Why?

In April 1988, Kenneth Williams took an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol and died, in his sleep.  Whether it was deliberate or accidental, we'll never know but the last words he wrote in his diary on that day were "Oh, what's the bloody point?"  It's a question we've all asked ourselves at some point - perhaps, as Williams seemed to, we've asked it about our very lives, or perhaps we've just asked it about something that we're doing.  


I've asked it in both situations.  I'm asking it now, about this very thing that you're reading.


When I started this blog, it was my third attempt.  I'd failed on the other two, I thought, because I'd tried to be someone that I wasn't.  On this blog, I was just going to be myself.  Hiding behind anonymity, I felt free to be open and honest and I started writing as therapy, a way of exploring the situation I was in at the time - which felt bleak.  I wanted to understand how I'd got there and how I could get out.  


The first three or four entries (they're not there anymore, I've taken them down) were very difficult to write but felt cathartic.  I paused, because everything felt very raw, and then restarted, changing the purpose of the blog so that I just talked about stuff that interested me, all the while promising myself that I'd be strictly honest - with myself and you.


I saw it as another way of keeping a diary.  The fact that it was online, that anyone could read it, was both important and unimportant.  It was important because I wanted to feel - as we all do - that I matter, that I was important enough or interesting enough to be listened to.  That someone out there cared enough, if only for a few minutes, to listen to what I had to say.  It was unimportant because I was just another blade of grass in the field, one more voice amongst so many.  I was nothing special and nothing I wrote could be traced to me or any of the people mentioned - I never used their names - and so I felt safe amongst strangers.


Mostly, traffic was directed here from Twitter, another place where I felt safe and where I felt I could be myself.  I would check the site stats and feel strangely proud that people - you - had bothered to check out what I'd written - even more excited when comments were written.  It wasn't much and you might think it pathetic but it was my own little readership; it was important to me and it made me happy, at a time when precious little else in my life did.


And then my blog was discovered by someone I knew, whether by accident or deliberately, I'll never know.  Everything I'd written was seen by someone very close to me, without any context.  The honesty that I had tried so hard to maintain was twisted and made to look like manipulation, or self-serving selective recall.  It caused a great deal of hurt and upset and that relationship, one I cared about more than anything in the world, looks at the moment to have been irrevocably destroyed.  


I took a lot of the posts down; I stopped writing for a while; I locked the Twitter account.  After a while, I moved the blog, started writing again and unlocked Twitter but, to be honest with you, it's not the same anymore.  I don't feel safe.  At the back of my mind, whatever I say or write, I'm censoring myself, wondering if they are still reading this, whether what I write in all innocence, will offend or upset them, will be turned against me again.  I wonder if even writing this will make a bad situation worse.


So what's the bloody point?  Why keep doing this, why keep writing?  I've loved blogging because I love writing but I feel like I can't be myself here anymore and that was a big part of the attraction for me.