spying on my secret self

I thought it would be easy to write for this blog. After all, writing has quickly become a large part of who I am and what I do. I planned to focus on one post in particular. A trivial post, nobody’s favorite. I knew, though, when I published it, that it would hurt at least two people’s feelings. Without much thought, I published it anyway.

I wasn’t wrong. Their emailed responses were short and to the point. But I didn’t apologize. I felt rebellious and arrogant. “I have to be free to write anything,” I thought. “I can’t censor myself.” Still, around the edges of my rebellion, I felt guilty.

It was then that I was tempted to throw in the towel. I considered taking down my blog, changing my name, and starting fresh. I know every blogger goes through this once in a while, for various reasons: Paroxysms of doubt about a carefully constructed image. Completion of a cycle. Or unwanted discovery. My mini-crisis was composed of a little bit of all three.

There are two mirrors in my bathroom. One can be adjusted to reflect the other at such an angle that I can see my face forwards and backwards, right-side left and right-side right, over and over again into infinity. My public face and my private face are both reflected. In one iteration I’m looking away, in the next, gazing straight out. Looking at this phenomenon is like spying on my secret self. I smile. I make a face. I move the mirror away. It’s not a view I enjoy.

One of my rejected six-word memoirs was this: Tried to overcome Scorpio nature: Failed. What I’ve learned is not to overcome my secretiveness, but to hide it, too, with a show of straightforward frankness. I have a habit of adding layers at the same time as I peel them away. I adopted the blogging paradigm of compartmentalization so easily, I didn’t even notice I’d done it.

I want to convey the truth, but not any particular truth. I want the words I write to form truth on the page. I want to perform a magic trick, appearing to reveal everything, while keeping myself entirely hidden. In fact, I learn the truth as I write it, and it’s nothing new. My secret self and my surface self look much the same, though I’d rather not admit it. Sometimes the view is less than flattering.