A Room of One's Own

I'm still here. I'm still breathing. I'm still really, really behind in writing my book. Therefore I'm still not going to be updating that often for the next couple of weeks. But, as long as I'm here...

I had lunch the other day with the incredible Tamar of postscript fame (she's linked over there in my blogroll), and at some point or another in between telling her how to run her life ("You need to put your essays into a book! That's your next project after you finish your novel." "No, no, you shouldn't read a book about book proposals; *I'll* tell you how to write your book proposal!" "You really should move to TownWhereILive; come up one day and I'll show you around and find you a house and a real estate agent and, and, and..."--gee, TC, obnoxiously overbearing much?) I mentioned that Baroy doesn't know about my blog. More specifically, I haven't told Baroy about my blog. And it wasn't until I saw the look on Tamar's face that I realized that actually IS a little odd.

First I need to say that I love Baroy. I really do. He's good people. I have my gripes, of course, but who doesn't? Overall, he does his best, he loves me and the kids to pieces, he's interesting to talk to, and we laugh a lot together. We've had our ups and down, mostly financial, but nothing earth-shattering.

So the reason I haven't told him about my blog isn't because I need it to vent about him. I can do that elsewhere. (Though I will say, to be honest, that there are people whose blogs I read where their spouses do read, and it seems as if sometimes they use the blogs as a way to say things to their spouses that they can't otherwise say. And that makes me uncomfortable. So I guess that's maybe way in the back of my mind as one of the possible pluses of not telling Baroy. But it's not THE reason.)

So what *is* the reason? You know, I'm not really sure. I sort of stumbled my way through my reasoning sitting there with Tamar, and I think what it is is this: The whole stalking thing has had this huge, enormous impact on me and my life. But the truth of the matter is, I'm not the one being stalked. Baroy is. And I think that in some ways it really bothers him that I've made it all about me--well, actually, all about the kids, but the freak out and the doctors' visits and the tranquilizers and the antidepressants were all for me. And poor Baroy can't process this himself, because I'm all needy and upset and unwilling to talk about it, and freaking out everytime he brings it up. And I don't like to bring it up to him, because he get all 'male' about it, and assumes that if I'm upset, I want him to DO something about the problem, when all I really want to do is say, "oh, woe is me, I went a little crazy, and my life will never be the same, and I'm feeling sorry for myself, and you're the only one who might understand." So I guess that's part of the reason I made this little place for myself: because I really can't talk to him about this. But I can here, as much or as little or as fully or as cryptically as I want to. And I don't have to worry about his reaction, or what he might do, or how he might feel, or what I might be stirring up for him.

And, yeah, it means that I CAN vent about him if I want to. But mostly, it's so that I can talk about the stuff that I don't want to talk about to him right now. And maybe it's also a teensy bit about not always having to tell the absolute truth about everything, being allowed to tweak a story to make it a little bit better without someone chiming in to say, "Hey, that's not quite what happened there, you know..." Yeah, maybe there's some of that, too. But only some. Really. Trust me.