blog … MY blog … is not a humor column. This blog is me talking about what’s going on with me, and I’m telling all of it: good, bad, funny, whatever. As I’ve mentioned before, you are only as sick as your secrets, and I am on the road to recovery.
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:58 am
Anticipation Anxiety? I think I called that Catholicism back in the day…