you know, amy, i'm so glad i posted that to you yesterday. it's something i've been wanting to do for a long time now, but only recently had the courage to do so. funny how things work.

he makes me sick. i would have even converted to judaism for that asshole, because that would make his family happier. what the fuck! i cant believe vile people like that exist in this world, but then again we are living in new york city. its a fucking nightmare dating scene here. too many egos, too much power, too much money, too much pain. why? how? aren't we just looking for pure love? is it really so much to ask for?

privilaged lives are one thing, but mentally abusing your girlfriend and sponging off her and his parents is another. that is not a privilage; that's a fucking embarrassment. fucker. yes, im angry. im angry at myself for putting up with his shit for so long and not breaking up with him when i wanted to. why did i put myself through that? that's why im angry.

my friends all hate him, have always hated him, but saw that i was semi-happy, so they wanted me to be happy. im talking ALL of my friends, and HIS, who apparently think he's a loser anyway. i couldn't believe how thrilled they were when we broke up, even in my despair of loss, even in my countless weeks of crying my brains out thinking i actually lost the one man for me. what a joke.

like i said before, people dont like talking about their shitty lives for many reasons. who wants to know they've put up with shit when they're constantly sought after, always told they're beautiful?? it takes one person to find your weakness, shoot you down, and keep you down until you one day realize you've been living a lie, a dream, a fucking fantasy in your head that everything is OK. well, it's not ok. and, amy, you are the voice that we all so desperatly need to hear, because you have the courage and place to do it. we NEED you.

what im trying to say is that, thank god for our friends — and you. THANK YOU!

I just stumbled in here through a misdirected Google search. As a woman who's been in a career for 20 years, I've gotta side with your mother on this issue. Not just for you, but for all the people who post their adolescent or post-adolescent angst online for all the world to see.

When I was a kid, before the days of the Internet, we wrote this stuff down in diaries that we hid under our mattresses or in our sock drawers. We griped about our friends, parents, boyfriends, and our Singular, Horrific, Emotional Pain. And when we outgrew the unfinished people we were - when we'd learned how to be ourselves, strongly and confidently - we were blissfully happy to burn those embarrassing, childish things we had written.

I've only read one entry in your dating blog. In it, you talk about smoking hash and partying with people who you yourself seem to acknowledge are vapid, self-involved boobs. Now I'm not trying to sound harsh, but to me, a full-grown, adult woman, it all sounds really bleak and dangerous. I do think there will come a time in your life - very soon, in fact - when you will want to distance yourself from the confessions you're posting now. You will wish your employer or husband or daughter did not have access to the personal details of this time of your life.

There is a rule most of us learn hard and fast: never MAIL the letter you write when you're angry or hurt. Tear it up. Burn it. In a day, or a month, or a year, you'll stop being angry and hurt, and you won't want to deal with the fallout of those permanent, black-on-white words you wrote. I think the same rule applies to writing on the 'net. It's cathartic, but the fallout might be more than you want to deal with.

Do with this advice what you will. I'm sure you'll find dozens of people your age who disagree with me. But I'm willing to bet if you ask dozens of people MY age, who have careers and families to think about, and who remember the folly of their youth with hot, red faces, they'd side with me, and give you the same advice. So... maybe pretend that my advice comes from your own generation, twenty years in the future. Be careful!

Mary

amy i want to give you props for having had the courage to blog like you did (tho i confess not having read, i gather from the context what it looks like). you might come to regret it, you might not. we all need to work out our shit-- our karma, whatever-- in different ways. hopefully you will eventually meet a husband who IS comfortable with all of your past-- because it's what made you who you are, which presumably is what he fell for. If he can't handle it, is he the right one?

which sort of begs the bigger issue-- can we really hide our pasts?  can anything ever really stay secret, on the spiritual plane?

"which sort of begs the bigger issue-- can we really hide our pasts? can anything ever really stay secret, on the spiritual plane? "

Hmmm - interesting thought!

I agree that we can't hide from our pasts, and that they inform everything that we are now. So, what happened to me when I was 22 absolutely creates my identity and is incorporated into it. Someone who's known me a while would probably be able to guess at the generalities of my past by studying my actions in the present.

But... not being able to hide the secrets of our souls from our loved ones is different from letting them know every single detail about our past. Someone could tell I'd been wounded in love, say, without having to hear the ugly, woeful details about the bad conversation we had next to the pile of laundry, and the second-guessing I did about my comment on a spring afternoon, and the way he raised his eyebrow at me one day, and the plaid coat, and the weepy stupid nights spent listening to Jackson Browne. Even the people who knew me when only saw that part of my life through the filter we all use to preserve ourselves. They didn't get to know the gory details. Who wants all that?

Written the right way, with 20 or 40 or 60 years' perspective, this stuff makes a good coming of age novel. But written in real time, as it happens... well, we don't have enough space between ourselves and our experience to see it clearly for what it is. Our words, with their manic, jangled, wounded anger, end up indicting ourselves as often as they indict those we believe have perpetrated crimes against us. I honestly do think that we sometimes need to save ourselves from ourselves. And if we can't, then our friends (or blog readers) can throw us a line.

Another point, too, is that the people we perceive to be the "bad guys" in the novels of our lives have their own points of view about US, and that these points of view are not flattering. I wouldn't want an ex's negative, detailed remembrances of me aired in a public forum like this, just for the sake of his need to talk through his angst. Seems to me that stuff like this leaves a powerful karmic trail that can't be easily erased.

I know we all need to vent until the poison is out of our system. The nice thing about venting through late-night conversations with friends is that the words disappear into the ether, and are easily blotted soft by the light of the next morning. No one can throw them in your face 10 years down the line.

Mary

someone you trust at a later point doesn't necessarily need to know all the gory details, but some not so little things like 'i was a stripper' or 'i had an abortion' IMO ought to be brought up at some point just so that they don't get accidentally discovered and seen as a betrayal if hidden (which i think they would be.) Things like that have too much spiritual valence, so to speak, to stay hidden even if you try... trust me on that one. (although you might not want to blog about them, either. while ani difranco did write some wonderful songs n poems about her abortion, i think that subject should remain emphatically private...)

"but some not so little things like 'i was a stripper' or 'i had an abortion' IMO ought to be brought up at some point "

Yes, absolutely. I guess I'm feeling a huge gap between being honest with a trusted confidante, and telling the entire world, which is essentially what you do when you're blogging.

Mary

As I said in my post, I believe, I wanted to write this column to inspire other young women to not take so much shit (which can be enumerated in so many terms) because so many of us do and I'm a prime example. Since beginning this column I've changed quite a bit, perhaps even "saved myself from myself." As the column is  no longer running, y'all don't really know the backstory on that... But in the context of what I'm planning to do with my career, I can't say I'm worried about future employers stumbing upon these. Knowing that I did inspire some young women has been the most rewarding experience of my short career.

In response to Mary's comment: If I can't share every gory detail of my past with whoever I wind up spending my life with, then something's not right. I should emphazise don't regret ANY experiences because I've learned something from every single one of them. (Actually, if I have one regret in life it's not filing a police report when Evil A gave me a black eye.) My current boyfriend doesn't judge me for my past, and I would never hide it from him out of fear that he would, which is a really beautiful and scarce thing I think. If I'm afraid to share something with a boyfriend about myself, it's because I'd fear their judgment. As long as that something isn't, like, cheating on him, I don't deserve derision.  Moreover I WANT my partner to  want to know about my past. I want him to want to know everything about me and want me to open up to him. This is the kind of relationship I'm in now, and it's the best I've ever had. There's no judgment, no regrets, no hiding.

And writing these sure as hell was fun.