When I started this blog, more than a year ago, I started it with a couple of separate intentions.
I wanted to find a voice that sounded like me, that felt like me. I had been quiet for a long time, and was on the verge of screaming.
I also wanted to find a conversation that I might have some room in which to participate. With someone, with anyone, who had something to say in return. A connection to something bigger, more, other than myself.
As it turns out, I got both my wishes.
I’ve found a voice that is real, that is mine, that speaks of who I am, who I have been, who I am learning to be.
If you’ve never been a position to lose your voice, to speak and remain unheard, you can’t begin to understand the value of that. If that’s you, then for your sake, I hope it stays that way.
I also found that connection I was looking for – to a small group of people who, though I hadvery limited offline contact with them, made me feel welcome, and invited me in, and offered to pull me up a chair in their circle.
About the time that was really picking up and getting going, that I was really starting to reach out and interact online, my life, my “real” life, got big and messy and ugly and scary and more than a little out of control. (Are we shocked that Jolie is a control freak? Really?)
I started this blog to keep the two separate, to find room for me in the overcrowding of my personal environment. For a while, there was only one intersection between my “real” life and this space.
For a while.
And then came a second intersection. And a third, and so on.
And then one of those intersections had a four-car pile up. One thing too many, one place where my online life and my “real” life met, collided, nearly went up in flames. And I checked out.
Shut. It. Down.
Stepped one long step back from all the interactions, all the potential, all the introductory push-pull, and let it go.
Looking back is one thing. Easy to say you saw it coming, easy to say you knew where it would lead.
I didn’t. I didn’t see it.
So that moment has led to this one.
In this one, crystal clear moment, I can see all the intersections between this life and that one, between “real” and online and tangible and imaginary.
I can see, where I couldn’t really imagine before, the potential disasters inherent in the fact that some people who know me at work, and at home, and at school, read this writing and have insight that they may or may not normally get.
I can also see how easy it would be for those people, who know me in the physical world I inhabit, to assume that because they know me in both places, they somehow know me better for reading me here.
That’s the “real” side.
From your perspective, my lovely readers (all three of you!), I wonder sometimes who I am in your eyes. Do you believe in the stories I tell? Do you read for curiosity? For voyeurism? For something else that I can’t even begin to guess at, because I’ve never been in your shoes and couldn’t possibly know?
Who do you think you see, when you hit the link to This Side of Changed and check out the sometimes-daily updates on the Life and Times of Jolie?
Because neither one, at the heart of it all, is the whole picture.
It’s just not. This is a two-dimensional medium in every way possible. Words on a screen. My thoughts translated through your eyes to conclusions that may or may not have anything at all to do with me.
I’m a three dimensional creature. So are you. You read this, and you assume, and you identify with my experiences through the lenses of your own. That’s okay. Better than okay, it’s kind of the fucking point of blogging.
So that moment has led to this one.
From where I stand now, at the biggest crossroads of online and “real” to date, it’s just about fucking time.
This is a good moment for me, a good moment to be in.
I am, for once, completely at peace in this moment.
Someone wise said to me recently, “Sometimes it’s just about being still enough to hear what you’re being told.”
It is that moment for me, now. I have really, finally, started to let go of the things I cannot control. I have stepped outside of it as far as I am able. I have accepted the choices of others, and gotten okay with those choices as much as I can get.
Which all means that yeah, I really am okay. With where I’m at. With knowing that some of you know the “real” me, and some of you know me online, and some of you try with varying levels of success to reconcile the two.
Because no matter how many words I pour out on to the page, I can’t give you my whole picture in a two-dimensional medium. And no matter how many times we sit down and have coffee, I may not every really be able to articulate what’s in my head to you like I can write it out here.
It’s all part of me. Each facet, each moment, each thought, all part of me. What I choose to withhold is just as much me as what I choose to share.
And that moment leads to this one.
Where, with my hand out and my eyes open, I can stand on my own two feet, and let these two pieces of my life intersect in ways that I never imagined possible. Where I can breathe through this moment into the next, and trust in both moments, and treasure the experience.
Because I came here to find myself, and to start a conversation. And I did.
You’ll have to figure out why you’re here, all on your own.
Trust me, it’s worth asking the question.