Betrayal Of Self

Some might say that betrayal is the worst offence a person can endure. It can leave a dent in the fabric of ones being. Once betrayed, it becomes very difficult to regain trust in the one who betrayed you. Often times, the only way a perpetrator of betrayal can ever be trusted again, is through the process of proving themselves worthy. But, what if the one who betrayed you was yourself? What do you do then?

I started this blog with the intent of being as authentic and transparent as I could be. I intended to express whatever weighed heavily on heart. I envisioned myself telling my readers things they might not know about. I wanted to inform people about the lies and injustices people all over the world are facing, yet are never presented in mainstream media.

Have I done that? Not exactly. There are glimmers of me trying to be the bringer of illumination, but, for the most part, I’ve held back. I’ve distracted myself by partaking in the popular Daily Prompts that wordpress.com has to offer. This decision turned out to be a big mistake for me.

I’m not saying the daily prompts don’t serve a purpose. All I’m saying is that they were a distraction that steered me in a totally different direction than I wanted to go with this blog. For me, the daily prompts were safe. Granted, they provided a topic to write about. For a new blogger, that was appealing. Unfortunately, the topics presented were, often times, not what weighed on my heart.

Another unfortunate thing is that you get sucked right in. The daily prompts have a large following. It’s sort of a community. Everyone reads each others post and likes and/or comments on them. For a new blogger, it was exhilarating to see that people liked what I wrote. The comments and well wishes added to the excitement. It made me want to go back and write some more.

The excitement didn’t last long though. It became labor-some to come up with something to write. I suppose it was because I was trying to respond to the topics with the kind of message I wanted to write about in the first place. Writing became a chore as I tried to try to formulate a posting on a particular topic and yet have it relay a message I wanted to express. At times, I couldn’t even finish and I left many drafts waiting to be completed. Perhaps, that’s why I stopped writing much at all.

I didn’t want to write just for the sake of writing. I wanted to serve a purpose with the things I wrote about. I wanted to give my readers something to take with them after they read my post, something they can think about afterwards. Ideally, I would have liked them to find it interesting enough to share with their friends and family. So, what stopped me? Fear did.

During the time I began this blog I had been reading and learning about things that had a lot to do with privacy issues and NSA surveillance.  I also read about people like, Barrett Brown, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, who have had their lives turned upside down for the things they revealed. So, of course, fear sneaked in to make me hold back.

Now that I’ve come to this realization I have to make amends with myself. I have to take the steps necessary to rebuild the trust I have in myself and to be authentic by writing about those “scary” things. I cannot allow the fear of retaliation to control me, to make me self-censor myself. If there’s something I feel needs to be known, I have to put it out there.

Of course, I may, occasionally still respond to one or two of the daily prompts. I just won’t let it be used as my only outlet. I’m grateful for the daily prompts. They were my safe haven and a way to help me explore the process of blogging. Thank God that I had enough self-awareness and was able to see that I was cheating not only myself, but my readers.

If for some reason my postings are not well received, at least I can say I was true to myself. That has been the constant theme running through my head, the constant echo reverberating in my soul. To thine own self be true. I cannot betray myself again.