Behind the Blog - Are People Really Living Up to What They Post in Their Online Journal?

Many people need a place to put down all those deep dark thoughts that they would never say out in public for fear of someone in a large white coat knocking at their door. Many of the rest publish a blog, or online journal, to validate their way of life and have a record of how they saw their daily activities. There are a select few though that publish a journal just to be showy and gloss over things to make themselves feel better, or sway people to thinking that they are really in more control than they really are. This article is my experience with a person of the latter.

I have been the owner of a journal for several years, and I have done my journal in a very uncensored manor. Listing the names of my offspring, the fights with my significant other, the scary moments when I thought I was going to lose my newborn. It was my life and I thought it was very freeing to write it all down and get over the bad moments and share the good ones with friends. I have some very close friends due to my online journal and had not censored any of my cursing, nor hid any of my proud mommy moments and they loved me, and still do, for the truth in my writing, the truth that is me. I would came to know someone that used to write in her little journals and keep a record of her thoughts and activities but became so overcome with the thought that someone might find it one day that she claims she got rid of them all.

She felt that she was living in a glass house because she adopted from foster care and from overseas. Her small family of 2 children and 2 adults came to be that of 11 children, soon to be 12 and she got enough critizing and staring when she went anywhere in public. Or so she said. She did articles for the newspapers, and spoke at homeschool functions, volunteered to have parents over to speak about adoption. Always telling them about how much she does and how she has to do it all. Not wanting her adopted children to feel like slaves and make sure that they bond with her and think of her as their mother. What an idealic picture she paints in her perfect house. But at what cost?

This woman would call me when her husband worked because she did not like to be alone at night. She feels empty even in a house full of children. So she would have me blather on and on about my crazy past, or my ideas on the future, or why I didn't wear makeup. I even told her that I didn't mind that she would pop off the phone with me if someone more interesting called her. I am used to not talking on the phone and rather like the computer better, but as a friend, I gave her what she wanted. A sense of someone being there with her. Don't get me wrong, she would tell me things. These things lead me to believe that she needed a place to vent. A place to get it all out. Her frustration with some of the people with their reasoning of wanting to adopt. Her perfectionist drive that she attributes to her mother. Her overwhelming moments with her children as she strives to be picture perfect all the time.

I told her how to set up her own online journal, and thought that her troubles would once away melt away because there is this anonymous *way* of the internet and you can select if anyone can read the entries, or if it is only for you. There are no hard copies for anyone to get and no paper trail. Whatever haunted her could be written down and she could let it all go. This was the start of the end of our friendship. I guess I should really say that it was when I realized that we never really had a friendship to start with and I shouldn't have worn those rosy glasses when I saw her and her family.

When this particular person said, it's alright, that's your family's way, she did not really mean it. She said she valued me for who I am. Never fake and ever changing. Until she got this new journal. I knew that she had friends that would not associate with me because I am not a "Christian" and they believe it is not right to think of me in their cohort group. I understood that people have their set ideas about other and that she didn't feel the same way about me. I knew because she told me. She said that she liked me for who I was. This was my downfall. My belief in her words.

She started this online journal and it seemed as fake as what she sends out to all the other people when we are out on trips together. She would ask me questions, and then even reply that she felt the same way as I did, but only in my journal. If I even mentioned that I knew her in her own journal she would delete the comments. It seems that her church group belonged to this journal site and I was not good enough to be her friend. One day she completely deleted me off of the site and blocked me simply because I mentioned her children's names. All of which are on the site with their pictures and adoption stories and other things that can be painted to be prettier than they really were. She finally contacted me and crushed me. What I was hoping was a silly computer error was her breaking my heart. Because of my own very emotional past I am very select on who gets to be my friend and not just an acquaintance. Being human I made an error in judgment and chose her.

She informed me that she has anguished for weeks because she is a very private person and is very select with her words where as I am not. I tell it like it is. Often time I will report the things that went on and not put any emotion to it and let the reader decide what they thought. This was very troubling to her. She read my writing as negative and feared that her church group would see I was her friend and also read the supposed negative posts and that would all reflect on her. It doesn't bother me that she is so conceited to think that my journal was all about her. Nor does it bother me that she felt that she was going to be looked upon badly for being my friend.

What did crush me was that she anguished over saying something to me about it all. The same person that would openly tell me that if I came over there would be certain friends that would walk out of the house simply because I was there. I did not convey to her that I was her friend and that she could talk to me. I had somehow in the long run, let myself down. She had thought about it and not said anything for so long that by the time that she did address the situation she was so abrupt about it my head was spinning. I did not live up to what my idea of a friend should be. I did not help her see that I would not judge her for being open and honest with me about her feelings. When she finally called to tell me all this, it was the worse possible time. I had already had a fight with my mother on the phone and needed someone to cheer me up. I needed a friend that would tell me that they loved me for me. Instead I got a phone call that told me I was not a good friend. She felt that she had to be guarded around me, because I do share my life openly. I did not get across to her that I didn't share others lives though. When I told her that I would not tell her darkest secrets they would really remain hidden away as they are her story to some day write down.

So now I anguish, over what I could have done. I anguish over how open I should be with friends. I anguish at seeing her at our next event as our children attend functions together from time to time. I did say that I was sorry I was not a good enough friend to her. And I really mean it. Some how I have managed to let her down, and in doing so, I let myself down. In hind sight though I am sure that she sees my words as hateful. I am sure that she may see them as I was not her good friend as opposed to me being a friend to her. Which in the end makes me evaluate and wonder...do we ever really know the person behind the blog if we don't know them in real life?