Bare Snow

Many of my friends have jumped on the tumblr wagon, but after experimenting with it for about a month last year, I decided it wasn't cup of tea. Nevertheless, I keep up with my friends' tumblr accounts almost daily. Considering my facebook has been deactivated, it's become my temporary newsfeed for my friends' lives.

I have always wrestled between the desire for privacy and publicity. In the end, privacy has always won out -- this blog, in all its incarnations, has never been made publicly available to all my friends and acquaintances. The thing is, I am a walking paradox. I don't care about what people say about me, but I do. The only time my writing feels like it has any worth is when it is raw and bare -- but in exchange, I am afraid of being judged once I strip the exterior away.

Two of my good friends have struck a compromise on tumblr -- they have a public tumblr that is publicly linked to their facebook accounts while maintaining a password-protected tumblr that only a handful of close friends have access to.

I was reading both private tumblrs earlier this afternoon -- by chance, both girls reminisced of the painful break-ups they went through last autumn. They both spoke of a pain unimaginable and incomprehensible to me.

January opened my eyes to just how much of a child I still am. Swathed in the cocoon silk of fairy tales and promises of the ever after, I am virgin snow, unsoiled, untrampled, untouched. But this me exists by choice. True, I have no former admirers or suitors to speak of. To my knowledge, I was never an object of desire. But the reality is, no one ever had the chance. I never opened myself up to anyone. I had vowed to be heartless before I had ever gotten hurt. I was steel and knives before anyone had managed to worm themselves past my defenses.

I still hate the cruelest month of April. I think back to the high school girl who went stag to her prom. Twice. Isn't that sad? I must have been guttsier when I was young, because I don't know if I would ever do that again. The message I wanted to send then was that I didn't give a fuck about the guys; I was there to have my own good time. Who knows if it worked? Perhaps I looked desperate more than anything. My disillusionment was still raw. Thinking back on it now, the naive high school girl had no idea that sex was already on their minds. In the end, I cannot help but wonder how many of the high school couples I knew had already set sail before I even realized that we had reached the shore.

My friends sometimes say they envy the empty canvas I call my life. No drama, no pain. But do you know why the canvas is so bare? This girl, who spins her own fictional worlds and lives vicariously through her creations' picturesque lives, cannot bear the thought of settling for anything less than perfect. Yes, she is probably your modern-day female version of a delusional Peter Pan. But if she has to be heartless to make the fantasy a reality, then so be it.