As happens periodically, but has not for a long time, I am pondering the whole question of exactly how much of my survivor stuff I want to reveal in this journal. I am pretty happy with where I am right now, actually, so I have no plans to back up. Sometimes, though, I consider moving forward -- showing more -- being more explicit in talking about my recovery work and all the little ways it impacts my life. All the things I'm thinking about doing to help my own process, all the things I'm too scared to try, all the things which I know are true that I still cannot accept. Why should I have to hide such an enormous truth from all of you, who are presumably reading this because you care or are at least interested?

People would talk, of course. I've been told that they already do, despite how private I keep these parts of my life. But now they would have something to talk about, specific things they could point to when they want to gossip about me and how messed up I am, how manipulative I am, how I say all these lies about myself just to get attention or (worse yet) am so stupid I actually believe all these things that any sensible person knows cannot be true. They would talk, and rumours of it would get back to me, and I'd want to throw up. It doesn't matter that I trust that the people I care about would respond sanely and well; there would still be people out there who think badly of me, who are deriving some joy or pleasure or at least satisfaction out of sitting around discussing what a nutcase I am.

I don't get that. No, it's not that I don't get why I'm afraid of it; I'm afraid of it because my biomom pounded it into my head from day one that I was manipulative, selfish, made things up to get attention (as if wanting attention is such a bad thing), that I was too emotional and 'just like my father', that I was irrational and oversensitive and illogical and wrong-headed and hopeless, that I was gullible and would believe anything that anyone told me, that despite being 'smarter than she was' (one she said a lot), I was really stupid. That I, in short, was Bad. That's why the thought of someone in the world looking at my truth and dismissing it as "She's just trying to get attention" makes me want to vomit.

But more than that, I am scared that these people might bother to talk about me at all. It's like, there are people in the world who are my friends or at least friendly acquaintances, and I imagine their response to whatever I might reveal in here (if they should see it) would be compassion or indifference or confusion, or maybe a few other things, but it wouldn't be to sit around slamming me. And then there's that other set of people known as The Rest of the World, whom if they sit around slamming me (never having interacted with me except through the passive medium of the journal) -- well, I was going to say that wouldn't bother me, but it does bother me. But fine, whatever, I wouldn't ever know about it (unless they sent me fucked up mail, in which case I would but then they lose credibility, so who cares?), so it isn't going to really matter.

The problem is, there's this group of people between My Friends and The Rest of the World, people who were friendly with me once but whom have now drifted away, or people who have heard of me because they're friends of friends of acquaintances, or people who knew one of my characters online and think that person was me... these people exist. And some of them would, apparently, talk about me. Despite not having spoken or ineracted with me in years, despite the fact that we are no longer in any way part of one another's lives, some of these people apparently derive great joy from sitting around watching TV and discussing what a fucked up crackpot I am, or what a manipulatively little slutty bitch I am.

Why?

Why do these people, who are no longer in my life in any way, still hold onto me to such an extent that they need to sit around slamming me? I don't sit around slamming them. I don't /think/ about them, except occasionally to remember something good or bad or indifferent. I certainly don't gossip about them (not that I could, since I don't know anything about their lives right now). So what is it about me that these people, five or six or ten years later, still talk about me?

The therapy-derived answer is, "It's not something about you. It's something about them." And that's true, but it still makes me feel sick sick sick to think about it happening. Daniel, who was a source of advice to me long before I started therapy, would say that I have a lot of power, and what I do impacts people, and that these people are still holding onto me because I (unknowingly) made such an impact on their lives. In some cases this is perhaps true, but again I come back to -- why me? What is it about me? Why doesn't this happen to anyone else? (I'm sure it does, but this isn't my logical mind talking.)

That's what I'm scared of. I don't know how to just accept it, that some people are going to be shitty about me, for their own reasons which have nothing to do with who I really am. Maybe if I can figure out how to not to let that stuff in, I can make the leap of faith into sharing more of myself here.