Legacies, and Living Out Loud

Lately, I have been pondering the concept of Legacy.

Now, Merriam-Webster defines “Legacy” as

1.  a gift by will especially of money or other personal property :  bequest

2.  something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past

Given that I am currently about as broke as a joke, it’s safe to say that it’s not so much the first definition that is captivating my thoughts this evening. It’s #2 that is more of what I am focusing on… Specifically, a concept of Legacy that may already exist (but if not I TOTALLY claim it): our Internet Legacy. Ours, meaning on a microcosmic scale.

What the hell do I even mean by “Internet legacy” ? I suppose our “Online selves and lives, as defined through various social media tools and blogs.” There are our physical lives and selves, and then there our online selves. A separate identity, most often. Perhaps a reflection of only certain fragments. Perhaps only the edited version. But still, a version nonetheless. A record.

A legacy.

I’ve maintained an online version of myself—sometimes several—in a desultory fashion since the late summer of 2001. LiveJournal was my vehicle for expression for a decent bit of time, up until about 2006. Then I graduated and moved, and began blogging via wordpress and blogger, and MySpace and Facebook happened. And then YouTube and Twitter and Instagram and so on and so on and so on.

Looking back, I suppose my Internet legacy is like my real legacy—scattered, messy, unfocused. There have been a few reasons for this plaguing me throughout the years: first, a self-consciousness that I can’t quite shake; the feeling that my words are inconsequential, prosaic, and even pompous-sounding. Second, a fear that one day I might “live out loud” too much, say the wrong thing, and get myself into hot water at work or damage future job prospects. So to remedy the first, every now and then I would “transform” my online self by taking on a new blog platform or handle. (Incidentally, I’m totally old enough now to know that moving your digs doesn’t change your identity, but it also totally doesn’t stop me from trying.) To remedy the second, I have gone to convoluted and probably ineffective lengths to not specify where I work, to not disclose my last name, so on and so forth.  For a lot of reasons, I don’t think that works too well.

I find myself, once more, at a crossroads in my Online Life. (Perhaps, because I am at a crossroads in my Real Life as well?) I don’t want to abandon my Online Legacy—countless times I have found myself blessing Past Me for documenting what I thought was quotidian and boring nonsense—but at the same time, I do want to clean it up, transform it, get it focused and launched on the road that I want it to be on.

Maybe it means going back to basics—going back to where it all started.

Peering through the cracks...

Tonight, when making dinner, I had an intense moment of déjà vu.

Tired after my gym workout, and freshly showered, and more than a little hungry, I meandered into the kitchen, with the intent of frying up an egg and making a fruit smoothie. And before I could go about whipping up this sustenance, I was transported back to the last time I came from the gym and made such a meal.

Silently, contemplatively, I cracked an egg on the edge of the frying pan. Then I moved to the blender, and tossed in some fruit, some yogurt--before I could pour in some juice,  Mr. Melissa came up behind me and kissed my neck. 

Resentfully I shrugged him off.

"Don't you love me anymore?" he asked, as he sometimes did. Before, I would feel guilty. But not anymore. 

His words cracked my facade as easily as I had just cracked the egg now sizzling in the pan.
 
"You know what?" I said quietly, realizing, as I did, that I was Over It. Over Everything. "Just...you know what, Mr. Melissa? I know that you and _____ are having a thing. So don't try that 'don't you love me anymore' crap."

With those words, I cracked through the crust of civility, of half-truths and whole-lies and diplomatic acceptance and avoidance that has formed over my marriage in the last three years. I drilled through that crust and got to the truth, which was maybe a lot less ugly than I feared, and definitely more freeing.

I never got around to eating my egg that night.

Eventually, tiredly, I tossed it into the garbage, too wrung-out to even feel the slightest bit of hunger anymore. I hadn't planned to confront Mr. Melissa that night, but pretending and keeping quiet have never been strong points of mine, and it was twisting me up inside. But what was also keeping me up at night was a truth I hadn't expected to uncover: in accepting that my marriage would eventually end, I realized that I will be free to return home. And the thought of that elated me--it still does--beyond belief. That truth--or at least the possibility of it--left me weeping with joy more than a few times. In a few years, I am going to have the chance to move home, to Indiana or at least the Midwest.

It's sad to know that my marriage has failed. It's sad to know that this marriage--begun hastily, but with hope and love--is for the next one or three or five years being kept alive on the life support of kindness and friendship and history and cooperation and acceptance. But I've been around the block enough times to know that the fact that I am not more sad, or at all jealous or enraged or vengeful, indicates a lot about my own feelings, and the role that I have played in steering our marriage to this place.

All of this is sad. And the old born-again Christian me would be appalled by my blase attitude toward the institution of marriage, and the 29-year-old desperate not to be an old maid me would be appalled that I am eventually walking away from what I once couldn't wait to have. It's twelve kinds of fucked-up. This world that I built up--I cracked open almost impulsively last month.

But through the cracks shine some rays of hope.


 

Living Out Loud: January 15th Edition

• It's almost midnight, and I am drinking vodka.

• I am seriously contemplating divorce.

• I'm not sure those two aren't related.

• But then, I'm not sure that they are, either.

• I don't feel as bad or ashamed about any of this as I should.

• What I DO feel ashamed about: I've got a lot of reactionary instincts about all the terrorist things that have happened over the last two weeks. I know that outlawing Islam or bombing a region ISN'T the answer, but since I don't know what IS the answer, I don't speak up.

• So far, my main goal this month has been "don't have a nervous breakdown." So far, so good, especially considering the divorce thing, and the Really Big Event at the Library this month.

• At work this week, someone told me my desk looked like an episode of "Hoarders." I've never watched that show, but I'm pretty sure that's not a good thing.

• Deeply discounted Yankee candles and Hello Kitty aviator hats are the bomb-diggety.