The weekend and yesterday have both been busy. A lot of it was great fun – dinners with friends, visits with relatives, Noah-adoration in spades, etc. – but it’s left me feeling a little stressed ’cause I didn’t get much downtime and I needed it to make space for writing this week. So that’s what I’ m doing today, I think. Making the headspace and hopefully getting to some, depending on naps.
I read a blog where the mum’s smaller child naps 9-11 and 1-3 and her older kid naps 1-3 and I think – man. Noah’s naps, if I’m lucky, total 2 hrs a day, usually one 45 min one and one 1 hr 15 min one. I’ve tried all the techniques to extend them and I think the reality is – that’s how he naps. He does get tired but he doesn’t have meltdowns, and his bedtime doesn’t get too affected. So… I just have to accept that and figure out how to manage some professional/writing time regardless. I really am thinking I’m going to have to find a teenager to come in a few hours after school twice a week, where I can hear them. This would also be a good step towards babysitting.
After thinking more on the whole blog journal writer webspace professional personal public thing (note the lack of word private, ’cause there is a big difference between a personal thing and a private thing :)), I have figured out a few things for myself:
1) I am back in the closet, because of Noah. This is not a terrible thing, but it is interesting. I’m getting closer to some of the mums in my mumgroup, where we’re sharing actual stuff. But I’m not sharing about our multiplicity. I don’t think my desire to be open and – well – seen and understood trumps Noah’s need now and in the future for community. And multiplicity is – too weird.
But in chatting up mums and starting to get to know them, I’m taking about 5 giant steps back from how I have been conducting new friendships.
Over the last few years I’ve simply told people about being multiple and handed out the URL for my d-x and therefore this blog “if you’re curious,” and then rather cheerfully ignored most of the multiple stuff unless it came up directly, like “oh Lyria wants to do this with you.” My belief was that people can’t really grasp “I’m multiple; that is, a we” very well and trying to explain it is really hard. But by sharing some things over the ‘net with those who were interested enough to bother reading, I might be able to show things. (This has been very much a “Shandra” project, as you all know. :)) And those who wanted to ignore it, could, by not reading online.
I guess it gave me the space to feel accepted enough without having to make multiplicity an ongoing issue. Most of the time.
Carl and I discussed this a few times, most recently when Lynn’s poem got all blown up about on DP, and he believes that this middle course – being open enough, but not advertising it – is ok, even with the added responsibility of protecting our kids and nurturing a “tribe” for them. Actually he was quite fierce about not trying to stop being who we are doing what we do.
So right now, if someone comes to my house and sees stuff with Shandra and Magdalynn written all over it and then goes to a search engine and plugs it in and gets this blog and reads this – okay. We’re not going to try to rip everything out of the Internet and start actively hiding.
But I’m trying to keep “friends I have for my son” separate.
It’s kind of a new interpretation of the fine line between not wanting to create uncomfortable situations, and being ashamed. We’re not ashamed and if someone or anyone finds out, we’ll deal.
But I’m finding…
2) Part of being myself, which is really important to me and many in the system, probably more important than it is for a lot of people, is probably entirely separate from having people know that we’re multiple. I can be the parent & person I want to be, and even leave space for Magdalynn and Lyria to be the parents & people they want to be (to name a few), without ever ever coming out multiple and 95% of people will probably not notice much except a few inconsistencies.
But I’ve lost track of where that line is. Being myself without being pretty openly multiple.
In the past I’ve thought that those inconsistencies could torpedo relationships. I’ve maintained that a lot of people sense switches, but if they don’t know what they are, they just get a really vague uneasy sense and kind of drift off. I based this mostly on how much better my friendships & relationships got after we came out multiple. And it has all worked pretty well as a cohesive unit.
But it may not be the case that it’s the /being open about multiplicity/ that has improved my friendships, but the simple being more me (and getting better at it). I just don’t know.
And now I’m struggling. I have drawn a line of non-openness, and I feel hamstrung, closeted, and trapped. And I don’t know if I’m stringing myself up by being muted and trying to think through “if I tell them my favourite food is steak, what will they think if Lyr goes off on a vegetarian thing?”
3) This also comes up for me as a writer. I’m having to supply bios, which is fine. But do I put a website? If so, obviously it won’t be this one. But what kind of presence do I want to have in that way?
4) The temptation is to start a new multiple-lite blog, to test out creating a new persona for us, the parent-writer-non-multiple us presentation to the world. But I’m not sure what I think about that.
If anyone has any ideas I’d be curious to hear ‘em. This is mostly just me musing but it is sort of directional musing. Where do I go from here?
Hmm, it’s an interesting question. It’s not one I have much of frame of reference for, the best equation I can make is that of being a fairly open bisexual/poly-inclined/kinky girl and that question that comes up every so often when you meet someone and like them and are starting to get closer to them and it comes up–do you tell them that you have a nontraditional romantic life?
For me, I found a sort of yardstick to measure that question against: Would this person be happier if they knew this about me? Sometimes the answer’s yes, sometimes it’s no, sometimes it’s I dunno in which case I keep my mouth shut on the theory that it’s hard to unsay something.
I’m not ashamed of who and what I am. But I’ve also had thirty one years to get used to it, and there were some pretty serious bumps and stumbles along the way. I try really hard not to get upset when other people can’t assimilate it right away.
As for the creating a blog…I don’t know what I’d do. There’s an initial reaction of ‘No way, why should I pretend to be who I’m not for the sake of public consumption!’ But then when I thought about that a minute, I realized how much I already edit and tweak my public ‘net persona. Even my blog, where I have a rule about total honesty, I go back over what I write, edit it, clean up the grammar and metaphors, make sure to present things as evenly as possibly even when I’m feeling my most irrational.
If you feel like it’s important to have this public persona, maybe a way to go about it would be to think of it like creating a MUSH character? We both know how true an online RP character can be, how much of our ‘real’ selves can be in them. I don’t know if it’s an approach that would work for you, but it’s probably how I’d go about it.
I use a “pen name” and try to not discuss my son, especially now that he’s in school. Kids are cruel, life is rough. I should be able to figure out how to be myself in a way that doesn’t make his little life harder. Good luck with this. IMHO you might be able to do it in layers. My husband says that most “mommy relationships” are like “smoker’s conversations.” That is, pretty expendable. But if you find people who you think might get to, say, a second level of intimacy, then you can tell them more about yourself. ?? Maybe.