Monday, June 11, 2018

Last Year I Was a Train Wreck, Now I'm Just a Mess? (Nope. Still a Train Wreck)

I was texting with this guy yesterday who I met a couple years ago once and have text back and forth with very off and on ever since. I don't remember exactly what I said, but he text back, I wish I could see inside your brain, which was really funny because I had been thinking all day yesterday, maybe not in those words, that pretty much everybody can.

One of the things I wrote in yesterday's post when offering up texts that BTJ could have sent me when I asked if he wanted any pancakes was something about reading my blog and knowing I'm insane. I wrote that in jest, but is it not true? I mean, I have no idea if he read it or not, but the address used to be on my Instagram, so he could have. I do know for sure that you all read my blog, hundreds of you, and that I'm not much for pretend. If I think it, you know. If I did it, I tell. People who read my blog, after reading my nightly posts on top of my regular posts, do you really feel like you don't see inside my head? I feel like a science or psychology or sociology experiment, a fly wriggling on the wall, completely unguarded and open, a train wreck or car crash that's such a mess, people can't help but stare.

After I wrote that yesterday and was thinking about the spectacle that is my life, I thought about it in the context of relationships. Not even romantically speaking, my openness has always been an issue--my mom and I didn't talk for months and months over an essay I published that she stumbled across online and my dad didn't talk to me for more than a year over it; my ex-Glenn and I definitely had words about things I would write (I guess that's sort of in a romantic context, but after being married to someone for so many years, it seems more familial than romantic); Griffin told me he always has to worry about what I'm going to write in my blog; Keifer told me I have a real problem keeping private things private; and none of them are wrong.

So now let's look at my blogging--not just my openness and willingness to put anything and everything out there, but the craziness and anxiety and awkwardness and neurosis it exposes--through a relationship lens. Who in their right mind would want a relationship with this? I mean, I would--I find all of these things fascinating and endearing and who the fuck wants an uncomplicated, garden-variety significant other?--but I'm not in my right mind! (I will say, though, at least with me there's no surprise. Plenty of people are way crazier than I am, they just act like they're not.) And so I ask myself: Is the writing worth it? If it hurts my relationships, romantic and not, should I just stop?

The majority of you, I'm sure, are like, Kel, fucking duh, but I don't know that I can want to. Like, this is my thing. Just like some people have to make music and some people have to paint and some people have to draw, I have to write, and, yes, I have to write about me, and, yes, I have to write these totally uncomfortable, awkward, obnoxious things (we're an obnoxious people, we Weinstein descendants.  My mom used to chase people down the street with a ketchup-covered maxi pad pretending it was blood). I think if a condition of my being in a "happy" relationship is that I have to keep all this me inside, I wouldn't be happy at all. I'm not saying I'm happy now, but at least nobody who's supposed to be making me happy is holding me back.

Except, maybe--
myself. 

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