Tags
balance, coping, fear, future, gender identity, gender variance, healing, hiding, internet, privacy, self awareness, stealth, transgender
I feel caught between a rock and a hard place and I have to ask myself why.
A friend just mentioned that there are several links on a popular search engine that basically out us. My heart sank before it began beating as if I was sprinting for the finish line. Only there isn’t an end to your internet history, is there? You can’t simply move on. It won’t let you go. It clings to what you consider the past like an ex clutching old love notes that speak of feelings long gone. It keeps shoving it in your face.
In the past I would have been frantic, flying into what I used to call “Recovery Mode” trying to fix everything that was wrong or broken, but is it? Lately I’ve been reading Pema Chodron and she’s made a huge impact on my thinking. Now before I take that emotional leap toward all the small “what if” places, I mentally sit down and let it all come. The worry. The fear. The panic. The improvised conversations with words that sting and bruise. The dark, wretched places where my child sits in the middle. The anger. The frustration. The pure, unadulterated rage. Doors open… come on in.
When I can see what my mind is fighting up close I realize that it doesn’t have any power over me. I can change the past about as much as I can change people’s feelings about me. Not at all. As I look back at the chicken scratch notes next to me about all the active sites that reflect the truth of our past, I am going to choose to do something that scares me. I am going to throw them all away and not do a single thing.
Are we still running or are we free people?
Do we stand in our truth with all its complexities and still feel whole?
Perhaps the farther I run or frantically try to erase, the more clear our past becomes. The sharper the focus. The bigger the deal. The more power we give away to people who simply don’t have the capacity to understand real life. Real life to me is what resides beneath the banter in the checkout line. Beyond the smile to your postal worker. The simple realities that are kept for those in your inner circle of trustees. Real life is everyone’s truth. Don’t we all have something we’d rather not share?
A recent conversation about the difference between “right to know” and “need to know” floods my brain and my heart slows the pace. We are just people living in this world. People who want to live authentically. Although I protect some details for the sake of my children, I am not afraid of our truth. It’s ours and I am proud of that. It is as much a part of me as the memories I keep closest in my heart. I don’t need to explain them. They just are.
I applaud your resolve to face the reality of things like this. I know all too well the fear that comes with realizing how much of yourself is out there for the world to see (or google).
I took the opposite route from you; I did manage to erase most (if not all) of my history on the internet. It wasn’t nearly as hard as one might think. But it would have been nice to just let things be and move on.
Keep on trucking along!
Brady
Thanks Brady! Believe it or not I did try to remove old info from the internet. I did cache removal requests, contacted people who interviewed me long ago (unrelated to our life now but reflects me as a mom of 2 sons), people who wrote about us, etc. The more I contacted people the more stuff that came up!! Funny how lessons hit you like that.
If you don’t mind, for people who need to erase at least some of their internet history could you possibly share with us how you were successful? It would be really helpful for many.
Best- Jen
Notifying people is a bit of an annoyance, I’ll give you that. I only had to do that with one company, and I’m just waiting for Google to re-crawl the site and update the cache so my information isn’t there anymore.
My major issue was simply having too many registered accounts with my various email addresses attached to them. That was taken care of by simply deleting all the accounts I could, and again waiting for the cache to update. Thankfully, that’s finally occurred and I’m nearly invisible. Now I can start job hunting in the coming months or when I leave graduate school and know that nothing will be available to dig up (in theory)
Beyond that, I’ve just learned to keep certain things seperate. The email address I use for work is not the same that is used for recreational activities online. Same goes for school; I have a different email for that, I just try very hard not to mix the three of them up.
The easiest thing to do is start over with new email. Between your email and your full name, those are the principle ways people can snoop for information. If you used the same email for everything, or for anything you don’t want identified anymore, simply abandon it. That way, if people confront you, you can just say, “Hey… that’s not me.”
Same goes for using names. I’ve already noticed you disgusing your children’s names, and you keep yours as an abbreviation of a very common name, so I think you’re alright there.
That’s all I have.
Brady
Brady- I really appreciate you walking us through it. It makes total sense when you say it, but I think we need to be told what we need to do sometimes. Living under the radar (for whatever reason) is so ominous at times that we need some sort of handbook. Feel like writing that one?
I am so relieved to hear that all your effort has worked for you. I am sure the news will inspire tons of people out there. Thank you. My Best- Jen
Everyone tells me I should be a writer. And as much as I appreciate that suggestion.. I think I’ll pass. The only reason I say that is because, like you, I tend to think the worst a lot. Not only that, but I expand upon the worst and create things with my extravagent imagination that most people couldn’t concieve of.
And the first thought that enters my mind upon considering writing on such a topic is people thinking, “Wow.. he wrote a whole book on how to be invisible online; I wonder what he has to hide?”
And then you cut to six months after the book is published and everything I ever typed on a computer has been dug up; I’m jobless, prospectless and bankrupt.
At that point I’ll be sitting in my makshift shack fashioned out of a large 60” old-school bigscreen TV cardboard box and think, “Damn… I shouldn’t have opened my mouth.”
Now, will that happen? No, most likely not. It never has before and probably won’t ever in the future. And by saying that it could, I’d be undermining your whole blog post… so I’m going to stop typing now.
I hope you at least got a chuckle out of this rambling reply of mine.
Brady
You cracked me up Brady!! I sometimes have to go there too and trust me, I know what you mean. Maybe we can stick together and find you an imaginative pen name!!
Best- Jen
Nice words. And when confronted with my past, and really my present direction, I tend to say, “And?”, and then leave it at that. I tell folks whatever I want others to know or I want to share is on my Website or blog. And everything else is personal and private, and not open for public discussion.
But your friend is right, just search on “today you are you” and you’re at or near the top. I don’t know what else they used to search, but I suspect you’d be lost in the many pages beyond the first, lost in the confusion of search results from the variety of words. But as you say, it’s all there for anyone to find, see and read.
For a long time, I didn’t discuss, let alone share, my inherited mental condition (Dysthymia), until one day taking with friends the topic of suicide came up (their friend was suicidal) and I explained why it’s hard to understand someone so deeply imploding to even think about suicide (twice for me). From that day I stepped into the light with myself to just be who I am.
Fear of being found and thought different, and often badly, is powerful and often overwhelming when you are honest with yourself. I believe it’s one of our most innate feelings and all the effort of modern society and culture can’t rid us of it. Our instinct pushes us to the negative side of our mind where our imagination can run away with us.
And when that happens I do a similar thing. I automatically go to and through the negative scenarios, and eventually see that all of them aren’t so bad after all. Not always without negative effects or results, but at least I can focus on the real possibilities. And the positive is always a surprise, especially if nothing negative happens.
To me, sometimes nothing is something. When you expect the worst and nothing happens, then everything is positive, if only nothing. It’s not wasted thought as many people try to preach or teach, it’s instructive to know you’ve come through and nothing could be worse for the moment.
I keep a memory log of bad experiences, and when I think things are going bad and likely will go worse, I stop to remember the worst time in similar situations. And when I see it’s not close, I relax and say, “Well, it’s not the worst day of my life.” And when I see it could be worse, I say, “Wow, a new worst experience.” And I’m relieved it’s just something new to remember.
Take care and thanks for sharing.
Thanks Scott. You are right. If I thought about the worst moment sin my life I can clearly see that I have endured worse. Many things end up feeling like a drop in the bucket. I love how you said your reaction was “And?”, only proving that things simply are. We add the positive or negative to things, don’t we?
They searched the internet using my full name to find the results and after 10 pages or so I realized erasing my past online is a daunting task. Unbelievable!
You’ve helped me see things in a different light too Scott. I am so grateful for your wisdom and support. Best- Jen
I was so impressed with your post (and the eloquent comments that follow). You recognize that you have been through tough moments and conversations before, and that ultimately whatever would come of someone’s search, you would get through that, too. You have an incredibly deep well of strength and resources to draw on. Worrying about what confrontations might come will not prepare you to deal with them; peace of mind can only come from seeing the gifts that are right in front of you at the moment.
Beautifully put Natalie!! We all have gifts right in front of us. I think I forget that sometimes. Thank you for your support. It means a lot. Best- Jen
You’re welcome. I always love the reaction after, “And?” when they try to say something I’ve told them about my Dysthymia or the new direction in my life, especially as it become more obvious. I’m grateful my words help.
As for the losing your Internet identity, I’ve always used one simply piece of advice, which is, “Don’t say anyting anywhere on the Internet you wouldn’t say in a public forum.” This way you have nothing to hide, and your words or information can’t come back to bite or haunt you. Of my past words, I always say, “I may have changed my view or mind since then, but I’ll still stand by them. If I hurt or offended anyone because I misunderstood, I’ll apologize. If’ I’m wrong, then explain so I learn. Otherwise, it’s what I said, it’s my view as we all have them equally as everyone else.”
This is partly because you can’t really erase your history. Many post-transistion women know this, even those who transistioned pre-Internet as public records become more and more digital and on-line. Many newspaper are putting their entire history on-line and many companies keep personal and other information forever. Even Google doesn’t erase broken links for a long time, if at all. I’ve run across ten year old broken links.
And let’s not forget the Library of Congress now has the complete history of tweets as well as archiving them as they happen. Instead of tweeting, in the future, they’ll say, “You’ve been tweeted.”, meaning outed by your own words. And the NSA has everything too, whether legal or not, or we want or like it or not.
Again, thanks for sharing.