An Open Letter to My Readers

Dear Gentle Readers,

Some of you (my family members included) have expressed concerns regarding my musings in this space.  Some of you have warned against writing anything too salacious or incendiary in such a public forum.  Others have intimated that I might be committing professional suicide (one reader stated if anyone from my church job got wind of this, I would be fired, which sounded kind of like a threat?  I don't know...).  An ex-boyfriend has expressed his objections at my putting personal information on the Internet (hate to break it to you, dearie, but the Internet was rife with personal information long before I started this venture...Also?  The only personal information I've put forth has been my own.).

All this to say:  I hear you.  And I appreciate your concern for my well-being, both professional and personal (assuming that it is, in fact, concern for me that prompted these warnings?).

However.

I promised myself a year ago after I was released from the hospital that no more would I be someone who falters in doing what I need to do to take care of me.  This includes being raucously outspoken in an absurdly public forum.  For 25 years I censored myself because I was worried about others' opinions of me, and I allowed other people to dictate my ideas of my own self-worth and happiness.  Writing this blog makes me happy--happier than I've been in a long damn time--irreverence, crassness, and liberal use of the word "fuck" included.  I'm sorry if any of this has offended you; it was not my intent.  Please believe me when I say my intent was, and is, to get all of the gobbledygook that swirls around my brain out, where I can walk around it and look at it and analyze it and not have it clanging around my brain anymore.  A virtual Pensieve, if you will.  When I started this I said I couldn't promise continuity or profundity--all I could promise was honesty.  And that's what you've gotten.

If it offends you, don't read it.  Or, read it and curse my name and console yourself with the thought of my getting my comeuppance.  Whichever.  Just know that this blog, this space, these words?  Are not about you.  And from here on out, I make no apologies for it.  What you read here is me, in my truest form--raw, unfinished, imperfect, and the best that I have to give right now.  Take it.  Or leave it.

--E.