Borderline

This morning, while waiting for my friend to pick me up for our fortnightly visit to the manicurist, I turned on my computer and logged on to my blog. I read my latest post to see (again) if my rant was as vitriolic as some of my (remaining) friends think. I guess I wanted to reassess whether I crossed the line between candidness and tactlessness.

This particular post was painful to write, primarily because I was (am) still hurting when I wrote it. My usual practice was to wait a few days and when my rage has subsided I can somehow inject some objectivity in my writing. I normally reserve this alacrity when writing poetry but in this case, I made an exception. I wrote while my wounds were still fresh, so to speak, and I found the result to be angry and yet, restrained. Well, that didn’t happen until after I edited the draft twice before deciding it was publishable.

What has this particular post done to me and my blog?

My friends who have read it have given me their comments verbally. So far, no one has posted any comment on the site itself. Even Derrick, who comments on my posts frequently, is amazingly silent. I can only wonder why. 

Last night I asked a friend on whether she thinks there is something libelous in my post. She said that if the person/s I was referring to in the post was/were not sensitive, they would not find anything libelous in the post. While this particular friend is notorious for being able to answer questions in the most oblique manner (she’s got a bad case of logorrhea most of the time–but that is another story), I took that as a yes.

But I am inclined to disagree. I am no legal expert, but I think I know about libel and slander well enough to think that I have not committed libel. To the best of my knowledge, libel is a written defamation, or written (and published) words that falsely and negatively reflect on a living person’s reputation. I learned this when I wrote for television many years ago. All the things I wrote about in this blog are true. I didn’t name these people as an exercise in restraint but aside from this, I did not hold anything back.

My only real apprehension was whether my article crossed the thin line between self-expression and self-victimization. Or simply put, between good taste and bad taste. As I finished reading it, I realized that my apprehension was unfounded.

Will I write this way again in the future? I cannot say. Most of the time, my posts are reactions to things that happen to me or to people who are important to me. This is, after all, a personal blog. But like I said, writing about painful things in one’s life is painful, however cathartic.

Much as I want it, I cannot expect that painful things will stop happening to me. I can only wish that my strength for dealing with these painful things does not fail me in the future.