Blogging Boundaries

I haven’t published anything for a while but I have been writing.  I found that writing is like therapy for me, especially since I now have some minor memory challenges and words that don’t come to mind immediately, but manage to get there over time.

At first it was enough to just write.  I started during a harder time with poetry and just typed it on my phone. That part served a purpose, putting my thoughts and feelings together.  They felt all over the place inside of me.  Writing brought them together in an organizational way and allowed me to see my feelings in packages,  and tie my feelings to the actions, circumstances, et cetera that were causing them.  What was so maddening and uncontrollable was becoming clear and my ability to tie my feelings to a cause allowed me to identify the cause.  Writing was empowering, and I’m grateful I stumbled onto it.

Over time I found that I needed more.  Writing felt like a solid organization of my thoughts and issues, and allowed me to plan how to deal with things.  It was great, but I found that I wasn’t able to get it out in the form of actions or changes.  Instead, the realizations just stayed in my head.  That made me feel pretty bad too because I could see why I was feeling certain things, yet I couldn’t really talk about them or get them out there.  Not that I physically can’t talk, some would say I’m a pro even when certain words don’t come.  The issue wasn’t in my ability to speak, exactly, but was more conceptual, is this real?  I’d put my thoughts and ideas together, and it seems like that should be enough, but I needed another solid action.  Almost a physical move to represent what was happening in my brain.  These aren’t just my ideas and thoughts, I need to solidify their existence.  This is a step that never existed in my pre-brain surgery life.  Maybe it just happens and we don’t recognize it, maybe it’s a modification for me, personally. I don’t know.  For me it needed to happen and I was lucky once again.  I found that publishing accomplished that.  My ideas, thoughts, and realizations are now solid, and I’m not the only one who can see them.  They do exist  I realize I was feeling invisible

So I set up my WordPress blog and began.  I had my settings on extreme privacy at the time because I needed privacy and security, yet I also needed the solid confirmation and ownership of my thoughts, and publishing brought that. Yes, I sad it, I let it out of my head.  It does exist.  Publishing was like freedom.  I still owned my thoughts and ideas, but they weren’t imprisoned in my brain, constantly questioning themselves and babbling, taking all of my energy.

So that was the past and now I’m entering another area that I once again question.  I have a lot more that wants to come out, that needs to be heard.  I guess I have two issues- I’d like to talk more deeply and honestly but doing so involves other people who may not want to be mentioned, and I want to be heard, so I think I need to go public with my blog (though not my direct identity).

Now I can tell my thoughts are bouncing all over, so forgive my lack of organization as I get it out.  Cancer might be one person’s disease, but it effects the whole family.  If I write about my experience and want to go to the “brain cancer freeish” place I am, instead of the emergency mode place where I’ve been, it’s no longer about survival, medicine, hospitals and doctors, etc.  Let me be clear,  I’m not minimizing that for others, I’m very fortunate to have moved past that and there are different issues now.  I’m in more of a big-picture mode and as I think about my feelings and issues, I realize I’m not the only one in this.  How can I talk about my life without including family, friends, others?  But they may not want the digital footprint of what they went through.  I don’t think I ever want to be public with my real name but I don’t want risk hurting my family either.  They currently know I blog and don’t read it, but they might.  I would never say anything to hurt them on purpose but they may not want their vulnerability or issues shared.  I’m really confused and don’t know how to proceed.

I mentioned that I had been writing, just hadn’t published anything.  That’s because I’m worried that one of my pieces will expose too much of my family’s experiences and the other one might offend someone because my words aren’t coming out so well on that one and it’s a delicate area.  These two issues are in limbo for me.  Floating around my head, more concrete, but floaters.  That takes a lot of energy and blocks other things.

I don’t know what to do about it, but I do know that as my life continues, I will have a lot more to get out. I need to figure this out.  Soon.