I remember when I was new to the internet. I was in 8th grade and I received from my father a laptop that I was told to share with my siblings. Until my butt-hole of a brother stole it from all of us and requisitioned it to use for his own stupidity privately in his room, I had a Xanga account.
Every day I got on it and ranted about what I was feeling that day. The next day I would log back on the account and post a new post and read my previous day's post. I felt seething shame reading it. As though I wasn't supposed to be feeling any of the feelings I had wrote about the day earlier and certainly wasn't supposed to be sharing it publicly. I deleted the post.
This behavior followed me into my adult life. Through Xanga, then Myspace, then Facebook. Post, feel shame, delete. In my adult-hood it only changed slightly as a few specific family members felt the need to even go so far as to police my posts for me and tell me what I needed to delete and change.
It all changed after I got married. I guess you could say I married a man that didn't care about what people thought about him. I learned to say what I had to say, in private at least.
My resolve with this blog is to post what i want, what I feel, what I need to express. I will make it a rule not to delete a single post, no matter how horrible I feel after posting it.
I can, because I must, because I want to.
Every day I got on it and ranted about what I was feeling that day. The next day I would log back on the account and post a new post and read my previous day's post. I felt seething shame reading it. As though I wasn't supposed to be feeling any of the feelings I had wrote about the day earlier and certainly wasn't supposed to be sharing it publicly. I deleted the post.
This behavior followed me into my adult life. Through Xanga, then Myspace, then Facebook. Post, feel shame, delete. In my adult-hood it only changed slightly as a few specific family members felt the need to even go so far as to police my posts for me and tell me what I needed to delete and change.
It all changed after I got married. I guess you could say I married a man that didn't care about what people thought about him. I learned to say what I had to say, in private at least.
My resolve with this blog is to post what i want, what I feel, what I need to express. I will make it a rule not to delete a single post, no matter how horrible I feel after posting it.
I can, because I must, because I want to.
I've always believed very firmly that you should never apologize, or be ashamed of, any emotion. All emotions are valid, no matter how illogical they seem later. To deny them is the same as denying any other integral part of yourself. A lie, at best. Self-destructive at worst.
ReplyDeleteI think it's a very healthy thing to acknowledge the validity of your emotions by refusing to purge them from a journal.
Thank you for your affirmation!
ReplyDelete