My Secret World (2017)

There was a time, many years ago, when I wrote every day and every day I posted my writings in a public forum for all the world to see. My friends and family were privy to what was in my heart and mind and everyone always knew exactly where I stood. I wrote about love. I wrote about politics. I wrote about social issues. I wrote about my struggles with mental illness. I wrote poetry and social commentary and plain old rants and raves.

Somewhere along the line I stopped sharing myself with the world. I don’t remember if it happened slowly or if happened all at once, but I very rarely share myself with anyone anymore. My writing has become my secret world. I only open the door to my secret world to a select few. I pick and choose those people that I am comfortable with; other writers, complete strangers (I mean, who cares if strangers judge us, right?), or those who won’t block me from their friends list. 😒

I lost faith in my writing at some point. I lost faith in my ability to write from the heart. I lost faith in my ability to reach people and write in a way that would make them understand me and who I am really am. Ultimately the awkward, introvert in me took over even the part of me that always been able to reach out and communicate with the world like a normal human being. My friends have long lived in my computer and I distanced myself from them as much as I had the people in the physical world for fear of being left behind as I had been so many times in the past by my IRL friends. See, I have been told by a few that I’m a tad “difficult” to be friends with or to be around and I always found that my writing reflected the real me so, of course, it was inevitable that if I continued to write openly (and why write any other way?) my friends in the box would eventually figure that out and leave me, too.

Add that to the shift in the way society functions on a social level over the past few years and things get even trickier. I have found (and I’m sure that others who are reading this will probably agree) that people do not know how to interact with those they disagree with anymore. Friends and family members can’t possibly have differing opinions on politics or religion and remain friends or even “family” these days. I can’t share an opinion on the state of our country, our justice system, racial disparity, religious intolerance, mental health issues or any other damned thing without some friend or family member jumping on my post and chewing me up one side and down the other. It’s been insinuated that I’m unpatriotic and stupid and a heathen (okay, that may be true). I’ve had friends and even family delete and block me on Facebook because of differing opinions or because I’ve asked them not to comment on my posts because they did so in a disrespectful manner. Some of these family members still don’t speak to me to this day. It’s a disgrace to modern society that we have let things go this far.

There are times when I will write something that I feel is important enough that it needs to be shared with even those people who might judge me for saying it. It’s at those times when some of you might see me post it on my FB feed (sorry if you have to see it twice~ in this group and on my feed). But those times are few and far between these days. I’m working on that. For the time being my blog is very private and I will carefully guard it and only share with a select few. For now my writing will remain my secret world.