coming clean

In an attempt to ensure anonymity of my blog, I've mixed up some details sometimes. Most particularly, I refer to "kids" instead of "kid," and "work" instead of "school." The truth: I have only one kid. And I'm a full-time grad student, with a part time job. There. I said it.

I say this now because lately (as in, my most recent therapist session, which I haven't written about), all my split identities have been bothering me. I have my superficial family blog, and not once have I mentioned my split with the church. I have my fta blog, where I am honest about church stuff, but leave out personal stuff like the fact that I'm a student, and what specifically I'm studying and the subjects I'm interested in. There's stuff I still haven't talked about anywhere. There's no place where I'm totally me. As the therapist pointed out, I've very concerned about the boundaries of public and private, what can be said and what can't, what parts of me to hide and what to lay open for all to see. While my fta blog can get raw, honest, show my confusion, seemingly the deepest me, it is still contrived. I choose what to say and how to say it, and when.

I've been mulling this over in my head since Friday, drafting a post of "coming clean" about some of the details. I'd thought about revealing more, and revealing less. On Saturday I heard a segment on NPR about the public-ness of the internet. Children who have grown up with the internet have a totally different sense of privacy that older people do; to them, it's not a big deal to have pictures of yourself drunk and doing something stupid on the net. Also, once something is on the net, it's always there. You give up control of it. Anyone can see it, copy it, send it, modify it.

While I've felt a comforting sense of community in Outer Blogness, it also occurs to me that devout Mormons would think my blog is disgusting trash. This was pointed out to me by Arizona Awakening's fight with his wife when she discovered him reading my blog. I can't even imagine the devastation my family would feel if they connected the blog to me. Some part of me wants them to find it--to discover the real me. But even then, is it the real me? No. It's just the part of me that still wants to talk about how Mormonism affects my life every day. But some part of me feels there is no need for them to find that part of me. Why should they? It's private; why shouldn't I have parts of me that are private from them, separate from them?

I feel in some ways like I'm still a teenager, negotiating and pushing boundaries of identity, privacy, and self. As if I never really was a teenager, developmentally. As if this secret blog is something of my rebellion. I also realize I can hardly make up my mind about things. There's always "some part of me thinks this, but on the other hand..." I don't know why I do this. I think perhaps it's from a desire to present myself as objective, as having thought about multiple points of view. Like I'm a textbook, reporting all the information from various sources, rather than a scholarly book, making a point.

So what's my point? My identity is in flux. And I want to be more honest about it.