If you look at my facebook profile, you will see that I do not list this website in my profile.

I go to conferences, I have paid my own way, I have BEEN paid to speak at conferences – to share what I know. My face has been on websites.

My face with a fake name.

Most of my family doesn’t know about the blog. The Dude’s family – no clue.

High school friends? Forget it.

I have started posting links to this blog in my status updates.

Very. Very. Carefully.

I have a list called “Trusted Readers”. I post the links knowing that I am controlling this to go to a very small group of people.

As I skim the names – I see my Dad’s second wife – my step-mom. Ex step mom, legally. My other mother.

My stomach flips painfully when I think of how she would feel reading these words about my dad.

I see my cousins’ names. I have the same feeling. The same fear of “what would they say” and also “how would this make them feel” and “would this hurt them”

It’s more than a little bizarre feeling to go naked to people I’ve never met, or met just a handful of times – yet hide from people I have know my ENTIRE life.

I’ve been trolled by that bitch girlfriend of my dad’s. I survived that, but I’m still hoping I am hiding from her. I’m still braced for the day a hateful comment from her hits my phone. I am not yet fully able to stand behind the statement of “fuck her, I don’t care”

Because I am capable of being hurt.

I fear being hurt.

So I try to hide in plain sight.

While I try to heal.