Wow, did I get slammed for my bit about Palin and the banned books scenario. I've been sufficiently slapped upside the head, scolded like a bad girl, and read the riot act and so, have deleted the whole damn thing. This blog was never supposed to be anything that brought more stress into my life; to the contrary, it was meant to help me handle and process the mess that was coming my way, and after I was diagnosed with breast cancer and went through some very dark days I realized that I needed to find my voice, and so I suppose you could say that I brought this on myself. After all, my outspokenness and my writing have gotten me in trouble before. Perhaps this is what happens when we speak our mind, actually write down those thoughts that pester you in the wee hours of the morning, or say something controversial about someone controversial during a completely compelling and wiggy election season that gets everyone, myself included, all revved up.
I feel like an idiot, because I should have seen this coming. It was one thing to think that I could write about the Celtics--and actually, when I did, I received my first attack (for saying that Delante West looked like a "miscreant elf"), and others just didn't like it--but clearly, putting myself out there about the election and all it has brought up for me was crossing some kind of subtle line that I haven't quite figured out yet. I don't like it when people I don't know and who don't know me accuse me of being a bad person (among other things). I don't like feeling like a bad person, and unfortunately, I'm not very good at going to head to head with people I can't see, or simply letting these kind of comments wash over me.
I know some people get into blogging because they want to stir things up, fuel the fire, bring on the comments, the controversy. But I'm not much of a rabble-rouser, and I didn't get into blogging for those reasons at all. I was born under the sign of Libra, for goodness sake. I crave harmony and peace and balance. I don't like upset at all. And this blog? I started my blog as a way of trying to survive the terror that suddenly took up residence in my gut, to help me regain a sense of center and balance and peace, to better understand what was happening to me, and give friends and family an easier way to check in, walk with me for awhile.
All the negativity swirling about my bits on Palin nearly wrecks this whole thing for me. And yet, perhaps the problem arose because I was being so negative, and for that I am sorry. But sometimes things bubble up, and you have to unload it, else revisit it later, a forgotten, fermenting locked box in your dark depths.
I am tempted to delete the whole she-bang, with one click of the mouse (actually, two), because this process suddenly feels contaminated for me, and I am steeped in heartache at the thought of letting it all go. Perhaps this is the grand finale, the final step of the process, the ultimate demonstration of our impermanence here on earth: I felt pain and confusion and joy, I wrote, I posted, I wadded it all into a ball and threw it on the fire. Poof.
So, I ask you, if anyone out there is reading, and listening: what would you do? Start fresh? Retire early? Finish that bottle of Vicodin once and for all? Or, perhaps, more simply, persevere? There have been other times in my life when I have suspended my writing because of my own inability to recover well from criticism that felt heavy-handed and harsh: when I was told, as an eleven-year old girl, that I "hadn't suffered enough to be a writer," or when I sat in class after class listening to my fellow writing students at Williams rip apart my writing, and decided to take a break from the scrutiny, the glare, the judgment.
Perhaps I still have not suffered enough, perhaps I should give it up and return to the dull domesticity that could so quickly overtake my days, return the Flip Side to dust, and start making applesauce.
Or perhaps, I should simply stick to writing about my girls. After all, I'll soon have a new nipple, and there should be lots of amusing tales to tell...
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