Teary blogging is probably not the best idea....

A couple of darts were thrown around in the comments section of my blog today that mostly made me laugh, but one in particular knocked the wind out of me.

I'm not one to hold my tongue much, so I want to just put a concern out here in blog world. My entire life, I was told that I had to be positive and happy all the time or something was terribly wrong with me. I was always made to feel that I had to be perfect and brush everything imperfect under the rug instead of talking about it. Over time, I took it upon myself to make sure I was everything to everyone and did everything and did it perfectly and would lie awake at night and fret about all the things I did that could have possibly been negative and made people uncomfortable. Was I thinking about what made me uncomfortable? Not really. I was too busy with my superwoman stuff.

Anyway, after feeling like it wasn't okay for me to have a bad day, or be angry, or for me to be sad, or to be bored, or to be sick or to need rest for, oh say, nearly the first twenty-three years of my life, I went through some seriously hard times a few years ago. I left town. I just bailed. I had to. I think I was just burned out and bottled up and couldn't breathe. Anyway, the particulars of where I went and what I did once I got there are immaterial, but I left for a while and totally flipped and everything I had bottled up my entire life came out.

(Insert time in spent in therapy)

So, it's okay with me if I have a bad day, or if one of you has a bad day and I don't judge you for it. I'm going to allow you to have your bad day or your bad moment. I think it is valueable to think positively and I do even in my worst moments, but I have been off the radar here on this blog for a while because, okay, well, mostly because I've been totally busy, but also because I have been worried that sometimes I feel that (I'm taking responsibility for my part) we tend to not allow each other the room for imperfection.

Really, I'm not leaving, nor wanting to leave. I love this blog! Nor do I want to offend anyone. I'm not directing this to anyone in particular, because we are feeding on each other, I feel, and it's reaching an uncomfortable place for me because I am starting to feel that familiar tug of perfectionism when I write here. And, more than a few times, I post something and feel shortly thereafter that what I wrote wasn't okay-enough or positive enough. And, a couple of times, I have to admit, I read comments on my post and wanted to cry. Not because they were mean-spirited, because they never are, but because reading them made me feel like what I was putting out there wasn't valid or positive-enough. And, everyon want/needs to feel good enough.

I will admit that I have really unsteady legs about this, because this sort of honesty is still only a handful of years of familiar to me. So, I take full responsibility for being hyper-sensitive. I guess I am just putting it out here to let the rest of you know where I am and to be communicative about it. I don't want to hurt anyone, that's surely not my aim, I just wanted to talk about this.

But, again, I don't want to NOT be part of this, I am simply sharing how I feel and where my head is so we can have open dialogue about it, okay?

I love all of you for who you are as individuals and I compare you to no one and I am not angry with anyone. I am just speaking up in order to take care of myself the best way I know how to.....