Over sharing



Spring has arrived in my small town.

I've been keeping this blog under wraps since I created it. For now, that's how I like it. However, something happened yesterday.

 

Yesterday, I accidentally shared a link on my personal Facebook page leading any of my relatives to this blog. For a whole hour or more before I realized what had happened, my FB page publicly showed the link. Most of the 'friends' I have on my personal FB friends are related to me. I have my mom, brothers and sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles as friends, so they all had access to this blog. Not to mention my past coworkers, ex-boyfriends, and people I went to primary and high school with. Even though I changed the names of my family members on my blog here, my family will still be able to pick out which characters they are.

 

How could I have done such a thing, right? Well, I had this bright idea to make a Facebook page dedicated to this blog, listing links to my latest postings. That way readers could get updates through FB, and they could link to the blog easily whenever they were on  FB. This page was totally separate from my regular FB account. Until I "liked" it from my personal FB account. Seriously! Why would I do that? I must have been in a state of deep brain fog when I hit that "like" button. I thought I was "liking" from my blog account, not my personal account. I really thought I could keep a private FB page dedicated to this blog, but separate from my personal account. I see now that's not an option. I might set up a page on Google Plus, since I don't have family there.

 

I laugh now at what happened. True, I did experience a wave of cold fear washing over me at the moment. Then anger at myself for not realizing I had leaked the link myself. Then anger at my family for being so nuts that a simple blog has to be kept private from them. Then a feeling of "who cares?" I stayed at the "who cares" level for the rest of the afternoon.

 

I played out what would have happened if my family had the time in that one hour to read any juicy parts. Or if another relative read it and gossiped about it to another relative, and it got back to my parents and siblings. What's the worst that could have happened?

 

I would get weird looks at the next family reunion or get together. I would look at them and know that they know my inner most secrets, and that I know what they know. But what of that? Should I care? What do odd looks mean to me? Trust me, I get strange looks and judgemental looks from them on a regular basis, so what is that to me if I get stared at and shamed more? Nobody would dare to bring up the subject to me, though because my family does not do confrontation. They will talk about you, but not to your face.

 

They could refuse to see me or visit me. Not a big deal because they don't make an effort to do so now. They could refuse to help me in the future if I ever need help. But again, this also is a mute point because they haven't done so in the past when I was at my lowest.

  

I've always had a difficult time expressing myself to my family because each thing I said or did was judged, condemned, torn apart. And I was too much of a good girl to stand up to them and say- "That's not very loving." So I don't have much experience doing this. I've been trying to lately, but it's still new. I know now I have nothing to fear, but the old automatic pilot mode of shame and fear still runs on "on" mode a little. I'm realizing more that shame and fear are facades, and that I don't operate this way anymore. That's why I was able to just laugh yesterday afternoon after I calmed down. I got back into my normal stride like nothing much had happened. 

 

There's this saying, "Don't cast your pearls among swine." Meaning, it's not wise to speak wisdom around unenlightened people who will chew you up and spit you out.  Some things are best discussed in private amongst people who are on the same level and are supportive. Another reason I don't like Facebook. Mass sharing is bound to cause trouble when we are all not on the same wavelength. People who don't have the full story and not in the loop misconstrue information and feelings are hurt. For me, it's more beneficial to communicate only certain things to certain groups of people.

 

I'll change my blog's URL, then I'll be back on track here. If a family member still ends up finding the blog, so be it. More power to them. I'm going to believe that this person will be so loving that they will congratulate me on my honesty and desire to express how I'm transforming into a more loving person while sharing it in this blog. It's vital for me at this point in my life that I have an outlet like this. So I'm going to keep sharing. However, for now I'm just going to share with friends who are supportive.