Today I looked around at the remnants of myself that are left online. Comments in forums, this blog, Google or Facebook conversations....and I suddenly wished I could take it all back. Erase it and be anonymous and private once again. I thought of the people from my past who might be looking me up and what they might find. There is very little about me that is private. And if my book gets published....then all semblance of privacy will be gone. Do I want that? Do I want to be exposed to that degree? I mean it's bad enough the way it is...but then it will be so much worse. I will be completely exposed and laid bare.
People who live in the public eye...People who write their memoirs: how do they stand it? Does everyone who knows things about me take away those pieces of myself until there is nothing left of me? Do they then own me?
I don't know the answers to these questions. When people read a memoir, they are reading a story. The characters, even though they may be real, are just people in a book. But if someone who has crossed paths with me reads the book, then they take away something different. My words will intersect with their memories and that is a different thing altogether.
I have to carefully consider what I want to do here. Because yes, this blog pretty much puts it all "out there" but to lay open my past, to reveal all that pain and that mess--I need to be sure about that before I do it. Right now, I am having my doubts.
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