Coming out of the Anonymous Closet

[Play in high quality if you can. It's MUCH better.]

When I started blogging back in 2005, I was falling down the rabbit hole of frustration and turmoil. I had to find an outlet and I had to both practice my writing and find out if I could even write regularly again; but my lawyer was troubled by my idea. We agreed that I could blog if I kept it anonymous and if I didn't blog on a whole bunch of topics he listed for me. As the movies say, anything you write will be used against you in a court of law. Well, that's a bit of a twist on the old line, but it's certainly true.

I thought at the time that this would be a temporary thing, that my made-up user name would soon be supplanted by my real name.

Ha!

As I blogged and practiced writing and expanded my online activities, the insurance companies dragged their heels, counter-sued my ex-spouse, and sent me to more medicals. As I dipped my toe back into photography, an angel came into my life to help me finish my book interrupted, I waited for the mediation to happen, the mediation that was booked almost a year away. I think I also went for a repeat medical. As I published my book, we went to mediation. What a total waste of time. Time wastage continued as I watched the months crawl by towards my pre-trial in June. My lawyer had informed me nothing was going to happen between mediation and pre-trial as the insurance companies would just wait as is their wont. Finally the day came. The day went. No change. And then at last, the companies started negotiating in earnest with my lawyer, we struck a deal, I recovered from the shock of how the state, insurers, and judges shaft car crash claimants with the legal system's blessing, and then I waited some more.

Today, it is done. Eight years, seven months, and three days after a couple of dickhead drivers smashed so hard into the back of the car in which I was a passenger that they pushed us into the car in front of us, causing me neck, shoulder, and closed head injuries, all the legal actions are over, and I can come out into the open.

Only thing is, it's too weird. From finding it strange to write under a made-up name here and on Metblogs, to share my photographs under another made-up name, to getting used to being called Points or Pointsy (my Flickr handle), it is now utter strange to go back, to put my real identity on all my online activities, to amalgamate my blogs and websites under one moniker.

The next many days, I'll be adding my website widget to my sidebar, adding my new Twitter feed, and catching up on other blog changes I've wanted to make. And in the future, you can be pretty sure I'll be writing about life as a car crash claimant, the hell of losing yourself through a closed head injury, the weirdness of growing a new personality and new hobby(ies?) out of that personality, and the legal system. I can now also talk about health care, insurance companies, and all sorts of interesting topics (Chinese curse: you lead an interesting life). But first I need to recover from this anti-climactic moment, anti-climactic because after the many times I thought we were finishing up only to find out not, that when it finally happened, I was too worn out to feel much excitement.

But I'm free! And to meditate on that is to touch excitement.