I know I am of an older generation because I do not feel comfortable expressing every last thought in a public forum for all to pick through.  Lesser minds believe I say what comes to mind; however, that is usually more indicative of their slow mental processing than of lack of forethought in what I express.  I rarely if ever say a single thing I haven’t thought through – problem is most people around me don’t think much due to their constantly babbling about inconsequential nonsense or any item that will kill silence.  The idea that any person on earth should have easy access to my personal history and experience is repulsive.  I value my privacy in a manner that apparently few under 30 do today.

I learned never to express anything important or significant about my feelings or thoughts when I was four.  I had recently learned to write and under the pretence of offering an outlet to practice my father gave me a «diary» to keep under my pillow.  There was no lock on it but; being typically naive as a four year old can be and thinking the safety of my bedroom inviolate, I did take to scribbling in the notebook for about a week.  At the end of that week I woke up being dragged out of bed by my hair with an irate 38 year old doctor smacking me open handed hard enough to floor me and when I tried to get upright using my own arms smacking me down to the floor then kicking me.  How dare I write anything about him in a negative light?  What an ungrateful worthless piece of trash I was.  Ingénue that I was I told him I had thought the diary was private.  Of course nothing was private.  I should have known better than to write down something I didn’t want another person to read.

I couldn’t sit up straight for over a week after that.  I  did not write about how I felt about anything again.  Not even in letters I knew he wouldn’t have access to read because I was beaten more than once for letters written to me by others about what they thought and felt. For over twenty years I never once had a free conversation on the phone because when I didn’t see him standing there listening I still knew he was – or recording it – or my mother would provide a report.  I moved a third of the way around the globe thinking this would be far enough to finally gain some freedom to express myself but no, I was followed and all my conversation was again cut off.

Now I find myself surrounded by people that don’t understand what boundaries are; don’t keep work separate from private; revel in posting disgraceful pictures of themselves; blather on in tweats to anyone that can access it; and I feel sorry for them because I know whether they realise it or not people are out there who will make them pay for it sooner or later.