A Blog-oversary...Hiatus?

One year ago today, I wrote a post called On Happiness, in which I talked about a quote by Leo Rosten that I love. It goes a little something (or, you know, exactly) like this:

"I cannot believe the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate. I think it is above all to count, to stand for something. To have it make some difference that you lived at all."

With that, I started off on the crazy adventure this blog has been. I've done so much self-discovery through this blog. I've met so many awesome people, made some friends that I really love, and grown closer to friends I already had. And I have to thank you guys because you've been a huge part of that.

However, recently I've been worrying about who this blog made me seem like. It started with this post, my decision to make a secret blog. I had my reservations about the situation then, but pressed on. My new blog became a place where I could be more honest about myself, where I could talk about the things I haven't felt comfortable posting here; stuff like the way the accident made me totally lose my faith in humanity, humiliating-but-hilarious stories about things Mr. Man and I do, the way I wake up crying pretty often, or the fact that I'm having a total crisis of religious faith and have been for a while now.

Bet you didn't know any of that, did you?

I feel like, in a way, I've been lying to you guys on here. Not deliberately, but by omission. And the ironic thing is that one of the biggest things I advocate is being yourself. The day I realized all this was the same day I posted this Kurt Cobain quote, actually, and God, look what I said after it: "Let's be ourselves today and every day after." It kind of makes me sick because I haven't been being myself, not totally. I've been being just one facet of Valorie on this blog, catering to my audience.

I hate hypocrites. Hate them. But I've been being one of the biggest ones of them all.

I mean, God, the fucking background of my blog says, "Be bold, be unique, be anything you want to be." Because I'm always the one telling other people they can't hide behind a mask, that they need to "be who [they] are and say what [they] feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -Dr. Seuss. (Yeah, high school AP teachers, check out THAT embedded quote!) But I've been so worried that I'll write something on here that will piss someone else off, that I haven't been doing that myself. And now I've been stretching myself thin, pretending like I'm this happy little Christian Aggie on here who may or may not have a politically dissenting opinion from the rest of Aggieland, but for the most part fits in perfectly because she's quiet and even-tempered and believes in God and has a happy family and has this perfect fucking life that I don't have. I'm only partly those things and only some of the time.

And yeah, we could probably delve into the world of psychology and say that this habit of controlling the image people have of me probably has to do with my insatiable need for control and perfectionism stemming from a woefully disrupted childhood, the same things that lead to my battle with anorexia and whatever else, and that makes it okay somehow.

Or we could call it for what it is: hypocritical, two-faced bullshit.

I can't do this anymore. I can't live behind this fucking mask, worrying that one day I'm going to slip up and that one of you is going to see a side of me I don't want you to see. Not because I'm not capable (I'm perfectly capable of juggling two blogs and two lives) but I don't want to because it goes against everything I stand for.

Being useful, being honorable, being compassionate. I know Rosten didn't say it, but let's tack on being genuine, too.

So, I'm taking some time off. I need to figure out not just which blog to keep, but kind of who I am. I'll be back once I have a clearer understanding of what it means to be Simply Valorie.