Beginning to Write for Me

It must be obvious by now, that I have struggled to figure out how to write here in the last few years.  

In the beginning, I blogged to make connections with others who lived like I do.  In the beginning, I blogged to help myself sort through my uncertainties, doubts, and struggles.  In the beginning, I blogged so that I could define for myself what it was I was trying to do and be.  In the beginning, I blogged because He commanded it.

I am not driven by those motivations anymore, and still, I find that I need to write here.  I have become attached to this place, and the challenges of writing now, cause me to feel as if I have lost something that was and is important to me.  I don't have any reason to write here anymore, except that I want to.  I considered creating another blog that would be more private, but it just doesn't feel right.  I have also imagined that maybe I could engage with some "friends" in a sort of email correspondence circle, but that feels awkward, and I'm not clear that friends wouldn't find it invasive and exhausting.

So, it is time to redefine this place for myself.  All my writing here has carried within it my intention to write as honestly and openly as I could.  Even when things were painful, scary, and embarrassing, I worked to put the truth out here as best as I could.  I cannot and will not do that anymore.  Things here will be filtered.  It is a necessity.  I have no desire to hurt my loves with what I write here, nor am I willing to do anything that would hinder the healing process for our family.  It is, sadly, a fact that some will respond with judgement and insults when confronted with our more difficult realities and struggles.  I've never understood that behavior, and I've also never figured out how to dissuade those people from indulging their mean streaks.  No.  That sort of writing is no longer an option for me.  

It has also been true that I've always felt that I could count on a degree of anonymity here.  I'm not naive, and I do know that anyone who wants to put just a modest bit of effort into it can, pretty easily, figure out who and where I am.  Still, I figured that my BDSM world and my outside world were pretty much parallel, with no likely points of intersection.  A scare at the beginning of the school year, gave me pause.  Too, there are things that I no longer share here because there is a direct conduit to my adult children because their other parent doesn't seem to operate by the same ideals as I do in that realm.  I try very hard to allow my son and daughter to have their relationships with their father without any interference or influence from me.  I guess that is MY ethical stance, and not his.  Oh well.  It does limit what I will say here however.  

So...

I need and want to write here again; to find my voice here again.

I choose not to expose my loves to the mean, nasty, and judgmental types anymore.

I cannot count on my former spouse to maintain any sort of reasonable boundaries with my adult children.

I've resisted shifting the subject matter here, but it is time to do that.  I am tired of looking backwards and bemoaning the things that cannot be anymore.  I want to focus forward on what is now and what can be.  I am closer to 60 than I am to 50, and the life ahead of me isn't going to be about being fresh and young and full of possibilities.  This is the other part of the story; about aging and decline and, hopefully, about some sort of earned wisdom, and maybe just a bit of grace finally.  I'll be writing more generally, more politically, more spiritually.  I'll be talking more about the books I read and the projects I'm working on.  I'll write more about my hopes and dreams and fantasies.  I may even take liberties with my own artificial rules about this place and post meal plans and recipes, and other sort of domestic stuff.  I have no idea what that will all come to look like or sound like, but I am ready to try just the same.