Truth or Dare

I always chose Dare. Because I'd rather do the most embarrassing and stupid things than risk dredging up bitter memories.

I started this blog last year partly out of boredom and mainly because I needed somewhere to vent during the cold winter of discontent. I've always kept the content light, a socio- political discussion here, an odd poem there, the usual I'm bored/lonely/unhappy navel gazing type post sprinkled in.

But I rarely speak here with frankness just as I rarely speak my heart to anyone else in my real life.

There are so many people who put their personal lives online for all to see. Their loves, hates, boyfriends, pets, girlfriends, break ups, sex lives, mental breakdowns....it's all there. All online for the whole world, including their friends and family to see.

I doubt I could ever do that. I have too much to hide, and mainly, my skin is just too thin. Anything at all that goes wrong in public makes me want to shrivel up inside and hide under the covers for the rest of the week.

But my silences usually mean my questions go unanswered. It gives power and control to people who hold my secrets because they know how much it means to me. It means I never get second or third opinions when faced with sticky issues in my personal life. It means I have no vent, no place to go, no one to turn to because I close off this avenue of release.

There are times I sit down and think to myself that I can't go on this way forever. That Donne was right; no man can be an island.

I came across the blog of someone I once knew, a long time ago. In it he wrote about his past failures, his lack of success in his career, the loss of his girlfriend...all the sad under currents of his seemingly placid and fulfilling life suddenly bubbling to the surface of that little blog. And I wondered if maybe one day I could do that with my own blog too. Write all the nonsense in my head and heart out onto my blue and cream corner of the web universe.

I could but I probably won't.

In the end, as Billy Joel once sang, my silence is my self defence.

Life is just easier this way.