An ye do no harm...

The secret is out. I'm evil.

In a long, drawn out, ranting email I am once again lambasted by my 'friend'. It seems there is no refuge for my thoughts, my venting or my privacy even when I lock my posts and keep her out. Some well meaning person has sent a locked post to my 'friend' and she has responded in her usually overly verbose way. I think suffering through her eternal whining, digs and zingers is worst punishment than having my eyeballs drawn out through my left nipple with a burning wire.

My mother used to punish me for what I wrote in my diaries, never realizing that once I had purged the anger onto the paper it was gone. I realize that posting in a semi public journal is not as safe as my paper journals, but the paper journals aren't all that safe either. I like to get things out where I can see them and not sitting around in some dark shadowy pocket of my mind or heart where they will fester and become fodder for some passive-aggressive snark fest. I guess I should learn that there is no such thing as a secret and my thoughts, even with limited exposure, are targets for more venomous attacks.

It isn't as if I haven't been notified in the past that my 'friend' was bashing me in her journal and in conversations with mutual acquaintances, but I always figured it goes with the territory. You get mad. You vent. It's over.

Guess not.

One of the precepts of my beliefs is that when you intend no harm to anyone you may do as you will. My thoughts are my own. My anger and passions are my own. I just happen to put them out for public and semi-public display. Probably not a good idea. I do understand the need for a shoulder now and then and someone who understands what I'm going through to help me over the worst of the anger, betrayal and lies and I don't do well with secrets. I seldom even remember what I write once it's on the page. I never remember my own poetry and only the basic story lines of the books and tales I write, let alone a blog entry. Like I said, once it's on the page -- virtual or otherwise -- it's gone. Now I understand how a good friend felt when her private matters were taken from her journal by someone who had access and spread all over the place to people she didn't want to know her private business. It's the equivalent of telling a friend a secret and having them tell everyone. Telephone, telegraph, tell a friend. Someone once told me that you keep a secret by yourself but when you tell one other person you tell the world. Looks like he was right.

What gets me the most is her accusation that now she understands why people distance themselves from me -- because I'm evil and manipulative and out to stick a dagger in every unprotected back. I'm not the one who has friends who stop talking, calling and communicating for years on end. I am in contact with all my real friends. Acquaintances come and they go -- looks like she was just another acquaintance.

Oh, well, c'est la vie. I refuse to allow her vituperative vexations to change my habits or me. I will not run. I will not hide. I will not worry about what she can or cannot do. I have protection she doesn't even dream of.

Guess she forgot what the precept, An ye do no harm... , really means.