Life on Display -- Blogging

There has been, in recent weeks, a surprising and remarkable level of concern for my children, who might possibly be reading here -- although I very much doubt that.  For, the record, and as I've stated repeatedly, the two human beings that I once bore into this world are well into their 30's.  They are adults, and no longer children.  They both live their own lives, and make their own choices (one of which might be the choice to read this or any other blog or website).  Some of the "concern" for them is clearly intended to slap me down; is purely nasty; and deserves to stand on its own for what it is.  On the other hand, there is one individual who has on a couple of occasions expressed "surprise" at the openness of what we write here, and those comments refer more broadly to the breadth of our lives and our struggles -- not confining the worry for the "children" to a mere exposure to sex, but to other things as well.  I don't know that this person is intending anything negative in their comments, I hope not.  That is the assumption I am willing to make at this point, and so I want to talk about this particular comment:


My surprise at your kids reading here was much more about the other, non-sexual aspects of your relationship. The fights, the drunkenness, the arrests, the pain.


We do discuss our lives here; openly and with very little veiling.  It has been our mode to attempt to honestly convey the reality within which we live.  Sometimes life is joyful, sometimes sad, sometimes painful, and sometimes funny.  We tell stories on ourselves here -- the good and the bad, and if you read from the beginning, you can see us grow and change and age.  We've made mistakes and we've been spectacular.  It probably really depends on the day.  More than anything, these blogs (our blogs) chronicle the humanness of our lives.


I sometimes go back through the archives, and find the person I was in 2005 or 2007 or 2010 -- and I can be surprised.  I sometimes wonder at the things I've written -- and long forgotten.  Did I really write those words; was I really that person?  And, the answer is, "yes."  The words are mine.  The words were mine.  That is the very nature of a journal (which this surely is) -- it records the passage of time and the journey one makes during the writing.  


The reader here will find the bones of our past -- the joy, the sex, the fights, the blunders, the anger, the pain, the embarrassment, the follies, the triumph, the love, the sorrow, the perseverance, the reconciliations, the diatribes, the poetry -- all of it, woven together.  Master will sometimes tell people that to read our blog is to come to know us better than our mothers do (or did).  Absolutely.  That is the truth.  We say things here we do not say out loud to anyone anywhere.  Here, we are often talking to ourselves, for ourselves -- as if we were all alone in an empty room.  Readers may find themselves privy to an internal monologue that some may find disturbing in its intimacy.  I can well imagine that.  To read here is to take us up on the tacit invitation to share what is happening with us.  We keep this blog marked as "adult" for a reason. 


As much as I can be surprised by things written here over the years, I am not ashamed of any of it.  I have had moments of naivety, and moments of hyperbole, and significant flights of self-indulgence -- but it is all an honest reflection of wherever I was in that moment.  If there is hyperbole, it is because I was caught up in my own melodrama.  If there are bits of fantasy, or scraps of dreams, I believe I've been scrupulous about identifying those things.  I've fallen into the occasional meme, but in general, I've avoided those kinds of canned tricks that can eat up space on a blog like this.  Whatever else one might think about The Heron Clan, and associated blogs, the place is largely composed of substantive writing -- not particularly good writing, but of substance.  And the pictures?  Those are, likewise, not anything that I feel the need to apologize for.  There are pictures of my butt scattered here and there.  My teary, pouty face appears from time to time -- and it is pretty obviously true that the immediate aftermath of a spanking is not a time when I am at my radiant best. Even that "fisting" picture that has evoked so much consternation seems iconic to me.  It captures and encapsulates the desperate and frantic scrambling of my post-hysterectomy fight to rediscover and reclaim my truncated sexuality.  In those dark days, I was furious and frightened, and I'd have done anything -- ANYTHING -- to have myself back again.  I'm betting that my struggle is echoed everyday by other women suffering the same loss.


But this blog is, as my presumably non-judgmental, but surprised commenter points out, is full of way more than just sex and poly and spanking.  We have documented the times when we fight.  We've shared the crazy, chaotic, destructive descent into addiction and co-dependence.  We've flailed and stumbled and dragged our feet through the early months of recovery.  We've been clear about the legal troubles, the relational troubles, the financial troubles.  If it happened to us, and we could get words around it, we've put it out here.  If we learned something new or useful or hopeful, we put it out here.  If we wondered about it, or thought about it, or disagreed with it, or hoped for it -- we put it out here.  It has been rough, painful, and uncomfortable, and we have chosen to keep writing here.  Some might think that was crazy -- others might call it brave.  There's not one bit of it that makes me think we should reconsider and begin to hide our lives from those who are important to us -- families and friends.


I see things differently.  This life I live is honest and real.  I am not ashamed of it.  I am not ashamed of my loves.  I've done things that I do feel ashamed of, but not recently:

• I am ashamed that I stayed so long with my ex-husband.  That decision kept both of us in a marriage that wasn't good for either of us.
• I'm ashamed that I allowed my children to grow up with that marriage as their model for a loving relationship.
• I'm ashamed that I worked for years in a corporate environment that required me to do work that I was not proud of.  No amount of money could ever pay for what I lost of my soul in those years.
• I'm ashamed that I spent so many years allowing my mother's poison to spill over my life and the lives of my kids.
• I'm ashamed that I never found a way to create a safe and sane life for my daughter -- that her mental health and developmental struggles remain such difficult challenges in her life.
• I'm ashamed for every time I've been a witness to injustice and done nothing... or nothing much.

There are probably other places where I've fallen short, but that's a pretty good list.  It isn't about sex or spanking or even battles with addiction and violence.  It is about growing and learning, over years of living, how to do things better than I might have once.  I can't change the things I did in my younger years.  I can only try to live more consciously and more openly and more honestly today.


If my kids ARE reading here, then I hope they will learn from their mother's mistakes.  If they read this story today or tomorrow, I hope they will learn to live life fully and completely and courageously.  I hope that they will watch me making a life for myself, with those I love, and come to understand that we each have to do that no matter what anyone else says.  If some of these words help that to happen for someone else, then I think it is worth all the false starts and prat falls.


swan