Although I can hardly boast any appreciable new technical skills after having been a blogger for one complete calendar year, I can report that I’ve had a full and robust year – one in which I began to find my voice and become more fluent in its expression. Yup, it’s been an interesting year for me, and this blog has helped me through some difficult episodes. (Although the entries may show to have been written earlier, my first true post was March 1st of last year.)
I’d hoped to perhaps have a more sophisticated handle on this forum by now, but I still find myself merely hanging on to the simplest tools. I can insert a photo by the skin of my teeth, a video still eludes me as this platform doesn’t like the form my the vids from my camera arrive in – and inserting an interactive guest book here is as confounding to me now as it was six months ago, in spite of hours spent researching it. In view of the much more visually interesting blogs to choose from in the world, I’ve found myself wondering what I have to offer here. This was a question I’d not even begun to consider even a few months ago, but with a growing readership, it has me thinking about this differently. Might I consider a little marketing? A little upgrade in my presentation? There’s certainly room for that. But in the end, in that I’m not selling anything, in that I’m so very grateful that I have people at all with whom to share my life, in that this has all been a lovely adventure – I think I’m going to let it be as it is for the time being. One day I may rally my efforts towards ramping this humble blog up a notch, but not right now.
Let me make no mistake about it; I began this blog simply as a means to keep myself from despair. I had been treated badly by my husband in this cruel divorce, and after several years of going it alone, I wanted a witness to the unfair way in which my marriage was ending. I was outraged, hurt and angry, and I felt it was time that someone else felt the outrage too. I was hoping that this public platform might help me to conclude my divorce – if by no other way than by shaming my husband into treating me better (i.e. giving Elihu and me enough money to live on as was entirely possible given his own personal financial reality) by giving our story a wider audience. In that Fareed has seen little more of this blog than the photo of this three kids by three different mothers (and, enraged by this, told me to remove it ‘or else’), and in that he lives in a world of his own concerns (and I am not one of them), this blog did not in the end serve to shame him nor cause him to reflect on the inequity of the situation. But while it may not have done what so selfishly I’d hoped in the beginning, it did end up taking a different course which proved to lead into happier new territory. Entries became more about our own personal adventures and struggles, and much less about the divorce and its lack of parity. I’ve never been one to keep a scrapbook or record personal events in a diary, and so this blog has been a nice way to not only record things that have happened in our lives, but it’s also given me a place in which to work out my thoughts on life as it happens. Honestly, I’ve forgotten so much of my life; I’m glad to have this past year down on paper (as it were). And I can’t help but wonder how Elihu himself may one day value this window into his younger years, this window into the thoughts of his own mother. I can’t begin to imagine having such a document of my own mother’s, or of my own early years. Really, what a great tool. What a lucky time to be alive.
It’s been through this blog that I’ve met many new friends, reconnected with old ones, and heard the stories that others have had to tell too. And because of it all I’ve come to feel a lot less alone. I had no idea anyone other than a handful of friends would come to read my posts. I may feel so isolated some times, but I’m reminded, through this magic little oasis in the ether, that you’re here with me too. In the end, I suppose that’s been more important to me than anything else, although a year ago I had no idea.
A little ‘by the way’ for you: Fareed and I will indeed be legally divorced as of 9 am this coming Friday. This was the very thing I sought with my first desperate plea one year ago this week on my virgin blog. “Letter to All…. I cannot get divorced…” And so here I am, one year later, my goal met by week’s end. Thank you so much for being with me through this difficult year. I so appreciate your friendship and support. Elihu and I both are aware that we’re not alone; we both know that you’re sharing our life with us. It makes us happy to know. It makes us grateful, too. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Happy Birthday, Hillhouse!
The Hillhouse 