I've been thinking a lot about this blog thing. About why I do it and why there are moments of inexcusible silence when I don't do it. Certainly I'm not reliable, and I have a self-defeating suspicion that I'm not even interesting most days. I have this thing ingrained in my brain that I must a) be interesting and b) make sure that everyone likes me. This means I don't want to say bad things about people who clearly deserve bad things being said about them.

I read a lot of different blogs, I believe I've listed them before. And I cannot compete with the wittiness of Joshilyn or the heart-filled blogs of Kira. And I often don't have the energy to be as smart and up-to-date as Shelley. I'm supposed to be creating something of my own here. And I feel like I can't.

I remember when I first began blogging. I was in the midst of a divorce. It's kind of like being in the midst of a hurricane. You want to strap yourself down to the nearest palm tree and wait for the pain to subside. But you know you have to keep moving or a Volvo will come flying by and take your head off. I blogged about the pain, about the anger, about the desolation I felt. Some days it was my only communication. I had friends that phoned to check up on me because my blogs were so... near the edge that they thought I might fall off. Or jump.

At some point I let go of that. I dropped it off the edge. I deleted that blog and along with it, every single post. I didn't keep a single one of them. I got past it all. Some may gasp at that, but let me tell you, I also threw out almost every single diary I've ever kept. Since grade school. Chucked them all.

And I felt so much better for it.

I did keep a few pages. I tore out the pages from when I met my boyfriend for the first time 9 years ago. I kept those and I read them to him. Because although I had not gone back to read the pages previously, my memory was identical to what I had written. And that's when I knew for sure that I did not create the words in my journal, I just transcribed them.

I hold every word for every memory inside of me. I don't need to clutch a journal or a diary because all the good and all the bad has been categorized and filed inside of me. Some of it I will pass on by translating them for others. I may write a book that expresses the ideas I have. I may write essays for my family to read 100 years from now. But they don't need the gritty, gunky truth that I wrote down in my wobbly hand. Or maybe I just don't want to give it!

Inside the pages of some of the most tattered pages, I read some seriously shocking and flawed statements. The words LOVE and HATE were bandied about like they were EVERYTHING. I fell in and out of love like a jack-in-the-box. I was up and down like a toilet seat. I found myself slightly embarassed by the young fool I was.

Throwing them away was like acknowledging my adulthood. It was like finally saying, "I know who I am now because I know who I have been, warts and all."

Wasn't I blogging about this blog? Yeah, I've been toying with trashing it. But I think I'll keep it for a little bit longer.