A Real Show

Has my moment passed? I wonder if I am still relevant with this blog. Certainly with respect to reporting progress, or rather regress, with respect to ALS, this blog is useful. I've begun to wonder lately, however, if I am out of things to say, finished with what I want. I have noticed, even within myself, a certain unwillingness to tackle some subjects, a self-filtering thanks to an awareness of who reads.

There are things I want so say, some of them truly personal, some of them perhaps hurtful to others. I don't say them; I feel them and keep them to myself. I suppose it's just good policy, good etiquette, kindness to those around me. Yet I have anger and pain within me which, unfortunately, I carry alone, or at least almost alone. I have some true confidantes, people to whom I can express the deepest of my feelings without worry or fear. I just cannot write them down for public consumption.

It has been suggested to me be one of those confidantes that I start a private journal, a diary, wherein I could write my darker thoughts. It is easy to share the good stuff; it's the bad stuff, the really bad stuff, which I avoid sharing. These thoughts, these pieces of pain and anger, would go in my private journal, written just for me to release, in a kind of catharsis. I am certain that more than one of these very private entries would simply be pages and pages of swear words; expletives galore.

The problem is that someone would read these thoughts eventually. The simple truth is that if you don't want it public, don't write it down. If you want it truly secret, keep it to yourself, never sharing or expressing those thoughts and feelings. You can have them, you can feel them. Just keep it to yourself.

Unfortunately, even with my truly public thoughts, there is a lot more going on that I don't talk about. As my disease progresses, these thoughts come more often. Yet instead of sharing them, I talk about transfer boards, slings, wheelchairs, bodily functions, all of the surface stuff which is mostly inoffensive. Sometimes I slip, crossing that boundary. Sometimes I say stuff I shouldn't. Now image if I wrote down everything I feel. That would be a real show.