Dear friend (or relative, or acquaintance, or family friend, or friend of a friend, or neighbor, or child's teacher, or ex-coworker, or ex-friend, or friend/lover/ex-lover of my husband),

It's hard to address so many of you at once, but if you find yourself here and find that you know me (the real life me -- with my real life non-Mary P Jones name -- or my real life husband or real life friends, in their non-pseudonymous incarnations) I hope that you will drop me an e-mail and talk to me. (Or, depending on your preferences and level of closeness to me, we can also forget the whole thing. If you do know me, you know I am non-confrontational, so pretending you were never here is totally cool with me, if that's the way you want to go.)

For those of you who are particularly close to me, I'm so sorry if you feel hurt that I didn't tell you what's been going on in my life. "Mark" and I have been doing what we felt we needed to to keep things together. Many of you who are closest to us don't know what has been going on simply because you love one or the other of us so much. Maybe that doesn't make sense, but now that things are out there and I don't have a choice but to talk, we can always do the whole talking thing to clear it up.

For those of you who are close to someone I've written about, know that I have tried to keep this about me. I may have written about my father, mother, brother, friends, husband and kids, but what I have written really says more about me (or where I was at the time I wrote any particular post) than about them. I have tried to share only my own experiences with them and feelings for them are part of me.

I have shared more than I wish I had early on as I worked through my own issues here. My feelings change with time. There isn't a way to entirely erase that now that it's out there, but I've done my best to make it less accessible. What I have left accessible may not be accurate today, but stands as a record of where I have been.

I love the people in my life and am so very grateful for each and every one of them. I know that some of what I feel or think may be inadvertently hurtful, but it doesn't diminish the truth of my affection or intentions. If they do know about the blog, they are ok with what's here. If they don't, well, I trust that most of them will understand, eventually. I'd be happy to talk to you, if you want.

For those of you who don't really know me or anyone else in my life very well, but found yourselves here and realized you know real life me, you might want to consider the lurking option, as long as you're lurking quietly and not bringing along 50 of my college classmates for some kind of lurking party. But if you do want to form a closer friendship, feel free to drop me a line.

Finally, on the off chance that you happen to know someone very much like me, who turns out not to be me, I'll be so psyched! First, I'm not alone! And second, that will totally help my anonymity. Although if you are that person, I'm sorry that I'm telling the Internet that your husband is a sex and debt addict. Maybe you can start your own blog and clear that up.

Love,
"MPJ"

When I was a kid and my parents needed to get my brother or me to stop what we were doing, they'd use the language of sports to break things up. "Time out!" they'd yell, holding their hands up in a referee's T. My household, however, operates on the language of the digital age. When I'm doing something with the kids and need to stop to, say, make dinner, I'll say, "Ok, PAUSE!" Sometimes I press an imaginary pause button, slowly, for effect. And now I'm going to use my imaginary pause button on my blog. PAUSE!

I had intended to do a post today (the long promised post) on life, the universe and me (oh, and Silda Spitzer). I was especially eager to finish after I interrupted everything yesterday to take note of April Fool's Day. However, I'm going to take a breath and do something else today. Here's why:

• My daughter seems to be doing that kid thing where she's making a developmental leap and so is not sleeping. In this case, I think she's learning to read. Last night she was up until 10 p.m. copying titles of books onto a piece of paper. When she's up late, I'm up later. I'm tired.

• My husband and I are dealing with some issues (not related to his sex addiction or our marriage -- never fear) that are reaching a critical juncture this week. For anonymity purposes, I'm choosing not to blog about just which shit is hitting our family fan right now, but suffice it to say it is taking my mental energy away from composing complex blog posts.
• Finally, someone spent a good long time (several hours) yesterday reading every post I've written on a particular subject. (Yes, I can see you all! I can seeee yoooou.) Now some of you may think that's great. "Wow, someone really loves your writing!" you might say. But as my husband pointed out when I mused about this last night, my blogging says, "Love me! Love me! No, no, not that much! Not that much!"

  You see, someone being that interested in me makes me anxious and reminds me of the fragility of my anonymity here. I'm just insecure and paranoid enough (and just time constrained enough not to have spent several hours reading anything in years) that I wonder how my writing (and the particular subject of interest) could that compelling to people who don't know me. So, I need to write a post I've been putting off for some time to address that particular demon in my head.

So, my apologies to me for not doing what I intended (because I'm really the one who has that little seed of disappointment about being sidetracked). But this is what I need to do right now and that's the way life rolls. I'm hoping to shout "UNPAUSE!" on Thursday.