Not My First Go Around

This isn't my first blog. It's not really even my second. I kept my last blog throughout 2011....the worst year of my life. I wrote nearly obsessively about the pain of a sudden and unexpected divorce, offering up morbid details and hashing over the things most outside people give no thought to about divorce. That blog was highly personal and quite possibly offered up far too much information. I've long been a fairly private person and tend to keep details of my personal life to myself. There are variety of reasons for this but I suppose the biggest reason is that I hate having my thoughts and opinions and overall life judged by other people. I'm a live and let live kind of person but a lot of people aren't. So I generally keep my life to myself. The blog last year was truly an antithesis of who I am.

I couldn't help keeping my last blog, though. I wasn't ready to dive into therapy again and writing has long been cathartic for me. Writing cleanses me....leaves me feeling like I've had a good cry. I'm a right brained, artsy person and for me writing taps into the creative side of myself. Growing up, I played musical instruments and enjoyed drawing as well as writing. But so far, writing is the one thing I've done consistently throughout my life.

I finally gave in and went back into therapy before Christmas and consequently quit blogging. As it turns out, I write more when I'm in pain. I knew after I started therapy that the blog would no longer serve the purpose it had been serving....that I would no longer feel compelled to write about the pain if I was having to talk about it each week. I eventually shut the blog down (I didn't delete it, though, because....well, I'm not sure why. I just couldn't delete it) when I realized that I was eventually going to have to go back into the dating scene again. We aren't a society that embraces expression of honest emotion...especially not if that emotion involves pain. When people pour forth their raw feelings, it's often viewed as mentally unstable. I figure I'm a bit odd already so having a blog outlining all of the pain I'd been through would just add fuel to my little fire of oddity.

I'm no longer doing therapy. I only did a few months and since then, I haven't had much of an emotional outlet. In recent months, I started writing in an old journal. I've tried to put the same amount of effort and emotion into the journal, but I just can't seem to do the same kind of writing that I do when I blog. Hence this new blog....

And the name? All things merge into one. This is a line from a quote by Norman McLean in A River Runs Through It:

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters."

I love these words. They are beautiful and true. All things merge into one. For better or for worse, they really do.