I have spent much of my life crafting a facade to hide the true (and vulnerable) me. I learned that if I showed weakness, even if the form of viewing or doing things differently, the world would pounce on me and rip my heart to shreds. So, I pretended to be like everyone else, because the cost I paid in aloneness was worth not risking judgment or criticism or hatred or rejection or abandonment. (I find I'm scared even to say that, because as I do, I can hear that critical, judgmental voice in my head lunging at that weakness like predator on prey.)

But here behind the relative safety of my pseudonym, I can share what I'm too scared to say in the real world. I can even say I'm scared to share it. Each time I sit down to write a post, I get a lump of anxiety in my stomach. My husband is a sex addict, but I haven't left him. My son is autistic, but I don't think vaccines broke him or that he needs fixing. Mark and I are in mountains of debt of our own making. I've had an abortion. I've loved and dated men and women. I'm a liberal Democrat, married to a black man whose whole family is in love with Obama, and I can't bring myself to support him yet. My kids fight. My house is a mess. I self medicate with food. (Did you know I stepped over cat vomit on the floor last night and sat down to eat an ice cream sandwich instead of cleaning it up? I did.)

Each time I put something new out, I think, "People are going to rip me down for this. People are going to be angry. People are going to know I'm a bad person. People are going to hate me. People are going to tell me what I'm doing wrong. People are going to tell me how I should think or how I should feel or how I should live my life instead. And everyone is going to see that I'm not perfect." And it terrifies me.

Each time I see a comment in my inbox, I hesitate and feel a little sick. Sometimes I wait hours to read them. And sometimes they actually are there to tell me how awful I am. But much more often, it's someone whispering, "Me too." It's someone saying, "I've never told anyone this, but ... I am married to a sex addict / was abused / had an abortion / am thousands of dollars in debt / don't know what to do / am scared / feel so alone..."

It's a miracle to me that when I say to you that I'm alone, you then say to me that you're alone, and suddenly, we're not alone anymore. I can let go of all those secrets that were weighing me down. That same miracle happens for Mark when he goes to 12 Step meetings, and in the safety and anonymity and rigorous honesty of his program, he finds understanding and support. Mark and I found that we were pretending to be like everyone else, when everyone else was pretending too. When we all stopped pretending, we found out we actually are like everyone else. Go figure.

This post originally published at The Second Road on September 10, 2008.

If you are reading this, you have somehow found yourself at my blog. I always knew there was the potential for you to end up here, but I figured the odds were against it, and the work I've been doing is important enough that it seemed worth that small risk. Now that you are here, I'm going to have to come clean and tell you the things that have been going on in my life, things I haven't wanted to share. I can't hide them now: they're all over the blog; they're in my greatest hits; they're even right there in the header. I hope you're sitting down when you read this, and now is probably the time to look away, run away, if you need to. In a few sentences, it will be too late. It may be too late already if you're skimming ahead like I would.

I have not told you some very big things that have gone on or are going on in my life and in my mind. I have not told you that:

• My husband is a sex addict
• I had an abortion
• I have had serious financial trouble
• I've had some of my writing published

I've really wanted to share some of these things, especially about my writing being published, because I know you would be so proud of me and so happy for me. But all of these things are so intertwined in my mind right now that I felt I couldn't share any one of them without sharing all of them, and I haven't been in a place yet where I have felt able to deal with your emotions of confusion and grief and loss and anger and worry in addition to my own.

You're my mother. I know you love me more than your own life and always will, just the way I love my kids. I know that you want me to be happy, not to suffer; I know you want to spare me from pain, the way I want to spare my children. I know that what you will feel when you hear what I have been through will be as intense and powerful as a tidal wave. I've been struggling to keep my head above water and I fear that if that wave hits me, I'll drown in it. But that's the risk I've been willing to take in doing this writing. I don't want to feel that hurt coming down on me, but it's been important to me to write, just like it always has been, and it's important to me to share that writing.

Know that I love you very much. I'm sorry if I've hurt you by hiding things from you that I'm now sharing with some odd combinations of friends and strangers. It's what I have needed to do for myself. Know that I am building a life where I am genuinely happy. I know everything is going to be ok. I know it with a faith I've never felt before. I love my husband. I love doing this writing. And I do love you.

~Your daughter

1. "I want you to be selfish on more occasions: I just want to [have] you [write] about you, in particular your childhood."

2. "I wish you could be discovered!"

So, Serizy, way to nail me for my codependent habit of blogging about other people, and my lack of focus on me. This post is for you...

I can't remember a time before I was able to read. There must have been a time, when letters were strange undecipherable squiggles on the page, and I sat on my mother's lap listening to her read to me, but I don't remember it. And for as long as I have been able to read, I have wanted to write.

The day before I started kindergarten, I followed my mother anxiously around the house, spelling aloud for her every word I knew. We lived in an apartment, with gold shag carpet, and walls on either side of the living room that my father had accented by in breathtakingly bold shade of orange paint. Sandwiched between those two orange walls were a set of Ethan Allen bookcases, one with a desk built in.

I reached the limits of my knowledge as I paced back and forth in front of those bookcases saying, "Cat is C-A-T and I know dog, D-O-G, and what else do I know?" I was frustrated that I couldn't spell every word I knew, simply because I couldn't think of every word I knew. I wanted a list of them, like my own personal dictionary, a list of every word I knew and could spell. My mother was not helpful at all; she was irritatingly serene about the matter. She seemed perfectly satisfied with "cat" and "dog" and not at all upset that I wasn't able to work my way through the full breadth of my English language knowledge, aloud, right that instant.

I knew what was coming the next day though: kindergarten, real school, big kid school. And I had heard from the big kids how things were done at school. At school you took tests, teachers measured your knowledge and doled out praise or criticism (usually criticism, according to the big kids). There were papers marked up in red pen, and the potential for failure. And there were days and days of those same teachers stuffing you full to bursting with new knowledge. And I was going to be ready for all of it.

So, there I was, the first day, sitting eagerly in kindergarten, nervous because I just knew there must be some word I had forgotten, and the teacher held up a red square and asked what color it was. Um, red. But surely that's not all Mrs. Fitzgerald, my ancient (probably 45-year-old) kindergarten teacher, wanted to know? Ooo, ooo, ooo, I can spell "red!" Can we write a story about red? Come on fellow five-year-olds, let's learn to write haikus! But no, actually, red was the answer, the only answer, and we really were just going to learn colors, and sing songs and (oh, please no!) participate in gym class and take naps (naps?!) and listen to Mrs. Fitzgerald read. Oh, kindergarten was so disappointing.

So, I read outside of school, a lot, and I wrote outside of school, a lot. I'd forget to eat if my mom didn't remind me, and I'd stay up late saying "just one more chapter" and then "one more" and then "one more." I'd write stories in crayon and then pencil and then pen. My books were my friends, my companions, my treasures. I once took on the ambitious project of devising a cataloging system for my books, labeling them and making an index card for each one: my own card catalog. I'd alphabetize my books and drape plastic wrap over them to keep the dust off. I learned not to break the spines of paperbacks by supporting them with my fingers and bowing the cover out in gentle arcs. (Ellen, I'm calling you out. You cracked the spine of Fung Yu-lan's A History of Chinese Philosophy, Volume II back in college. Don't think I've forgotten! That poor book is sitting in my lap right now with that sad little crease still marring the spine two thirds of the way in.)

In school, I'd soar through my own personal curriculum: from Little House on the Prairie books and Nancy Drew mysteries to Agatha Christie and J.R.R. Tolkien, books squeezed on my lap under the desk. Then, once we got into classes that required taking notes, I realized that school was really a much better place for writing. So, books were abandoned in favor of poems about my history teacher's paisley tie or the shadows outside the window and letters upon letters upon letters (love letters to people I was dating and letters to friends who had moved away and letters to classmates sitting right next to me) and whole reams of paper devoted to my love for my crush du jour. Everyone who knew me as a child knew one thing: Mary wants to be a writer.

I never did, before this blog, write the things I wanted to write and share them with more than just Mark and a few others. There are a lot of reasons for that, but that's another blog post. The result has been that I never have, before now, been that writer I wanted to be... Which brings me to Serizy's second wish...

I just learned today that The San Diego Reader, an alternative weekly paper, will be printing revamped versions of two of my most popular blog posts: A New Kind of Trust and My Son Doesn't Eat and paying me real live actual money, like a real live writer, to do it. It is, quite literally, a dream come true: my words, written simply for love and pleasure, in print, and paid for. I get to check "become a published writer" off of my list of things to do before I die. This counts. And if these two pieces are as far as it goes, I'll be satisfied. I'm enjoying this moment as much as if I were J.K. Rowling complete with best sellers, movies and a whole line of spinoff products, maybe more.

And this is all thanks to the love of my blogging life, The Junky's Wife, who pointed the San Diego Reader folks in my direction in the first place. She and I are going to celebrate by taking off our panties and riding in a limo with Paris Hilton. Come on, JW, let's ride!