Not Quite Anonymous

When I began writing this blog at the beginning of 2008, nobody knew who I was. No-one who read the blog, that is, had any idea of my identity. There was something so liberating about that. I was able to just be myself and say whatever I was thinking or feeling at the time. I think that allowed me to see myself from the outside, almost as if what I wrote was an explanation to myself about who I really was. Perhaps I thought that I really needed to know.

I think that, back then, I had resigned myself to the fact that I was not just a product of the experiences I recounted but that I was destined never to be more than the loser described therein. And I don't think I saw that at the time. I think that I believed that what I was doing at the time was cathartic when it was probably in some ways the exact opposite: it was me framing myself as the person I didn't want to be. And perhaps trapping myself inside that frame in the process.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. Am I wondering whether I know myself better now than I did two years ago? I'd like to think that is beyond doubt. Lots has changed during that time. I feel like in some ways I can read what had once been so painful to write with a sense of detachment. Some of what I had written was, back when I first wrote it, difficult for me to reread, let along imagine someone who knew me reading it. I didn't want the pity or the patronising that would, I felt, inevitably follow should I share the musings of my anonymous self with a real friend. I think that I felt like if I ever lost that anonymity it would take away the one outlet I had, that one place where I could truly express myself without fear of judgment.

That anonymity is no more. A little while ago I shared my identity with someone I know in the real world. That person became the one and only person to know that I have a blog and be allowed to read what I had written. Whereas once I found comfort in the fact that no-one knew who I was, now I find it equally -- or perhaps more -- comforting that someone does know. Surely, though, I can no longer expose my thoughts and feelings like I once did? Or so I would have thought. It's strange because, back then, I imagined if anyone found out who I was I would self-censor and lose the freedom that anonymity had afforded me. But that's not how I feel. I don't want to do that at all. I'm not really sure what to make of that. But it feels like a good thing.