Lying on the bed, resting, reading, waiting for the time to go, I am struck by the thought that the games we play with others, and our partners in particular, are decidedly stupid.
I wonder what this world would be like without these games, without the subterfuge, with honesty and forthrightness. Sure, it may hurt sometimes but wouldn’t it be so much better?
What if we all said exactly how we felt? If we were pissed off by some comment someone made to us, what would it really matter if we told them that, actually, we didn’t appreciate the comment? If someone made us really happy with something they said or did, rather than just saying ‘thank you’ it would be so much nicer to be more effusive and tell them that they have made us happy.
Instead, we pussyfoot around, saying less than we mean or cloaking it in words that say nothing (or, worse, the opposite).
Oh, and before you start on me, yes, I do the same. In fact, a friend recently told me that my blog was ‘oblique’. See, there’s the thing – I didn’t think it was. Well, again, that’s not entirely true. Some time ago, when some of my readers were unsure of, for instance, whether I was a woman or a man, I didn’t think it was oblique just that I had been rather clever in disguising it – not that it was important one way or another and, actually, I became rather smug about it, which, when I look back was rather snobbish on my part and for which I am not proud.
The problem, I find with this blog is that, although I want to tell the ‘whole truth and nothing but’, I find it difficult when many people I know read it. It is, of course, one of the beauties of having an anonymous blog – but, having started one of those, I find that it is hard to write, since I can mention no names or places or give any indication of anything that might find people tracking it down. So, in itself, it is not satisfying enough – using it for some details that, if I’m honest, I am just too scared to put here.
And, the fact that I am too scared I also find unsatisfying and so, I think anyway, my writing remains oblique – satisfying sometimes and dissatisfying at other times.
Not long after V & I split, for some reason that I do not recall, we went for a Chinese during which I got rather drunk. I think (but was not sober enough to remember all the details), I told him the truth. The truth of the last couple of years and what harm had been done and, therefore, why we were here, at this point, sitting in a Chinese restaurant, apart and estranged. I don’t think he had realised. It made me sad that he didn’t realise and now I think it is sadder that I wasn’t more open with him in those two years. Perhaps, if I had have been, things would have been different? I don’t think so, but you never know, nor will ever know. At least it would have given him (and me) a chance.
I have posts that I have posted and then withdrawn and posts in drafts that I felt didn’t say what I wanted them to or, worse, said nothing (much like this one probably) or ones (well, one anyway) that I am too scared to post. And still posts that were written and never put up at all! All kept but all should really be trashed for, if I didn’t post them then, perhaps they should never be posted?
Take the last post. All of it was true but that doesn’t make it the whole story; it doesn’t give you the true picture, the true picture being much more complicated than a simple blog post. I mean it was a beautiful day in a pretty seaside town and we had plenty of laughs along the way – but to blog that means nothing without the side that I did blog about. The beauty of that post is that I can explain that to Best Mate and she will understand as with her I can be more honest than most.
People usually ask if V reads this blog. The true answer is that I don’t know for certain but think that he does not. I’m not sure why, other than he doesn’t really read blogs at all and finds them boring, I think. I have no problem if he did anyway, unless he took some of the things I have said and thinks that they are about him as some of them are not and, therefore, he might get the wrong impression or, like the post before, see just one side of things without the full picture.
Of all of them there is the one (not posted) that I reread often. I wonder if it would make a difference if posted and on more than one occasion, have had the mouse poised over the publish button, swinging the cursor away with logic and, for that time, grateful that I did. I guess I may keep that one as I like it for many other reasons.
Even posting this post is dangerous, maybe. Or, rather, not dangerous but being too honest even by saying that I am not giving the whole picture and that the obliqueness of it all makes it difficult to decipher what is really going on in my head or in my world.
Still, I will post it anyway and, maybe, next week go through the old stuff, the drafts and so on and trash/use them/use bits of them. It feels time to get rid of some of the trash, like a spring clean, even if this is the start of Autumn.