So real you can taste it
Let’s look at the facts as revealed here: I’m a stay-at-home mom with a preschool-aged son. A former librarian, I went to culinary school and from there decided to be a writer. My family is relatively new to Northern California, having moved from the East Coast almost two years ago. I’ve told you my name. Given my birthday (oh, those worries about aging, forcing me to seek comfort on the web).
And if you’ve been here for a while, you know about the defining story of my life, the lifeless premature baby I gave birth to at home when I was sixteen.
But what do you really know?
Jennifer recovering from a late night, 1988? Or
another photo to continue the ruse?
How would you feel if I was
actually a 25-year-old male advertising copywriter
from Peoria? What if I really lived in Buffalo, NY?
Or if I was pushing 70, mother to a multitude of now
middle aged children, grandmother to teenagers, a
Brit using the blog to flesh out a character? This
"Jennifer" person you think you've been reading could
be someone I’ve been keeping in my back pocket for
years. writing to survive might be some kind of grand
fictional experiment, an attempt to create a flesh
and bones person out of ethereal imagination.
And my stories? What if these were figments, scraps
from my mind, absolute fiction masquerading as
angst-ridden past? It could be that you've been
reading full-blown literary lies à la
Margaret B. Jones, the wannabe memoirist who made up
a gangland childhood. Turns out my parents have been
married for forever, I waited until marriage (or at
least love) to have sex, and I’ve never touched a
drop of alcohol. Oh, and that isn’t my son, he’s a
nephew (never mind that I have no nephew).
Would you feel betrayed?
Don't worry. I don’t have it in me to lie like that,
though you'll mainly have to take my word for it and
trust your gut. There were times in high school and college
when I was a serial liar, self-serving and hidden. My
mother believed the stories about my solo nights,
even when my boyfriend's car was parked right outside
the Little
House ("Oh, the car? Dirk leaves it
there when he goes to the Cassady's. Sometimes
he's had too much to drink, so he stays at their
place for the night." "That's exactly what I
thought, Jenna.") Later, I hid my unfaithfulness
from my college boyfriends, created a protective
distance by pursuing empty hopes with relative
strangers.
Living a life of lies is a dirty business. I was
becoming unrecognizable, murky, untrustworthy, a bad
friend. So I stopped lying and regained a hold on
fidelity. And while those old kinds of lies are no
longer tempting, I still struggle with my tendency to
exaggerate minor facts or to deny my feelings.
Attempting to be good is a life-long process.
There is a difference between making things up to
avoid punishment and creating stories to entertain.
Stories aren't lies (and sometimes
the lies we tell in
our life stories aren't fibs either). If the blog
tale is well-told, the characters believable, the
created world tangible, so real you can taste it,
does it matter if it actually happened? How would
you know if it did?
We’re taking it all on faith in this blogging world,
want to believe that everyone is who they present
themselves to be. For the most part, I think people
are genuine. Yes, we have plenty of time to shape our
online selves, but we’re generally real. Still …
There must be bloggers, perhaps ones you read every
day, who have created fiction under the guise of
truth. Their blogs are ostensibly about their day to
day existence, may even include some pieces of
fiction or poetry or personal essay, but some of the
facts have been turned inside out.
Maybe the writer doesn’t want to be identified, or is
playing, having fun being someone else. The character
that demanded life is finally born in a blog, fully
realized, solid, interactive (the fresh-eyed college
graduate moving back to her hometown; the landlocked
fly fisherman reminiscing about his days of streams
and trout; the tech-savvy doting grandma with an
herbal tea obsession, a minor character in a SAHM's
life). Or they add a totally fictional detail, erase
a husband, gain a Weimaraner, make a virtual move
from Asheville to Albany.
And what of it? Readers are entertained, the writer
has an enthusiastic, satisfied audience. These are
tenuous connections we have, the lengths of spider's
silk stretching across the ether from blogger to
blogger. Many of us have never even spoken. In these
circumstances, does the truth matter?
I'm still trying to figure that one out.
The end of anonymity
In the beginning, there was Anonmomous.
Then it was simply Jennifer. But there were slip-ups.
The PublicLiterature.Org stories with my full name.
The e-mails I sent to others from my personal gmail
account. The few blogging awards that went to
Jennifer Fullname instead of to just Jennifer.
My father found the blog. I accidentally sent an
e-mail to my ex-husband from the writing to survive
account and I'm pretty sure he's been here. I have a
sneaking suspicion that my brother-in-law has visited
at least once. A friend from elementary school found
me here. For a while the first hit on a Google search
of my name (yeah, I google my own name. I'm not the
only one, right?) was the blog, for reasons that are
somewhat mysterious. Until today, the two weren't
directly connected.
It's one thing to write to complete strangers. It's
quite another to realize that people who may be a
part of my story are reading. Or that casual friends
might come upon this and find out more than they ever
wanted to know about me. But as I kept on leaving the
door ajar, I realized that I want to be open, needed
it. What's there to hide? Just me.
So.
Here I am.
Jennifer Trinkle.
All other names have been changed
to protect the innocent. In most cases.