Secrets, Blogging, and Fear

I was recently reading a blog by a woman who recalled the teenage angst of having her privacy violated by her mother. Snooping through her drawers and diaries led to tantrums thrown by her mother whenever she read something her teenage daughter thought she oughtn't have.

I can remember such kinds of betrayals as well.

It struck me as funny, here we both were, scribbling our thoughts and rants and hopes and dreams across cyberspace for anyone to discover, where just scant decades ago, discovery would have been tantamount to death.

I've been blogging now for longer than most of my boyfriends or jobs last. The reasons I've listed (previously) for blogging, have each had their days, but here I am, still blogging past all reason.

I've come to understand it is a compulsion for me, to journal, to blog, to diarize, to strive to organize information in some kind of linear fashion. To keep a record, a history.

I've kept a diary of one kind or another most of my life.
For a while I stopped writing. I destroyed or lost track of (shudder) a whack of others.

Mostly my reasons for NOT writing always had to do with one thing. The fear of, or the discovery of, betrayal. That someone would, or had snooped, read, discovered my deepest, darkest secrets as juvenile or morbid or sweet they may have been, and have power over me.

That's what it always came down to. Fear.

I remember a pivotal dream I had about fear a few years ago now.
It was one of a recurring series of dreams since childhood. I was being chased. Who hasn't had this dream? Running and running and hiding and heart pounding and blood rushing and movements become as slow as molasses. Y'all know what I'm talking about.

At one point I run into a room. Bad move, no way out. I slide to the floor, heart pounding like a bunny. I roll for cover between a couch and a coffee table. He's in the doorway, big and dark and hulking over me, a shiny pistol clenched in his fat hand.

In my dream, I wake up and recognize my self petrified, frozen with fear. I fiercely whisper in my own ear, "Remember what I always said I'd do in this situation?" Like a shot in the arm of adrenaline, I remember, and I remember the times it has worked in the past, I remember in this situation I promised myself I'd rush him, I'd use surprise, I'd knock him on his ass and escape. BOOM, I was in the air quicker than slick, and BOOM, my skinny little elbows sank into his gut, in surprise his gun hand jumped out of the way and whoosh I was through the door. I woke. I laughed. I woke with laughter. Rare. Freeing. Sublime.