The Secrets I Never Wanted to Keep

 

I have been posting on "Coming to Terms..." for 18 years...almost a third of my life.

I am very attached to my little blog.  It has served many purposes over the years.  It brought new people into my life (and back out of my life, I'm afraid...)  It has given me a place to share my love of birds, cats, and photography. It's been the garden where I've sown and tended my political opinions. It's been a catalog of my spiritual awakening and growth. 

It's been a record, though a slightly erratic one, of my personal history over nearly two decades.

And it is a matter of deep personal sadness to me that not one member of my family--not even my husband--has ever been interested in reading it. 

Early on, I did invite them.  But I never had any takers.  In fact, it was as if the mere suggestion violated some kind of family taboo to which I was not privy. Kind of like, rather than a mild, "No, thank you!" I got more of a "God no!"

I'd like to think that everyone just believes this is a diary, so it should be private.  (But, guys, it's out there on the interwebs...!)  At any rate, I don't think that's the problem.  

The problem is--and this just pierces my heart--none of the people to which I am most intimately connected, are interested in knowing me all that well. 

Not the sisters.

Not the husband.

Not the long lost dear friend, whom I rediscovered back in March, and from whom I never heard another word after my second email to her, in which I specifically invited her to read my blog(s) if she was interested in catching up with what I had been about for the past eighteen years.  That one really hurt. 

If I really let myself think about this (read:obsess) it makes me question my life on the deepest of levels.  The fact that I have never meant enough to, well, anyone, to make them interested in what really makes me tick...  I just can't go there.  

So, most of the time, I don't.

But I come here anyway, and clack away just to hear myself clack.  And to interact with my one faithful friend who visits from time to time, and actually leaves evidence that she has done so. (Thank you, Jackie!)    

Oh, well.  I decided a long time ago that this was my safe place on the internet.  So here I will come, and here I will write...until I can no longer navigate a keyboard.