I was at my mother's house the other day visiting and she approached me and that secretive way like she either wants to gossip or ask me a question she feels guilty about asking. She wondered if I am taking Lexapro. I am, and have been, and if you read this journal at all, you know perfectly well why, and most of you are complete strangers. I didn't tell her because I didn't want her to know - she thinks that as soon as someone else is suffering any kind of affliction, she can immediately commiserate and then proceed to one-upping you in the suffering department. Misery loves company, but it hates competition.
I told her I was, and then she fessed up that she'd been wanting to ask me for a while because Dad saw the pills when he was at my house a few months ago. A few months ago? It's not like I'm shooting heroin or an alcoholic who's back on the sauce; she asked why I was taking them and I told her: "they're for my rage." How could she possibly have not noticed how my life has been going this year? I'll tell you how: she doesn't pay any attention to how I'm feeling or why and probably never really has. That's not even a spiteful statement. My mother and I have just never been close that way; she has never been my confidante and while I love her, like spending time with her, and as an adult can have great conversation with her, I don't honestly feel like she's ever been my true ally. Never been my cheerleader. What else is there to say about that? I do wonder, with some level of amusement, what my parents have been saying to one another about me since they "discovered" my prescription - which is, incidentally, sitting in plain sight on my kitchen counter.
Which brings me round to my next thought. I read the NYT supplement this weekend (or maybe from the weekend before) and in it was an article by a young woman about blogging and the dangers of sharing your private thoughts with the world. Said article was strongly recommended by the mother of a friend who darkly intimated that I should read this before I blog any further. The article was pretty good, but I have to say that the woman who suffered so greatly for airing her dirty laundry did so on a national level; she chose to speak publicly, go on TV, and to have a pseudo-celebrity life on the internet. Since I think about 15 people read this blog, I suspect I'm quite safe. Not to mention the fact that one should never write down what one does not want someone else to read. Generally. Sure, there are things on this blog I'd rather some people didn't see, but it's honest I think, and if anyone goes to the trouble to find this shite, read it, and then process it at any level of importance, more power to that diligent individual.
I love the reactionary behaviors that articles such as these bring about. Now everyone - and by everyone I mean the general uninformed masses - will be frightened of blogging. They will pester their children about their blogging practices. I'm sure child-molesting predators are leaving blog comments on your children's blogs as we speak. It's like the whole thing with MySpace and cyber-stalking of young teenage girls; it happened a few times but isn't the norm, and frankly I wonder about how tuned in some of these parents are for this to be able to happen in the first place. Are there parents out there who don't monitor what their kids are doing online? Or looking at their text messages and phone calls? Emails? My daughter's only pathway to any of those things is that I have access to her passwords and if the history is cleared when I check it, her privileges are suspended. It's not that I'm prying or butting into her life, but making sure she is as safe as I can. I don't read her personal stuff unless I see a name I don't know, and even then I only scan to make sure it's legit. It only seems smart to me to do so. As a parent, I reserve the right to invade my daughter's privacy whenever the hell I feel like it; when she's an adult and out of the house, she can have it back and do with it what she will. I've told her she had better always be where she says she is and with whom she says she is, because I might decide to check up on her at any moment. I have only one child, and all the time in the freakin' world.
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