Exposure

After posting last night, I was thinking that it's no wonder I don't have a loyal troop of readers. Yesterday's writing was not insightfully witty or funny or comforting, or even well written. I wondered if I should have posted at all. When we met for lunch this week, one of my friends cringed at the idea of having one's thoughts posted on the Internet, especially when a few years down the road those thoughts might change significantly. But, I pointed out, if I write at all, that is something I have to accept.

When I find that someone else has expressed things that I feel myself, it is both comforting and encouraging. Wow, I think, I am not completely crazy after all, or if I am, I am no more crazy than a lot of other people. I can live with that.

By your stumbling the world is perfected. -- Sri Aurobindo

My friend Suzy has told me, with regard to divorce and rebuilding life, "after this everything else will seem easy." There are times when I repeat that to myself like a mantra. I have faith that it is true, I just haven't reached the "after" part yet. I am still in it. If I write about divorce five or ten years from now, I won't remember it as it really happened. The recounting would sound like a smooth progression of discovering this and realizing that and voila, life got better. Reality is much messier.

The rebuilding is really renovating; it's like having your only bathroom torn up in stages. It is not so fun or convenient to have the room's interiors exposed and only partly functional while you still have to make use of it. Without a thorough overhaul, the faucet will still drip and the inner walls will continue to rot and mold. Likewise, if I'm realizing that somewhere along the line I picked up the idea that sex is something that happens to you, or that it is okay to be put down then those false premises have to come to the surface. Then they can be taken apart and replaced with parts that work. In the meantime, things are going to be a bit messy for me. The only alternative is to keep having the same experience, the same relationship that I have had in the past, and I would really prefer not to do that.

What is uncomfortable to me right now is how much I unintentionally expose about myself when I am writing stories. I am even more transparent when writing fiction than when I am blogging. At least I have some control when I write here. I have sufficient courage to spell out the things I am ready to share, but at the moment, not quite enough to risk more exposure than that.