well, well, well...

Look who disappeared from blogging for two weeks and then has the nerve to come crawling back... (Oh wait, that's me.)

Hi guys!

Life has been, uh, interesting, for the past couple weeks and I honestly didn't get many chances to post much...nor did I really want to. You see, on top of all the other crazy stuff that is going on in my life, which includes but is not limited to financial problems, family health emergencies, friendships exploding in my face, errands and duties to do now that I've been tapped to be in a friend's wedding as a bridesmaid (where I get to walk down the aisle with my ex, no, I'm not kidding) and a client's crisis landing in my lap to deal with (yes, all of this happened in the last two weeks... I can take one day at a time but when they all attack at once I get my ass kicked) I got...The Phone Call.

Now, mind you, I'm getting about four to five hours of good sleep these days. When my life is spontaneously combusting, my mind does not shut off and rest and relax for a good 8 hours at night. No. It runs over possibilities and anxieties and worries again and again and again, like a damn marathon runner in my brain. My skin gets a little thinner, my temper a little shorter, and suddenly I find myself crying during Dr. Who re-runs or having a freak out attack because Trader Joe's is out of my favorite ice cream sandwich. I need that ice cream sandwich to cope with life, dammit.

So my mother called me early last Thursday morning while I was still in bed, and the conversation went something like this:

Phone rings. I pick it up.

Me: Mrghghgsmmmhello?

Mom: Tracy. How are you?

Me: Mrghghmmmokay?

Mom: Is there something going on? Something you'd like to tell me?

Me: ::blinks:: What?

Mom: Is there something that you haven't told me yet?

Me: Uh.... I'm getting a tattoo?

Mom: About you and Benni?

Me: (briefly wonders in my sleep-deprived state if I'm pregnant and my mom somehow found about it before I did. Dismisses the idea, moves on.) Um...

Mom: Are you and Benni engaged?

Me: What?! No. No, we are not engaged. (turns over to a sleeping Benni in bed beside me and fights the urge to whisper, did we get engaged last night and I completely forget? How many root beers did I have last night?)

Mom: Oh. You're not engaged.

Me: NO! No, we're not. Where did you get that idea?

Mom: We-ll....

So it turns out that someone who reads this blog (and yes, I know who it is, and no, I'm not naming them here) read my last post, the following sentence in my last post, to be precise:

"So blogging is going to be light this week because I'm up to my eyeballs in work AND I'm in the final days of getting ready to throw my friends an engagement party this weekend ( I promise I'll take pictures - the theme is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!)"

and decided it meant that Benni and I were engaged. And then decided to call my immediate family and tell them that I was engaged. Which immediately set my brothers and mother off as they were sure (and rightly so) that if I ever DO get engaged they will not find out from someone else who read my blog that one time.

Isn't life cute?

So my life officially went to Defcon 1 at that point, and I sort of walked away from the blog for a little bit. Because if you think you love firing up your computer and sitting down to write another blog post because the coolest, funniest, most awesome thing just happened to you... try sitting in front of a blank screen, feeling like whatever you write will be used against you to f*&k with your personal life. It's considerably less thrilling.

Now, here's the thing: I have a public blog. I'm fully aware that I have a public blog, that I do not use a pseudonym, that I post pictures of myself and use the real names of my friends, family and loved ones. This comes with consequences... it always does. I don't moderate comments, anyone can find this blog if they Google search me or go through my website...and for the most part, this has worked out totally fine. My reasoning is, if I blog like an adult and treat my followers and commentators like adults, the drama will be at a minimum. And although I'm sure there will come a day when that reasoning blows up in my face, today is not that day.

So if 99.8 percent of the time I get nothing but coolness from everyone, and .2 % of the time things go a little haywire, I'm fine with that. It was just the most excellent display of I Really Don't Need This Right Now that I've seen in awhile.

And please, please, from a (mostly) adult blogger to her (mostly) adult followers and commentators: don't take the time or energy to guess who this person is or say something crappy about them in the comments section. They were made aware of their mistake, they feel awful. Life goes on.

Last Sunday I was telling someone I respect quite a bit about this whole incident and she just sighed and said, "As human beings we will spend the rest of our lives accidentally hurting each other's feelings." And I nodded, because I did that this past week too, I hurt someone deeply simply by opening my mouth and using what I thought were totally innocuous words, but they hit a nerve and someone I cared about was a little wounded. Right now I'm a little wounded too. It hurts that someone scanned my blog, leaped to a very important and very incorrect conclusion, then felt the need to alert my family and cause more chaos and bad communication.

We will spend the rest of our lives accidentally hurting each other's feelings. So instead of holding ourselves back or giving up on others, we learn to forgive ourselves, and forgive each other, and know that tomorrow is another chance to get a little bit closer to becoming the person we want to be.