The Price of Raw

When I started this blog a little over a year ago, I never really thought anyone would read it. Or at the very most I thought I’d have a few consistent readers, you know, people like my mom, maybe friends who I don’t get to see very often (and I was pretty much right). But that’s about it. I mean who wants to stick around for a 365-word-a-day snapshot of one woman’s life, regardless of how colorful her language is. I wasn’t doing it so that it would get read. I was doing it so that I could make myself write every day. It was just about the writing. It also turned out to be an incredible outlet for me during the hardest year of my life. A way to process an incredibly complicated and painful time of my life that simply could not be overlooked.

Probably the most consistent piece of feedback I’ve gotten on this blog is that it is raw. The emotions, the language, the situations. All of it is raw. And I’ve been called courageous and inspiring for being willing to air that rawness to the outside world. Now, I don’t know how courageous or inspirational I am, but I do know that raw was (is?) the only way for me to be. There’s just been too much to polish. Too much to try to hide or shirk or simplify.

For the most part, I’ve not let myself get too bogged down in worrying about what I put out there. Because as I said, I am not writing it because I need people to read it. So why should I give a shit what they think of it? And I don’t. Except for today I got dealt a sucker punch to the gut. Today I got handed down a sweeping judgment of myself, my life and my family. And it came in large part because of what I write here. Amidst the adrenaline fueled anger that I’ve been feeling all day, is also a deep sadness. Sadness that through everything I’ve written, expressed and learned over the last 15 months, that all they gleaned from it was a chance to judge.