Uncensored at last

I created my first blog in the hopes of expressing to those who knew me, my everyday life experiences and thoughts. I did try as much as possible to keep people anonymous if I wrote down any reflections on them. However, it looks like I was unsuccessful since my other friends had their own blogs where they were not anonymous. Also, if one person is writing about some similar experience to another's, they are most likely to be the same experience from different viewpoints. In short, people got offended and hurt by my reflections.

Why pray tell did they get hurt? Because in my reflections I was writing in stream of consciousness mode and some of my opinions are not in agreement with my friends. To be more exact, I said that I was frustrated at some of the choices they have made in their lives, with some of them being risk takers or being risk adverse. They took it pretty badly and thus it was two months before one of them had the courage to tell me through chat that they were hurt and offended at what I had written. Worst of all, I had written something that people could view all over the world.

I in turn was suitably irritated myself. I write for myself and not for anyone else. I did my best to make sure that I did not offend anyone and due to the conservatism of my friends, I still did. I guess my boyfriend was right in saying that "you can't please everyone." I mean, what would be offensive to them would not neccessarily be offensive to me. Most of all, I think that differences in opinion among friends should be respected. Not become a cause of war.

I thought I had friends among whom I had mutual respect. We have taken different paths in life and made different choices. Some of their choices I would not have taken, and I think they would not have made the choices I made either. But at the very least I expected that I be allowed to have a different opinion. Not that I would have to be censored. This is my second blog because I had to edit my first one! I did it out of consideration of the "privacy" of my friends. Maybe some of things I wrote were hurtful. But I had never considered myself as "plastic", I always wanted to be truthful.

If I'm your friend I expect dissent at times because we are not identical. However, I also expect that if you disagree with me, you will still support me because I'm your friend. That is what I do for my friends. I guess for some people it is not good enough. Maybe they follow the saying that "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I guess that saying works for people you've just met, not people you've known for years!

I apologized to them. I edited out the "offensive" material. Have I received a response that I am "forgiven?" No, I was reprimanded by my friend who claims "my mother told me not to do my laundry in public." It's a good saying but it doesn't fit the situation. I did not air a dirty cat fight nor spread rumors. I simply wrote down my thoughts on choices and decisions made by unnamed people. I think they said they were afraid that what I wrote might instigate rumors about them. Without their names even being mentioned in the blog!

I myself have been victim before of nasty rumors. It made me cry. But I also had this resolve inside me that if people believed those rumors without getting to know me, it was their loss. I know that I am not like that. My good friends know that I am not like that. So what I see here is a sad sense of privacy and self. If you want total privacy, don't go out of your house or your room. Stay in a little box the rest of your life or heaven forbid someone sees you or talks about you. And if you can't put your chin up amidst distasteful talk, go back to that little box and stay there.