Stitchpop

Disturbed.

I was blog-hopping, and I happened to land on someone's intensely personal and painful stuff. I won't even link to it, because as soon as I was done reading I felt wrong for having read it at all. Even though it was a public blog, with a public link inviting traffic in.

I admire the person for writing so openly. It makes my own blog seem extremely trivial and superficial. And even if I ever touched on anything deeper, it would only be so that I could shrug and laugh, in the casual, between-us sort of self-admonishing way that people confess bits and pieces of themselve to friends after a few too many drinks.

It's a mystery to me how some people are able to talk about troubling things as easily as if they were discussing politics or a sale on rutabega at the local market. Maybe I'm not wired that way. To me, everything uncomfortable is off limits. It's packaged up and tucked into neat, hermetically sealed boxes that can be easily stacked and organized in an out-of-the-way corner.

(That sound you just heard was the Pandora metaphor being nipped in the bud.)

It frustrates my husband, and of course I understand why. If I tell him that a box contains "shoes," he wants to know what kind of shoes -- Red ones? Heels? Army boots? Little white, size-one baby sneakers with velcro straps?

Shoes. Just shoes.

That's all I have to say about that.