Privacy

There seems to be rather a fine line between keeping one's private life private, and leading a secret double life.

You start off just not telling people that you're trying to start a family. Nobody's business, after all, but your own. And then when you get pregnant, you keep it to yourself as much as possible, because it's early days yet. You miscarry, and congratulate yourself on everyone you didn't tell-- even though now there's this kind of emotional barrier between you and the un-told: they don't know what's going on with you because you couldn't tell them. You try again, succeed and fail again in rapid succession. More people know this time, because the pregnancy hit harder and lasted longer-- you were starting to come out of the closet, so to speak. But there's still a large contingency that knows nothing about the trying, the pregnancies, and miscarriages. Combine this with the fact that you started trying to get pregnant at the same time that you moved across country, meeting an entirely new group of friends and acquaintances; people to chat with, hang out with, but not necessarily share the more intimate details of life with.

And suddenly it's difficult to chat and hang out, (even more than before, when you didn't explain why suddenly you can't stay up past ten in the evening) because you realize: it's a double life. Someone asks "What's up, how are you?" and your answer is a complete fabrication-- fine, not much new, same ol' same ol'. But you're thinking: the whole time we've been friends, for almost a year now, I've been struggling. I've gotten pregnant twice; spent maybe four months total immobilized on the sofa, having traded nights playing darts for hugging the commode. Went through two miscarriages. I'm trying to deal with the changes and problems that these new stressors add to a relationship-- the guilt, the blame, the worry. And you don't know a thing about any of it, which is nobody's fault but my own. I'm scared and depressed and tired, and I can't talk to you about it without starting from the beginning and changing the nature of our friendship.

And it's my own fault. For being so circumspect right from the start, for keeping new friendships light and airy, based on television-darts-hamburgers-beer-the Red Sox and not on life. Should I have been more open? It is against my nature for the most part. It wouldn't seem so for someone who keeps an Internet journal like this, right? But this writing is a substitution, something that balances the private, quiet, almost closed-off character that I tend to be in person. But where is the line drawn? How do you know which people are which-- which ones that could be close real friends that talk about the future, the past, joy and heartbreak, and which will back away uncomfortably, wishing that the subject of conversation was still last night's game of darts? I have always waited for the other person to make that call and then responded in kind, but now I realize that this is lazy and ungenerous.

And it leaves me with a fake smile on my face, casual lies flowing from my mouth, and a blog as the main place to sort out the truth.