Author: Veronica

So!

Since MONA FOMA, I’ve been relatively busy with various things, the Australian Blogging Conference is the main one, but there is other stuff going on.

I’ve been trying to keep the resume part of Sleepless Nights updated, but I’m not sure how much I’ve remembered to share here (as opposed to twitter and facebook).

Last Friday, I spoke again to Ryk Goddard on the morning show (ABC Radio) about parenting and whether or not we’re still fulfilled by it. I’m still waiting for a copy of the MP3 to show up, but once it does I’ll upload it and people can listen if they want. Mum came in with me and for live radio, I think we did okay. I was definitely less nervous this time!

Earlier this week I got to answer some questions from Bec Fitzgibbon about family on social media and how I feel about my mother using facebook and twitter (hint: I talked her into this whole thing) and the article was published in the newspaper today. You can see an online version here. Quite pleased to be in an article alongside actors nominated for Oscars as well.

Hello to anyone coming over from The Mercury too, if you’re interested, have a poke around. My “Best Of” can be found here and you can read more about me here.

This isn’t a reflection on anyone else, and what they choose to do with their blog. This is my story and why I don’t – can’t – blog raw.

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People who have been reading here for a long time might have noticed that my writing changed around 2 years ago. From writing posts in an hour and publishing immediately, I started waiting to detail events, writing things out weeks later, or not at all. A window closed and while I railed against it in the beginning, now it just feels like normality.

My grandmother died. I can’t say those words out loud to anyone, normally, but I can write them, sometimes. My grandmother died and that changed how I live my life and how I blog about it.

The consensus, from some people appears to be that she was just my grandmother and that it ought to not affect me that much. After all, surely it can’t have been that bad?

Leaving aside pain Olympics and discussions of who had it worse because of who they lost and what their relationship was with that person, losing my grandmother changed everything.

Nan spent 12 months dying, slowly. Watching someone die slowly in stages is about as heartbreaking as it sounds. Watching them go from dying but still living, to dying and not caring, in under a fortnight, well, you learn to live in the cusp of an indrawn breath, taking each moment as it comes.

I made my grandmother cry, in the last few months, by writing about what was happening to her. But it wasn’t me, exactly that made her cry, it was you guys. The commenters – the people who can only respond to my words and not the situation. You were the ones who upset her, watching her death in your comments was more than she could handle at that point.

That was my first lesson in blogging raw and why I shouldn’t do it here. I moderated my tone and closed comments occasionally. After all, what was my pain when compared with hers? She knew she was going to die and leave us to deal with that. That can’t be easy on a person.

My second lesson in blogging raw came shortly after her death, when I still couldn’t breathe for the pain in my chest. An ill timed rant about Mum and I four days after her funeral, from a family member, left me throwing up all night with stress and grief. No one wants to read vitriol about themselves, especially when coming from someone who is also grieving and grieving hard. Again, the response was not necessarily to do with what I wrote, but what commenters took away from my post and said themselves. Having a total stranger tell someone that ‘they can go fuck themselves’ is not well received by anyone.

Months later, there was an apology, but in those months, I learned to be careful what I wrote about. Not blogging raw left me with less of my life being shared. I was incredibly aware of what I was sharing, who was reading it and how it would be taken. What was started by my grandmother’s pain, was finished by a family members anger.

And I know that you’ll say that this is my space and that I can say what I want and write what I want and others don’t have to read it, but reality doesn’t work like that. Telling other family not to read something that was upsetting them here was akin to not poking at a sore tooth. You know it’s going to hurt, but you can’t keep your tongue away from it.

I’ve been blogging for a long time. I have learned that sometimes the repercussions to the written word is swift and totally unexpected. I have learned what I can and cannot deal with in this space.

I don’t blog raw anymore. Raw is dangerous, for me, because I never know who is reading. The thing is, what I say here and how it is taken by someone who may have a problem with me, they are two different things. Some people can’t understand why we’d share our feelings here, and they can’t understand that it is only a slice of our reality that we’re sharing.

Life is ugly. My life is ugly sometimes, in ways that I don’t talk about anymore. Ways that I can’t talk about anymore.

Too many people read and I have to ask myself, is the fallout worth it?

For me, I decided that it wasn’t.

Some things, they take 2 years to work out of my system and allow me to write about them. Some things may never come out. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Who knows, maybe you’ll hear about that in another 2 years.