A couple of weeks ago, I was scouring my computer, looking for an old entry I'd written.

Not long after I announced I was getting a divorce, as a response to what seemed to be an onslaught of people scouring my site to read the old entries, I took down all of my live archives at ejshea.com. At the time, it was weird to look at my referral pages and see (mostly) strangers tear through page after page of things I'd written about my ex and our relationship, and then it was just plain hurtful after I discovered total strangers gathering in online forums to discuss the end of my marriage.

I wasn't about to provide easy access to those folks looking to use my own words to take shots at me.

That time was a shitty time on its own, and I didn't need to watch as people spent sometimes a good two hours reading old posts of mine, even if some of those reading weren't wishing me ill whatsoever. I suppose I can say with clarity now that I worried those people would uncover the very thing I'd been fearing the most - that they'd discover what I had earlier, that I had been a fake and a phony. I wasn't exactly ready to conduct more of such self-discovery in public, much less online.

I cannot tell you how many times that those in my day-to-day life would say to me, "But all of your entries! All of those things you wrote!" I always steeled myself for one of those people to follow it with, "Were you just lying?"

They never did, of course, because the obvious answer was, yes. Yes, I was. I know now that it wasn't a conscious consideration on my part as much as it was the act of someone trying to write the relationship she wanted, thinking eventually it would come true. A goodly portion was true: I loved him, he was my friend, and everyone liked him very much. The parts I left out: I wasn't in love with him, we had barely a thing in common, didn't spend much time together and I couldn't leave him because everyone liked him.

It is criminally easy to put yourself in a situation that is safe and sound.

But time passed, and things happened, and I realized that I had to leave. I had to come to terms with the fact that, yup, I was a phony and a fake. I'd been manufacturing for myself a life that had more to do with what I thought would make me happy, rather than giving any considered thought as to what actually would -- in and outside of the blog. In doing so I hurt a lot of people. My marriage was the collateral damage of all of this self-examination. I don't mean to sounds trite, but it's important to note that once I realized that the life I was living mirrored absolutely nothing that I truly wanted, I couldn't keep moving forward for the sake of safe.

My dearest friends have said I was brave for what I did. And there are a handful of days, when I see what my life is like now, that I believe them. Most days I am just ashamed and sorry for having been so cowardly for so long, in the many years leading up to leaving Erik. Because that's what it boils down to: I was a coward. The leap between coward and liar is not far, and eventually they become mates.

Posted by Erin at 06:03 PM | filed under: Random Stupidity