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Mar. 8th, 2015 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressWell, we're fourteen months into me having this shiny new laptop I call Kela, and I finally got around to doing something important:
I made a Behind the Walls file.
In 2005, when I was fucking up badly in school and my internet access was taken away as punishment/incentive. I decided to be petulant and not post any entries to my livejournal anymore --March and April of 2005 are the only months in over ten years where I have not made any posts.
But gods, you cannot make me stop writing, and that's where Behind the Walls comes in. I wrote almost 20,000 words in three months. Most of them were about The Boy, the first one who ever mattered to me in a serious way, but they were also about life offline, and desperately missing my clone, and what was going on in the drama club and with my friends. It was a place where I could be completely unfiltered because no one was Ever Going To Read It Ever.
And I updated it a little, even after I broke quarantine and started posting again. Just a handful of entries --squeeing over boys who had said nice things, and sobbing over breaking hearts. I've never put a lot of specifics of my love life online (more often than not, traditionally the people I had crushes on were out there reading this, and I didn't want to embarrass them, or tell them before I was ready.)
And then it was August 2007, and I got a new computer and made a new file. The BtW file from August to December of 2007 is the thing I miss the most from Seren going up in flames. It's the only thing that hurts, even now. Losing pictures and schoolwork and the like from my first semester of college, oh, it's a bummer but half those essays were in my email and I could always take more pictures. But at the time, there was no way to recreate the last three months of my true and honest mental state, all the things I was willing to say to a private file that I wouldn't say to the world.
(There is a more significant reason I miss it now, but this entry isn't about this trauma. Suffice to say, it could've been proof I'm not crazy. I've found other proof (including a stubborn understanding that what happened really did happen and really was what I think) but god, to have back the pain in that file would have saved so much more pain later.)
Once I had Vera, and it was established that she would *not* be imploding, thankyouverymuch, I made another BtW file --BtW 2.1, to be exact. Because I recognized --especially with things being so interesting with my love life1 all a'sudden-- that having a place I could write coherently in private would remain useful.
I never used it as often as that first stretch, but it was always there to welcome the thoughts that I emphatically wanted to get down, but equally emphatically did not want to share, in any way. I never let people read it, not really3, it was there for me and me alone.
Once I started using 750words, there was a pretty sharp downturn in both the number of LJ posts I made, and the number of proper (as in, in file) BtW posts I entered. I will sometimes jokingly refer to 750words.com as "Behind the Walls 3.0". It's not wrong. I haven't felt compelled to save something I've written there into a separate, special file. I've never had the exact right kind of pain --usually relationship, and usually too private to share.
But hey, there's a first time for everything, and now there is a file back on my desktop in the proper place where it belongs. And maybe if I still feel an ache for the words I unspooled there, they're coupled with a sense of rightness, that for over a decade, there has been a place for you when you need it.
It's a good sense.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: December 2007 was when I ended my last monoamorous relationship, January 2008 was when I began the first two relationships that would start me on true poly. I have consistently been dating at least two2 people since January 25th, 2008.
2: Not always the same two --I did break up with Magus about four years later-- but I have had no period of singleness, or even classic monoamory, in over seven years. Sometimes this worries me, I have never been single, can I handle it? More often, I am not bothered, this is just the way my life runs.
...And to be perfectly frank, given the long distance nature of most of my relationships, I have had more than sufficient time to learn how to be alone with myself.
3: I think jere7my read some once, but he has been one of my best and closest friends pretty much since the day we first met. Maybe Sparr too? I am not sure. But the thing they have in common is that they would've asked.
I made a Behind the Walls file.
In 2005, when I was fucking up badly in school and my internet access was taken away as punishment/incentive. I decided to be petulant and not post any entries to my livejournal anymore --March and April of 2005 are the only months in over ten years where I have not made any posts.
But gods, you cannot make me stop writing, and that's where Behind the Walls comes in. I wrote almost 20,000 words in three months. Most of them were about The Boy, the first one who ever mattered to me in a serious way, but they were also about life offline, and desperately missing my clone, and what was going on in the drama club and with my friends. It was a place where I could be completely unfiltered because no one was Ever Going To Read It Ever.
And I updated it a little, even after I broke quarantine and started posting again. Just a handful of entries --squeeing over boys who had said nice things, and sobbing over breaking hearts. I've never put a lot of specifics of my love life online (more often than not, traditionally the people I had crushes on were out there reading this, and I didn't want to embarrass them, or tell them before I was ready.)
And then it was August 2007, and I got a new computer and made a new file. The BtW file from August to December of 2007 is the thing I miss the most from Seren going up in flames. It's the only thing that hurts, even now. Losing pictures and schoolwork and the like from my first semester of college, oh, it's a bummer but half those essays were in my email and I could always take more pictures. But at the time, there was no way to recreate the last three months of my true and honest mental state, all the things I was willing to say to a private file that I wouldn't say to the world.
(There is a more significant reason I miss it now, but this entry isn't about this trauma. Suffice to say, it could've been proof I'm not crazy. I've found other proof (including a stubborn understanding that what happened really did happen and really was what I think) but god, to have back the pain in that file would have saved so much more pain later.)
Once I had Vera, and it was established that she would *not* be imploding, thankyouverymuch, I made another BtW file --BtW 2.1, to be exact. Because I recognized --especially with things being so interesting with my love life1 all a'sudden-- that having a place I could write coherently in private would remain useful.
I never used it as often as that first stretch, but it was always there to welcome the thoughts that I emphatically wanted to get down, but equally emphatically did not want to share, in any way. I never let people read it, not really3, it was there for me and me alone.
Once I started using 750words, there was a pretty sharp downturn in both the number of LJ posts I made, and the number of proper (as in, in file) BtW posts I entered. I will sometimes jokingly refer to 750words.com as "Behind the Walls 3.0". It's not wrong. I haven't felt compelled to save something I've written there into a separate, special file. I've never had the exact right kind of pain --usually relationship, and usually too private to share.
But hey, there's a first time for everything, and now there is a file back on my desktop in the proper place where it belongs. And maybe if I still feel an ache for the words I unspooled there, they're coupled with a sense of rightness, that for over a decade, there has been a place for you when you need it.
It's a good sense.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: December 2007 was when I ended my last monoamorous relationship, January 2008 was when I began the first two relationships that would start me on true poly. I have consistently been dating at least two2 people since January 25th, 2008.
2: Not always the same two --I did break up with Magus about four years later-- but I have had no period of singleness, or even classic monoamory, in over seven years. Sometimes this worries me, I have never been single, can I handle it? More often, I am not bothered, this is just the way my life runs.
...And to be perfectly frank, given the long distance nature of most of my relationships, I have had more than sufficient time to learn how to be alone with myself.
3: I think jere7my read some once, but he has been one of my best and closest friends pretty much since the day we first met. Maybe Sparr too? I am not sure. But the thing they have in common is that they would've asked.