Unfiltered

A magical thing happened a few weeks ago. On our family trip to the HOT states (because that is absolutely what they should be called; the North, the South, the East, the West, and the HOT) we drove sweated our way through Las Vegas, and there we had the amazing opportunity to visit with my dear friend and mentor, Sandra Hooven, lovingly known to me and several hundred, if not a thousand or more former students as Mrs. H. (tangent: in the many years I have taught art classes here and there, I have always introduced myself as Mrs. H, with a smile and a long-distance little nod, over both time and terrain, to the First and Best. THE Mrs. H.).  I want to and will write about the trip, and our visit with Mrs. H, and some of the other really special people who made this such an incredible adventure, but my thoughts all started tonight with something Mrs. H. said when we were together: "I really used to love reading your blog."

 
Used to love. Past tense. And I loved writing it. And I miss it. I like what it brings out in my head and heart, and the way it challenges me to examine myself, the way I think and the way live my life. It challenges me to review my days and the words I speak, and to squeeze those days through a juice press and filter, many filters, to see what comes out the other end. 

When I first started writing my blog I thought I would use the format to anonymously float my thoughts out into the ether without consequence, but low and behold, after my very first "anonymous" post, I got a message about it from someone I knew. The smarty-pants internet had sent my friend a message; "Hey, your sneaky buddy Laine thinks she can write whatever she wants and get away with it! Why don't you pop over and say hi and give her a heart attack?" It was my first lesson in social media (back before in the days before "friends" on Facebook began ruthlessly attacking grammar and life choices- lesson two, don't share if you care about it)). There is no anonymity online. Lucky for me I hadn't flown my freak flag too high yet during those first few posts, so it was just a wake up call; fortunately "no relationships were harmed in the making of this blog". 

Ever since, I have been doing that filter thing I mentioned. 

What will my dad think if he sees a post about my childhood through my eyes? 

How will my kids feel if I post about teenage angst and hormonal drama? 

What will the folks at church think if I use 23 different terms to describe my breasts in one post? (if you missed that one, go back and read it. I regret nothing.)

All that filtering has blessed and hindered. But mostly hindered. I squeezed the last three years through the filter of, "Nobody is going to want to know how sick I am. It will sound whiny, and attention seeking, and also, I don't want pity comments." There are people in my life who boldly state their distain for people who "have to broadcast their lives on the internet", so there's that filter, too. I was even criticized for a photo I once posted with my feet up on the dash board during a road trip ("that's dangerous" they said. Not as dangerous as another blood clot from my legs hanging down for hundreds of miles, I thought).  It made me start to question THE WAY I USE MY FEET.  Duh, I tell you.  Just, duh.

Filter, filter, filter.

And of course, you can't possibly anticipate all the ooble-dy-zillion ways your words will be processed by others.  And if you are defensive about it, you shouldn't share, right? 

So I haven't posted.  That's the long and short and scared of it. 

I just can't physically handle the confrontation, the correction, the judgement (and THAT, my friends, is a gene mutation thing, which I will over-share about later, and to which you will raise one dubious eyebrow, firmly square your jaw, and say in a British accent, Is that a thing?  Well, we always knew there was something a little off with her.  Like in those news interviews, when the neighbor says, "Bodies in the basement, ya’ say?  Well, I always 'spected there was somp'in wrong wiff Floyd").

This week, Guy and I had a talk about plans for a future trip that didn't go super well (there's that busy filter again, Will Guy be mad that I hinted at marital disharmony? Should I hide that we have the only imperfect marriage in California?), and in the aftermath, as I pulled at all the threads in the conversation to unravel where it had stepped off the happy track, I hit upon a powerful realization. Here it is as shown through many filters:

I have Hashimoto's (hello, overshare much? Like, dude, we get it already. You're sick. Waa waaa.  Move on). Everyone who has Hashimoto's experiences it differently, but for me it deeply impacts my ability to make and retrieve memories. Short term stuff is the hardest -in one synapse and out the other-  but it turns out that another tricky type are memories that are 'similar to each other in nature'. For example, I am really excited about this RV trip we just took, partly because the memories are so unique. They stand out starkly against the backdrop of all the other vacation memories I have from the last (choke) 26 years of marriage.  I mean, I remember our honeymoon (teehee). I remember the time we helped Kathi and her kids look for their lost dog in Colorado during a summer thunder storm while the cicadas screamed at a deafening pitch over our heads. I remember riding 4-wheelers through the Bone Yard with Jackie in Idaho, and floating in circles with Melissa at the Rec Center in Provo for hours. I remember playing Kettleball at Guy's parents 50th Anniversary/family reunion, and how all the ice cream was being left out to melt, and how I LOVE melty ice cream, and how I ate so much of it I nearly burst. But the memories of car travel, motels, stops at burger joints, all mostly blur together and then, heartbreakingly, disappear (the filter just told me there is really nothing special about this dilemma and I should delete this post!  Dang filter!).

One way I can keep my memories, I realized, is by making sure they vary from each other in the making (like maybe suggesting to my husband that we stay at Issis Oasis Egyptian Sanctuary instead of Travel Lodge, hello conversational misstep), and another is by writing them down. As I revisit them later, it is like writing over the top of fading pencil with a nice, thick, black ball-point pen. They become anchored, fixed, and easier to visit later. So the battle I face now is writing unfiltered. Or less filtered. Maybe not full-pulp OJ, but certainly not pulp-free. Because I won't remember things if I water them down as I write about them. And who am I kidding? Only twelve of you read this anyway, and all twelve of you know what a goofball I am, and somehow love me anyway.  

I'm starting to feel like I've told you all of this before, but I can't quite remember (the redundancy-alert filter just kicked on... robot voice: Bwoooop! Bwooop!  A-lert! A-lert!).  Also, it seems like I have posted about needing to write more A LOT, and it's feeling excusy.  Yes, excusy.

The filters just told me that maybe they are not really filters at all, and that I am just insecure.  Wow, they are so mean sometimes.  But maybe they're right.

Back in the early days of the blog, I would write each post directly to a few people in my mind, specifically because I always felt loved by them, more sure of myself, and like they just loved anything I wrote -Jackie, Rebekah, Steph, who I sure miss.  Jackie's sisters, all of them.  That one anonymous person who always reads my blog with in minutes of me posting (I love you so much, whoever you are!  I seriously say "Hi!" to you when that little notification pops up).

 And now, Mrs. H.  

So here's to you, and here's to living life unfiltered.

*the photo above happens to be unfiltered, because they don't make a filter that gets rid'a old!