As most of you know, a post of mine was Freshly Pressed yesterday. It was an answer to a Weekly Writing Challenge.

This is the third time that FOG has been Freshly Pressed. The other two posts were impersonal answers to daily prompts. I’d like to tell you that this honor means a great deal to me, and it has in the past, but this time, it’s a little different.

The post that was pushed all over the internet is a little personal. In just 333 words, a lot of them duplicates, I laid out most of my past. I mention child sexual abuse, domestic violence, an abusive family, substance abuse, depression, prostitution and homelessness. It is all of the crappy things that have happened to me in handy, numbered list.

I don’t often think about the fact that once I hit publish, people will read my words. I mean, I write with a few of you in mind, but I don’t think about the world at large. I don’t consider the fact that something so personal might very well get hundreds of hits in one day. If I did, I might not write.

This blog started off as a place to write down crap that was floating in my head. When I started it, I didn’t go into too much detail about my past, but for whatever reason, a lot of it has been floating to the surface lately.

I’m in pain. I hurt. I have so much hate and anger that I feel like I will explode, and I haven’t a clue where to put it, so I keep writing it down here. I know a lot of these posts aren’t easy to read and I thank you for doing just that, but I write them not for you, not even for me necessarily, but so that I have someplace to put it outside of myself. FOG is a form of therapy. I can’t afford a real therapist anymore because the US health care industry sucks big donkey balls. Poor donkey.

When I read the email saying that I had been Freshly Pressed, my first thought was YAY! And then I saw the link for the post that was to get the honor and I cringed. That post is super personal and I wasn’t thrilled with a bunch of strangers traipsing through my yard, taking a peek in the fishbowl and moving on. I wasn’t thrilled because it was one more way that my abusers, that I’ve been in hiding from for decades, could find me.

How many people were abused at 7 years old, became homeless prostitute drug addicts, were hit on the head with a stage light in their early twenties, and fell in with a domestically violent relationship for 8 years? I haven’t done the research, but I would image the number isn’t much greater than one.

If you know the facts of my life, which are pretty much all available on this blog, it’s easy to put two and two together. If you were, say, Monster #2, the domestic abuser, and you stumbled on this blog, you might say to yourself, hey, this is all a little familiar. Then, because you have zero sense of remorse or common decency, you would attempt to contact me, like you’ve done every other time you’ve found me, and ruin everything.

The only way I can write is anonymously. If the monsters I am hiding from know who I am, I can’t write about this stuff anymore. I would have to close down this blog and that would be a goddamn shame.

So, yeah, when I saw that a post that gives a few too many details was to be promoted, I cringed. I cringed because it was one more way for the monsters to find me. I cringed because it was literally putting a laundry list of shitty things that have happened to me on the front page of WordPress. I cringed every time I saw a new comment, wondering if this was the end of the safe harbor I have built for myself with all of the people who read this stuff who I consider friends.

I don’t want to live in hiding anymore, and I’m working on that, but I sure as shit don’t want my secrets given away before I am ready to face it myself. I am not ready. I am still only getting ready to take the first steps.

Thank you to WordPress for thinking that my post was worthy of promoting. Thank you to those of you who read it and commented. Thank you for being my friends. Keep your fingers crossed that the monsters stay away. I don’t want to lose the fishbowl.