Did I Tell You That?

ABrownGirl shared a story in her latest post about a friend she had who got upset when she found a blog posting ABrownGirl put up about her. Per the story, it seems ABG did it out of frustration -- not feeling like she was in a position to tell her friend how she felt, but still needing to get it out.

Enter A.Smith's life long (ok, maybe not life long) struggle with knowing too much from all the wrong sources.

It has been my experience that people don't like it when you know something about them that they didn't tell you. That relates to ABG's situation in that I've found people in my life don't always like knowing that I talk about them and their feelings about them on my blog. This is why most of my close friends don't know about this blog. As I said on ABG's blog, I'm sure they wouldn't really be surprised by what I have to say, but they'd probably be a little upset that there were public commentary on their private lives. I once said (on an old website, linked below)

It sucks that I can't use my website to say all the things I truly feel in the way I want to because others don't like what they end up reading about themselves here... because sometimes writing this stuff out is the only way I can seriously begin to deal with and handle myself.

Once upon a time, I had a website called The Life & Times of A.Smith (3-4 yrs ago, I had the great idea to make this website focus strictly on my obsession with quotes, so it's still in the inbetween stage. I had it unpublished, but I've republished it for a few days so you beautiful people can see it... excuse the mess and utter confusion.) and on that website I talked about a lot of things, including and especially my relationship which was just starting to hit a rough patch. I was really using it in the way most blogs were being used at that time, an online journal, in the vein of xanga or livejournal. My b/f at the time found it and we had MANY fights about the things I put up there. I tried to explain to him that this was how I dealt with our situation when he didn't want to talk about it and my friends were tired of hearing about it. I was most struck with the fact that he wasn't upset so much that I talked about him or that I even talked about him negatively. Rather he was upset that my friends might read it and, as he put it, read it out of context. We see the priorities...

My senior year in high school was quite possibly the most drama-filled experience of my life. I have fond memories of high school and I had great friends, but there was one girl in particular who I was really close to who totally turned into this crazy chick in our last few months together in school (I've been working the past few weeks on figuring out how to share the whole story with you guys in bite-sized interesting chunks). What really got the crazy-ball rolling was an innocent incident in which her ex-boyfriend, who I had become friends with (yes, I know I've posted in the past what a bad idea that is, how do you think I know that?) told me that he and the girl he had been rumored to be dating were actually dating. My friend didn't know it. During an argument, he blurted it out to her and she came to me for comfort. What did I say? "oh yeah, he told me about that a week ago..." I cringe even now thinking of what a big mistake that was. She didn't speak to me for about a week behind that.

I think we all like being able to control how people view us. I've previously admitted it's something I do. When we find out that someone knows something about us, especially when it's potentially harmful or embarassing, of course we get upset. Further, what if it was in a public place with a whole lot of people who you don't know reading it. Nevermind that for the most part these unknowns will never know who you are, and surely nevermind whatever truth may lie in the critique you read... emotions are at play and we don't do logic when we're doing emotion.

So since I know my blog is where I will come to vent about all the crazy things the people in my life do, I also know that I can't tell them about it. There's something that intensifies when they read it here versus when I just tell them. I'd like to avoid that intensity...