9/24/14

My social media is divided by opinions on my sex life

I have too many social media accounts.  I have too many because I have at least TWO of everything.  There are two sides to me.  And while I don't live two lives, there's the side I let my some people see and a side I let the worlds see.  Oddly enough, the WORLD side sees more of me than the some people side. 

I have a facebook account for my family and co-workers.  The ones who care about my kids and what I cook and the tame, vanilla side of my life.  The ones who I would rather not know about the dynamics in my relationship.  Then there's my ACTUAL facebook account, which is where my friends, my partners, old boyfriends etc reside. 

But there's a lot of crossover.  My BOSS for instance, is friends with me on my vanilla facebook account, except, she knows everything about me.  And I mean, EVERYTHING.  My old co-workers at my old job (10 years ago) and people I knew from my past professional life are on my regular facebook account, pretty much ensuring I will never work for them again.  Hmmmm- that was probably a bad call.

Many, but not all, of my family knows about my less traditional lifestyle.  However I keep it from them because honestly I think they just don't care to know or hear about it.  I generally stay mostly tame on FB and I do have different groups for my kinkier friends so as not to offend anyone who's kid might peruse their facebook feed.  But it's exhausting

Twitter is something different though. 

I have different twitter accounts for different things.  One for me that is pretty NSFW, one for the vanilla me (mostly unused), one for an event I host, and one for the podcast I host. 

I have an instagram account but I keep it pretty tame because my kid follows me.

I have an "about me" account that I don't use.

I don't have a tumblr.  At least not anymore.

Today I got an account with ello.  It seems nice, clean, no ads.  Nice manifesto.  Currently no worries that what I say or see will be used against me for marketing campaigns.  However when I was setting it up, I thought- what will I use this for.  Who will I be here? 

For a while I had an account on Subjot (which I think is no longer out there).  Or something.  Anyway, nobody knew me there.  I don't think I even told many friends I was on it.  It was kind of freeing.  Talking out into the void and not really caring who talked back.

Social media is practically my social LIFE most days. Some days I will be in the mood to engage with family and other days it's all about my close friends and kinksters.  There are days though, that I wish that I just had one side of me- the real side and the only side.  The problem with social media is that I'm not always the same kind of social with everyone.  I envy those who can just be who they are online, although I think most of us somewhat filter ourselves when our parents are watching.  The day my mom joined facebook was probably where things went awry for me.  The internet was a pretty safe place for me to be who I am.  Now I worry that my mother is just 6 degrees of separation away from seeing me half naked with sharp things poking into my skin.  I don't think she even knows about THIS blog, which is still a few breaths closer than I would like her to know about me.  I enjoy my relationship with my family, but because they have a tendency to be somewhat uptight and judgy, it must be done from a distance.  It sucks.  I would like to think that they would like me anyway, but chances are I would just become even more of a black sheep.  I did marry and bury the drug addict and all.  There's always one in every family.  I guess I drew the short straw along with the actually "short" card.

I'm gong to be 43 years old and I am still hiding from my family.  I think I do it more for them than I do for me.  There's a blanket rule not to scare the vanilla people.  I told one of my brothers about being poly.  He seemed unphased.  My siblings have met past partners, but didn't realize just who they were.  My mom has asked, "if that your girlfriend or something?" but her mere tone told me that even if she had been, I should just say no.  I don't want to have that conversation any more than she does.

I'd like to think that who I REALLY am is not so bad or offensive.  However I know that if members of my family were "describing" me to someone else, it would go something like this.

"Oh Julie?  She's great.  She's got 3 kids, well actually 4 if you could her late husbands daughter.  and 5 if you could her new boyfriends son.  Her and her boyfriend have been together about 3 years now.  He's 12 years younger than her- so you know.  And they are into that BDSM spanking thing... so there's THAT." 

And while all of those things are true- they tell you NOTHING about me.  NOTHING.  I'm a good person.  I think I'm kind and thoughtful.  I have made a lot of sacrifices for the people I love.  I have a good education.  I have a good job that most days I really love because it makes a difference for peoples lives.  I educate people on BDSM and safe healthy relationships.  And even THAT tells you very little about me. 

However I know that I will be reduced to how I have sex and who I have sex with.  And to be honest, I have sex the same way everyone else does.  And 95% of the time I only have sex with SR.  It's not THAT big of a deal.  I think there are more interesting things about me. 

However, it is what it is.  It's a bit frustrating though, that the ones who are supposed to love me conditionally, my family, are the ones who probably only continue to love me because there's a lot that they don't want to know. 

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