It's hazy out here, where I've been lately. The weather is foul, murky-green shot through with bilious colours, and the footing is decidedly treacherous. If you ignore both the pond-stink of old water and whatever that was that just went squirming and shrieking off through the underbrush, it still looks sorta normal.
Kinda normal, anyway.
Ever get caught up in a relationship you look back on and know with a sick twist to your gut that you ignored your feelings, stuffed down the slightly-hysterical voice inside you that was giving you warnings, the i told you so i told you so i told you so clawing rampant under your skin? And then the ooze buuurps under your heels and you realize you're far too deep in to abandon ship now.
We bloggers get invested in each other. Hazard of the beast, really, when talking about our lives and families and children and carpool and work and work again. Then Facebook came along and catapulted us all into each other's laps, and I now know more about people I've never 'met' than some of the ones I've lived near for a decade now.
What do you do when you realize that someone you've looked up to isn't who you think they are? Someone who you've read for a few years, whose stories you've looked forward to and whose children you can call by name?
What do you do when the mask cracks and falls away and what you see beneath takes your breath away with revulsion - all the pretty stories sworn up and down to be truth exposed and crumbling in daylight, groups and websites sprung up to hammer home the point that you've believed a lie, a lie with a wide colourful bow, yes, but still a lie - what do you do?
I kind of wish I still was clueless. Because now? I gaze at my family in the light of the waning sun and know that I've lost something through this revelation, that the blogging community for me will never be the same again.
I mourn, yes.
And then I turn my back on the toad squatting in front of me and look towards the sun, clear at last.
**This has been bubbling for awhile, but I need to get it out and on the page before it festered from simple grief, disbelief and pity to hate**
8 comments:
zurk! test comment.
Dear Jess,
I read this post with alarm. I am sorry that you had this bad experience with a fellow blogger and hope that you will indeed find that the sun still shines if you look elsewhere.
I guess we all wear masks to a certain degree - even when we meet face to face, so perhaps it is not surprising that sometimes also occurs in how we present ourselves in our blogs.
On that note, I have to confess that I am actually not a cute grey squirrel with bushy tail but a slightly paunchy middle aged man. I hope you are not bitterly disappointed. :)
Oh Jess, I'm so sorry that you've been disillusioned. I've been lucky enough to meet a number of bloggers in real life and have had nothing but lovely and even wonderful experiences. (Just as I know I will if I ever make it up to your neck of the woods and have the honor of meeting you too.)
I am guessing that most of us bloggers mask our true selves to a certain extent. I know that I tend to keep things light and mostly shallow on my blog, so as not to overwhelm my readers with the stresses in my life right now. Still, I would like to think that a person's true self would show through the veils regardless.
Sending you hugs.
I'm so sorry this has happened, and like Jen, those bloggers I've met in real life have been just as I imagined them from their blogs. In fact, Jen is one of those people.
It's never fun when someone turns out not to be the way they represent themselves. I'd say though, that most bloggers are the people they profess to be.
I went through this. The realization that a blogger isn't as authentic as you expect bloggers to be.
What I hate most is now I look at all the other blogs with a bit of caution. I know that not everyone put each minute of their lives on line (some do/some don't) and we might only get a movement of them. But I really hope that that moment is full of truth.
ouch. i feel lucky, in that this hasn't happened to me. but ouch.
What Magpie said. But the worst of it is that when someone is making up a life or trying to be another person, their real life must be so bad that they can't stand it.
I feel sorry for the blogging liars, but not enough to ever go back to them again.
That sucks. We all get so used to the blogger family we've created. It would feel like such a betrayal.
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