Found!

I feel extraordinarily strange at the moment. My sisters found my blog. And they read it. And they showed it to our mother.

I immediately changed the address and some names, and hope they can't find it anymore.

I never expected this. Once again, I have underestimated my sisters. I was excited about the blog and mentioned it several times, and I teased them when we were arguing, saying (jokingly) that I was writing bad things about them. But I didn't think they would really look for it, and if they did, I was sure they wouldn't find it. Stupidly I had overlooked their names in a few places when I first published some old journal entries. They had been changed in the meantime, but Google had "read" the old ones, and so they found me.

Damn. It came out of nowhere, I had just come home from class yesterday. Mam confronted me. At first I couldn't believe it, I thought it was a joke.

They had read the post called Sisters, and while it was unkind and rant-y, it was nowhere near as bad as Mam let on. Yes, I should have written "plain" instead of "rather ugly" in describing Diane's face, it would sound nicer. She says that about herself all the time, by the way. And I should have left out the b-word. But I was furious and had to "write it out". As for Sina's weight gain, she told me herself that she was afraid to weigh herself and that her clothes no longer fit her. I hadn't even noticed before.

Mam acted as though I had put up names, addresses and nude photos of my sisters together with my rant. Well, I did NOT. I would NEVER do such a thing, not to my greatest enemy. There is a difference in ranting about people so that everybody knows who they are, like on facebook, and ranting anonymously, even though the whole world COULD read it. That's what I was doing. The blog was never meant for family and friends, or people who know me personally. I wanted to put my thoughts "out there", yes, but anonymously. If I had wanted to tell those things to my family, I would have done so. I didn't. They are my thoughts, and strangers may read them, but not people who know me.

At first, I felt guilty because, if somebody who knew us very well and searched specifically for some names and places like my sisters did, they COULD have found the blog, too. But the longer I think about it, the more I am convinced that I am the wronged one. After all, there were only a few negative points about my sisters to be read here, versus half my soul.

I feel violated. Threatened.

I had felt safe. I must have felt safe to put those things online. Because if I had really wanted them to read it, I wouldn't feel so naked and embarrassed now. Those things I wrote were not for the eyes of people who DISLIKE me, like my sisters. Now my enemies have read my secret thoughts, had a glimpse into several private rooms of my soul. Good, beautiful thoughts, mean and hateful ones, tender, private ones... all ruined by unfriendly eyes.

I was STUPID. Stupid to let slip so much, stupid to think they didn't care.They always seem so brainless, lying in front of the tv apathetically. I let myself be fooled.

I dread going home, seeing them.
I can't speak to them. There is nothing left to say.

My whole family has turned against me, and through their glasses, they can't see my reality. I tried to explain to Mam last night, she didn't see.

I really wish they could see THIS post. Would they understand? No.
Let's face it, we are not the same. I am apart from them.

An Enemy in Ballet Class

Strangely, I want to write about people I hate more than people I like. They are more fascinating, and aversion is intersting when you think about it.

There is this woman in one of my Saturday classes. Let's call her Goody-pointe-shoes.

I HATE HER.

It is an unreasonable, exaggerated hatred. She never hurt me or did anything to me. She just... kind of rubs me the wrong way. There are many little things, but mainly this: She thinks she is good. And she is not.

She doesn't say much, but when she does, it is something along the line of: I know this and that, I have done this and that. Her facial expression is always smug. When she doesn't get a combination, she blames the teacher, I see it in her face. She laughs disdainfully and doesn't try again. She is always wearing thick legwarmers on her calves, even on the hottest summer afternoon. She recently started showing up to class in pointe shoes. Gaynors.

It all doesn't sound so bad. I just seem to be allergic to her. So much that when I see her, I want to strike her. And no, I am not crazy.

When I first came to the class, I thought she was much more advanced just from her bearing and her expression. Until I watched her actually do ballet recently (because I noticed she annoyed me), and saw that she was... not. She's rather bad. Her movements are limp, she appears weak and soft. This actually made me really happy. If she WERE good, she'd be insufferable. As it is, I KNOW I am better than she, although she of course doesn't see it. Now, I have no problem with people who are better than me. Lots of people are, I am still more of a beginner after all. But naturally I want to have an advantage over people I hate.

What I tend to do, when I hate somebody, is the opposite of my instinct: I am nice to the person, chat with them, get to know them. In a way, that gives me power over them. They don't know I dislike them. But I know things about them. Who was it that said to keep your enemies closer than your friends? U-oh, this makes me sound like a creepy stalker!

The thing is, I detest confrontation. And often, the person in question never hurt me in any way. I just dislike the way they are. I have no excuse to be anything but nice. Getting to know them also satisfies some weird curiosity: I need to know what they are up to, to know where I stand with them, how much and why I can dislike them.

In this case, I wanted to know how long and how often she had been dancing, and where. So I asked her last week. She wasn't unfriendly, but smug. Well, just VERY confident and a little patronizing. She has only been dancing for a little more than one and a half years. (HA) Already en pointe. She goes to other teachers, somewhere at Deep Well. She asked me (meanly, I thought) whether Franca didn't teach anymore because I kept coming to this class. I said truthfully that I just liked Rosanna as a teacher. And that the (beginner) class now was actually more difficult than Franca's because Rosanna advances much faster. She then immediately added that this class was actually too easy for her, and she just came to do it en pointe. Gah!

The class was a whole other matter, but more on that later.