apparently, when twitter was first created, the theory was that it could open up the world to millions of people’s thoughts with billions of “microblogs.” and to a certain degree, i suppose that’s true.

we all know i tweet *way* more than i blog.

but here’s the thing – sometimes twitter scares me. let me explain; sometimes, when i’m feeling particularly relaxed (maybe i’m a little drunk, maybe i’m just feeling especially happy) i tweet something that, for whatever reason, when i go back and look at the stats later i discover has caused people to look at my twitter profile. sometimes, it’s a *lot* of people that look. and the more obscure the reference or innocuous the topic, the weirder it is to me that someone decided, “huh; i wonder who this person is, i think i’ll check out her profile.” i mean, if i tweet about my boobs, i get it. y’all wanna know if you know the girl with the nice rack, lol. but when i just re-tweet something that literally thousands of people have re-tweeted and could apply to literally *anyone* and then follow it up with a simple, “that last rt? omg, yes, yes, yes, mother-fucking *YES*” and that gets a bunch of people clicking on my profile? that just creeps me right the fuck out.

such is the case of last night. last night i went out and had fun with friends and maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was the fun, or maybe it felt like it was a random enough thing to say that no one would know that it was about me specifically, but when i woke up this morning and looked back – sure as shit, someone (or several someones) had clicked through to my profile. which triggered a wave of nausea, a quickening of my pulse, a sharp pang from the shallowness of the next few breaths. because as random as the thought was, as much as (sadly) it could have applied to any number of women, it was also something very specific, that really, only people that really know me would know about me. so of course i deleted it. but that doesn’t matter. it’s archived, somewhere. there’s tools for recovering deleted tweets. someone could have taken a screenshot (it was up overnight). and that’s the real problem for me when it comes to comparing microblogging to blogging.

when i write a blog post, i give it a lot of thought and attention. i’ll read it through over and over to make sure i’m comfortable with what i’ve written. with sharing this bit about myself, this tiny piece of me. when i tweet – i rarely do that. i just fire off a thought into the great big universe.

so you might be asking, “if you’re that worried about it – why tweet at all? why blog?” well, therein lies the rub. because i don’t want to be a hermit and not connect with people, but i do want to be as anonymous as possible. because as much as i’ve been hurt, i want to be there for others to maybe prevent their pain. because i don’t want to grow old all alone, even though i can count on my fingers how many of you actually know me. because i want to hold my head up and be brave and so of course i don’t care that obviously by calling myself “the woodlands biotch” and talking about things i’m doing and places i’m going are in and around the woodlands has the potential to make me easier to find; but it also means that i’m clearly broadcasting that i am just one of over 100,000 of us here in the woodlands, and there’s safety in numbers.

years ago, when i finally struck out on my own, i was initially determined to go somewhere else, somewhere far away. i thought maybe i’d go to boston. maybe i’d go to austin. but the way the stars aligned at the time, it turned out better for me that i stayed here; i had a safety net here. i had people. and frankly, it was easier to monitor the monster being closer to it than far away from it. but most importantly, i convinced myself if i was going to be brave enough to finally escape the monster, then i needed to be brave enough to not run away.

and now more than ever i have a great life here; i don’t want to be anywhere else, with any one else. life here is good. i just hate that no matter how wonderful it is, i still find myself looking over my shoulder. not out of fear of the random stranger – but of the stranger i thought i knew.